Cretans

“ These early Cretans were of unknown race, but probably of a race akin to the Iberians of Spain and Western Europe and the dark whites of Asia Minor and North Africa, and their language is unknown. This race lived not only in Crete, but in Cyprus, Greece, Asia Minor, Sicily, and South Italy. It was a civilized people for long ages before the fair Aryan Greeks spread southward through Macedonia. ”

“ Crete was an island, which, from its position, should have dominated over the whole of Greece, as it had for its neighbours the coasts of the Peloponnesus and of Asia. The Cretans were remarkable amongst the Hellenic nations for their institutions, which bore a singular physiognomy. Diodorus describes all the legends relating to the Greek divinities of whom Crete boasted to be the cradle; he then adds that during the generations succeeding the birth of the gods, many heroes lived in the island, the most illustrious of whom were Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon. ”

“ What the Cretans wanted was a good leader, arms, and bread. Greece sent them rival chiefs without subordination, a rabble of volunteers, who quarrelled with the islanders, and weakened the cause by deserting it as soon as they felt the strain of danger and hardship; and if, after the first campaign, they were more wise in enrolling men to go to Crete, they still allowed the jealousies and hostilities of the leaders to go unchecked by any of those measures which were in their power. ”

“ The Cretans possess, in common with all the Greeks, the avidity for instruction and quickness of intellect which make of this race the dominant element in the Levant. They are tenaciously devoted to their religion and to their traditions, which have kept them up and preserved the national character against such a continuation of hostile influences as probably no other people ever lived through. ”

“ Most of us have lost long ago all we had. The Moslem Cretans must leave the island, for their hate is too fierce for peace.” It came to this—they defied us, well knowing that no one Power would be suffered by the rest to land enough men to sweep their hills: and I rose convinced that union with the Hellenic kingdom is the inborn hope of a Cretan. He sucks it in with his mother’s milk, and breathes it at her knee; reason is powerless against his sentiment, and to use it worse than vain. ”

“ I am much moved by the mention made of the services which my late illustrious husband was able to render to the cause of Greece in his youth, and to that of Crete in his later life. It is true that his earliest efforts, outside of his native country, were for Greek independence, and that his latest endeavors in Europe were made in aid of the Cretans, who have struggled with so much courage and perseverance to deliver their country from the yoke of Turkish oppression. ”

“ Some of the frescoes are so lifelike that as they were brought to light during the excavations, it almost seemed as if the spirits of the long-dead Cretans were returning to the earth. The workmen felt the spell, and Sir Arthur Evans, who excavated Knossos, has described the scene as the painting of a young Cretan was found:
The colours were almost as brilliant as when laid down over three thousand years before. For the first time the true portraiture of a man of this mysterious Mycenaean race rises before us. ”

“ Anarchy unnerved it. The bad reputation of the Cretans at Athens was also due to the jealousy of the Athenians who could never forgive Crete a short supremacy on the sea. When the poets wished to please the Athenians they abused Minos and the Cretans. Nothing is more dangerous to good fame with posterity than to have for enemy a witty nation.b
BELOCH’S ACCOUNT OF GREEK COLONISATION
The scene of Grecian primitive history is practically limited to the countries bordering the Ægean Sea. But in the period which gave rise to the great epic poems the geographical horizon had already begun to expand. ”

“ It is a wholly unheard of thing for the British to think or speak of Britain as “the Fatherland”: the Cretans, according to Plutarch, spoke of Crete as their Motherland, and not as the Fatherland: “At first,” says Mackenzie, “the Cretan Earth Mother was the culture deity who instructed mankind ... in Crete she was well developed before the earliest island settlers began to carve her images on gems and seals or depict them in frescoes. She symbolised the island and its social life and organisation.” ”

“ This action on the part of the Cretans turned every one's attention back to the frontier of Greece and Turkey. It seems that the question of Cretan liberty must be settled there.
The war fever is running very high in Greece, and King George is being urged to declare war, and let the Greeks show the Powers they are able to settle their own affairs for themselves. ”

“ Spartans did in respect of the Helots, the Thessalians in the case of the Penestæ, and the Cretans with the Clarotæ. But the Cretans call those servants, who are in their houses Chrysoneti, [414:1] and those whose work lies in the fields Amphamiotæ, being natives of the country, but people who have been enslaved by the chance of war; but they also call the same people Clarotæ, because they have been distributed among their masters by lot.
And Ephorus, in the third book of his Histories, "The Cretans call their slaves Clarotæ, because lots have been drawn for them ”

“ A prevalent opinion among the Greeks ascribed the origin of paiderastia to Crete; and it was here that the legend of Zeus and Ganymede was localised. [2] "The Cretans," says Plato, [3] "are always accused of having invented the story of Ganymede and Zeus, which is designed to justify themselves in the enjoyment of such pleasures by the practice of the god whom they believe to have been their lawgiver." ”

“ The state of affairs in Crete remained practically unaltered; supported by Greece and Russia, the Cretans demanded nothing less than incorporation with Greece, whilst England and France viewed this proposal with disfavour. Ali Pacha, the Grand Vizier, was sent to Crete with the most extensive powers to pacify the island; in addition to other reforms, a Christian Governor-General was to be appointed. ”

“ In fact, it may be said that, from the origin of both peoples, the likelihood is that they were in contact. It is possible enough that both the Nilotic and the Minoan civilization sprang from a common stock, and that the Neolithic Cretans and the Neolithic Egyptians were alike members of the same widespread Mediterranean race. ”

“ Among the Cretans the exact reverse of all these arrangements497 obtains. The laws allow them to possess as much land as they can get with no limitation whatever. Money is so highly valued among them, that its possession is not only thought to be necessary but in the highest degree creditable. And in fact greed and avarice are so native to the soil in Crete, that they are the only people in the world among whom no stigma attaches to any sort of gain whatever. ”

“ At Cydonia, one of the towns of Crete, the slaves had festivals during which they were free and powerful, and could even fight the citizens. Servitude has always provoked orgies.
All the instincts of civilisation began to develop in Crete with great energy. The Cretans did not like inaction, they liked hunting, wrestling, and every kind of exercise. They lived in common and divided the fruits of the earth. These customs and habits were at the bottom of Cretan institutions. ”

“ Then after this, when they had returned home from Troy, famine and pestilence came upon both the men and their cattle, until at last Crete was stripped of its inhabitants for the second time, and a third population of Cretans now occupy it together with those which were left of the former inhabitants. The Pythian prophetess, I say, by calling these things to their minds stopped them from giving assistance to the Hellenes, though they desired to do so. ”

“ Desiring to learn what50 (Note 50) they can of the commercial possibilities of the Cyrenaica, the Theraeans come to Crete, and not only to Crete, but to that part of it where there still dwelt in the eastern corner of the long island a remnant of Eteocretans, that is “Cretans of Pure Blood,” descendants of the “Minoan” Cretans, who had been such famous traders and mariners. Itanos, where Korôbios lived, was an Eteocretan town. It has been excavated and has revealed material evidence of “Minoan” culture. ”

“ TRANSLATION OF AN ADDRESS TO THE EUROPEAN CONSULS OF THE CHRISTIAN DEPUTIES, ASSEMBLED UNDER THE NAME OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF CRETANS, SITTING AT PROSNERO, CANTON OF APOCORONA.
MM. les Consuls: The Representatives of the Christian people of the Isle of Crete, respectfully undersigned, assembled under the title of the Assembly General of the Cretans, feel it our imperative duty to call you to bear witness to the violence which obliges us, in spite of our wishes to the contrary, to take up arms by right of lawful defence. ”

“ The Cretans have stayed their previous decadence, and are once more possessors of a progressive civilization. They have developed a more convenient and expressive written character by stages of which one is best represented by the tablets of Hagia Triada. The art of all the area gives evidence of one spirit and common models; in religious representations it shows the same anthropomorphic personification and the same ritual furniture. Objects produced in one locality are found in others. The area of Aegean intercourse has widened and become more busy. ”

“ But it appears now that long before this time the island of Crete was a great naval and commercial power, that in the earliest dynasties of Egypt Cretan fleets were carrying on a commerce with the Nile valley. Indeed, the Cretans may have taught the Egyptians something of the art of building sea-going ships for trade and war. [1] At all events, Crete may be regarded as the first great sea power of history, an island empire like Great Britain to-day, extending its influence from Sicily to Palestine and dominating the eastern Mediterranean for many centuries. ”

“ Industrial relations with Egypt are also marked by the occurrence of a series of finds of pottery and other objects of Minoan fabric among the remains of the XVIIIth, XIIth and even earlier dynasties, while the same seafaring enterprise brought Egyptian fabrics to Crete from the times of the first Pharaohs. Even in the Homeric poems, which belong to an age when the great Minoan civilization was already decadent, the Cretans appear as the only Greek people who attempted to compete with the Phoenicians as bold and adventurous navigators. ”

“ Word comes from Athens that the people are not at all pleased with the idea of home rule for Crete. They want the island to be joined to Greece, and would rather fight for it, than give it up. It is very natural that they should feel this way.
If the people of some near-by country were almost all Americans and relations of ours, and were cruelly treated by their rulers, we would feel just as the Greeks do. There is hardly a family in Greece which has not suffered wrong from the Turks. It is but natural that they fight for their brothers, the Cretans. ”

“ Of whom four were of Asia—Thales of Miletus, and Bias of Priene, Pittacus of Mitylene, and Cleobulus of Lindos; and two of Europe, Solon the Athenian, and Chilon the Lacedæmonian; and the seventh, some say, was Periander of Corinth; others, Anacharsis the Scythian; others, Epimenides the Cretan, whom Paul knew as a Greek prophet, whom he mentions in the Epistle to Titus, where he speaks thus: “One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. And this witness is true.” ”

“ The population, moreover, by artificial restraints, was kept within due bounds; consequently, most persons lived plentifully, and possessed wherewith to exercise the most generous hospitality. But even here they multiplied in later times more rapidly than the means of subsistence, so that numbers of Cretans were fain to serve as mercenary archers in the intestine wars of Greece. The same remark will apply to the Arcadians, and several other people whose poorer members earned a subsistence by their hereditary valour. ”

“ Volunteers had been coming over from Greece—a motley mass of all nations—many of them from Smyrna and other Turkish parts, who, as soon as they landed, began to breed disaffection and maltreat the Cretans, creating the most angry feeling in the island, which did not stop short of violence. At this time, the whole body were driven into the Sphakian mountains, where, exposed to intense cold, half-fed, and without any discipline, they were dangerous only to the insurrection, and yielded readily to proffers of the Pasha to give them free exit and conveyance to Greece. ”

“ He then began to frame laws, repairing to the god at Delphi, and bringing thence ordinances, as Minos brought his from the cave of Jupiter.818 The greater part of these ordinances were similar to those of Minos.
20. The following are the principal of the laws of Crete, which Ephorus has given in detail.
All the Cretans, who are selected at the same time from the troop (ἀγέλη) of youths, are compelled to marry at once. They do not however take the young women whom they have married immediately to their homes, until they are qualified to administer household affairs. ”

“ Devoted to piracy, [453] and reduced to sell their services, the Cretans, celebrated as archers, fought as mercenaries in the armies of Syria, Macedonia, and Egypt. [454]
Rhodes. XX. If Crete was in decline, Rhodes, on the contrary, was extending its commerce, which took gradually the place of that of the maritime towns of Ionia and Caria. Already inhabited, in the time of Homer, by a numerous population, and containing three important towns, Lindos, Ialysus, and Camirus, [455] the isle was, in the fifth century{149} of Rome, the first maritime power after Carthage. ”