Cretonne

“ Then Creon, King of the Thebans, was wroth with the maiden, and he commanded that she should be taken to a cave, and the mouth be barred with rocks. She should be given just enough food and water to prevent the guilt of her death falling upon the city, and left to pine away in her rocky dungeon. And the guards led her away and did the king's bidding. But when Creon's only son heard what was done he forced his way into that tomb of the living, for he loved Antigone, and would have delivered her at the price of his own life. ”

“ He dodged between the sinewy arms of his opponent, and, arching his back against the python embrace which now tightened upon him, felt for the Cretan's throat, when—there was a great crunching and trembling sound, and in the air, that had suddenly turned milky and pungent, Cretans and Turks were leaping like imps. Curtis stood for a moment in stupid wonder, his mouth open, his hands still convulsively twitching. He was gazing at a great heap of debris and a triangle of wall with one ragged side. Men were scrambling over the rubbish, working their arms as though they were trying to fly. ”

“ The lying propensity of the Cretans is proved from the fact that the verb to Cretize, was used in Greek with the meaning “to speak falsely.” In Hebrew, Crete is called Caphtor (cypress) . It is mentioned in Jer. xlvii. 4. It was the native land of a tribe of Philistines called Caphtorim (Gen. x. 14; Deut. ii. 23; 1 Chron. i. 12) . The fact that the Philistines came partly from Crete is also affirmed in Amos ix. 7. Another branch of the Philistines came from Casloach in Egypt. The Caphtorim emigrated originally from Egypt to Crete, from which island they were probably driven by the Greeks. ”

“ It is not only the vastness of the size that amazes us. That is the chief wonder of the Egyptian pyramids. But the buildings and other remains in Crete are more wonderful still.
This Cretan civilisation at so very early a date makes an extraordinary chapter in the world's story. It would still have been a story very extraordinary if it had been only just the story of what happened in the island of Crete, and did not spread beyond it. ”

“ Burton is confined to her bed by a sprained ankle, and her daughter cannot leave her. Miss Ward will have to come up.’ You [91] write it on one of your visiting-cards, Luella, and we’ll send it down as quick as we get back from breakfast. Hurry up. The only thing about it will be that climb up three flights after breakfast, but it won’t do for us to risk the elevator. Crete might recognize us, for the elevator goes right by that second-floor front parlor. What I don’t understand is how they got in there. It’s only rich people can afford that. But, land! Crete’s just like a baby ”

“ The position of Crete—'a halfway house between three continents, flanked by the great Libyan promontory, and linked by smaller island stepping-stones to the Peloponnese and the mainland of Anatolia'—marks it out as designed by Nature to be a centre of development in the culture of the early Ægean race, and, in point of fact, ancient traditions unanimously pointed to the great island as being the birthplace of Greek civilization. ”

“ Thus Cratylus to Marina in his heart.
The inexpert poet is not content with numbers; as Miss de Speyne had said, he is apt to probe what he expounds. Also, by a merciful provision of our mother, no man is permitted to think himself ridiculous, nor indeed is necessarily so. The poets are right there. The intentions of mature Cratylus may be as honourable, his raptures as true, his sighs as deeply fetched as any of beardless Corydon’s. Only, when desire fades in us, o’ God’s name let us die. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Page 181 process which finally resulted in the island of Crete becoming 'the mixed land,' with a heterogeneous population of Pelasgians, Dorians, Achæans, and other tribes, must have been a gradual one, extending, in all probability, over several centuries. Any large influx of foreign elements was impossible so long as Crete was dominated by a great and warlike central power; but once that power was broken by the catastrophe in which the Palaces of Knossos and Phæstos were overthrown, there was nothing to hinder the gradual drifting in of the wandering tribes of the Ægean and of the North. ”

“ For a while the most sober-minded bade adieu to the stringency of habit, following the well-known Greek maxim—
“Ne’er blush with drink to spice the feast’s gay hour,
And, reeling, own the mighty wine-god’s power.”
So it is in Cremorne. If Corinth had her groves sacred to Aphrodite, so has Cremorne. It offends our modern sense of propriety to speak of such matters. English people only see what they wish to see. If you are true—if you look at real life and say what you think of it, you shock our modern sense of propriety. ”

“ FAÏENCE FROM THE TEMPLE REPOSITORY OF THE SECOND PALACE, CNOSSOS, CRETE.
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the muscles. It is probably a failing of archæologists to see religion everywhere they go. It is certain that the suckling motive was in after times associated with the worship of maternal deities such as Hera. It is certain also that the prehistoric Cretan did worship powers of fecundity in human and animal form. But we need not transform this she-goat into a goddess. I much prefer to be sure that this prehistoric Cretan loved and studied the wild creatures of his native hills and his native blue sea. ”

“ It was quite apparent in the case of the alchemist, Kreutz, that something was going on that was undermining his health and perhaps his reason. Such a change as had come over him was not at all normal in a man with such a strong body and mind as he possessed. And as Elzbietka lay awake thinking of one thing after another she became a prey to many strange fears, among them this one, that Kreutz was no longer the master of his own soul, that somehow the student Tring had become the master of it ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whichever way we go, we soon find that we have run into a land older than those with which we have been familiar, whose legends greet us even at this distance over miles of tossing waves. Let those who are content to voyage with us through the pages that follow, be content to reserve Corfù for the homeward journey, and to assume that our prow is headed now toward Crete, through a tossing sea such as led the ancients to exclaim, “The Cretan sea is wide!” The shadowy mountains on the left are the lofty southern prongs of the Grecian peninsula. ”

“ Additional indications, indeed, have come to light which carry back the chronology of the earlier relics of Cretan culture far beyond the date of Schliemann's great discoveries on the mainland of Greece, and attest an intercourse with Egypt going back to the third and, it may be, even the fourth millennium before our era. We have here in Crete the first stepping-stone of European civilisation. ”

“ Roused by the taunt, Cratinus put forth all his strength, and in 423 B.C. produced the Πυτίνη, or Bottle, which gained the first prize over the Clouds of Aristophanes. In this comedy, good-humouredly making fun of his own weakness, Cratinus represents the comic muse as the faithful wife of his youth. His guilty fondness for a rival—the bottle—has aroused her jealousy. She demands a divorce from the archon; but her husband’s love is not dead and he returns penitent to her side. ”

“ Whereto replies the much-offended Malvolio: "That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird." He of the crossed garters disdains such fantasy. "I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion."
I took my ticket for Cotrone, which once was Croton. At Croton, Pythagoras enjoyed his moment's triumph, ruling men to their own behoof. At Croton grew up a school of medicine which glorified Magna Graecia. "Healthier than Croton," said a proverb; for the spot was unsurpassed in salubrity; beauty and strength distinguished its inhabitants, who boasted their champion Milon. ”

“ Crittenden's own face grew tense as he watched her. There was a tone in her voice that he had hungered for all his life; that he had never heard but in his imaginings and in his dreams; that he had heard sounding in the ears of another and sounding at the same time the death-knell of the one hope that until now had made effort worth while. All evening she had played about his spirit as a wistful, [Pg 110] changeful light will play over the fields when the moon is bright and clouds run swiftly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I saw her several times afterwards, and she contributed much to make my stay in Crete interesting and instructive, being always ready to give any information I wanted regarding the country and its inhabitants, and being better fitted for it than anybody else.
Mdlle. Elizabeth of Crete, for that is the name [61] by which she is generally known, is a very remarkable woman. She was born in Crete, but received her education in Athens, and lives in an Eastern Island with the manners and habits of the West. She walks and travels about alone, protected only by the respect all have for her. ”

“ Here old Anchises, father of Æneas, rich in the lore of old tradition, says:
Listen, lords of Troy, and learn where your hopes are. Crete lies in the midst of the deep, the island of mighty Jove. There is Mount Ida, and there the cradle of our race. It has a hundred peopled cities, a realm of richest plenty. ”

“ The earliest folk which reached Crete are described as having come with a form of culture which had been developed elsewhere, and among these neolithic settlers have been found traces of a race 6 feet in height and with skulls massive and shapely. Moreover Cretan beliefs and the myths which are based upon them are admittedly older than even the civilisation of the Tigro-Euphrates valley: and they belong, it would appear, to a stock of common inheritance from an uncertain culture centre of immense antiquity. ”

“ THE SAGE OF CROTON
The popularity of this sage at Croton offers no problem: the inhabitants had become sufficiently civilized to appreciate the charm of being regenerated. We all do. Renunciation has always exercised an irresistible attraction for good society; it makes us feel so comfortable, to be told we are going to hell—and Pythagoras was very eloquent on the subject of Tartarus as a punishment. ”

“ The Cretan wares which filtered into Egypt after 1400 B.C. were the products of the Minoan decadence, when the survivors of the Empire of the Sea-Kings—a broken and dwindling race—were still trying to maintain a slowly failing tradition of art under the new masters, perhaps the Mycenæans of the mainland, who, driven forth themselves by the pressure of Northern invaders, had crushed in their turn the gentler sister civilization of Crete. ”

“ When he arrived at Crete, as most of the ancient historians as well as poets tell us, having a clue of thread given him by Ariadne, who had fallen in love with him, and being instructed by her how to use it so as to conduct him through the windings of the labyrinth, he escaped out of it and slew the Minotaur, and sailed back, taking along with him Ariadne and the young Athenian captives. Pherecydes adds that he bored holes in the bottoms of the Cretan ships to hinder their pursuit. ”

“ Creon's attendants reverently wash the body in pure water, burn the remains, and raise a mound of earth. Then they take their way to "death's marriage-chamber," in which Antigone had been immured. Even before they reach it, a shrill cry of lamentation breaks upon their ears; and with a heart foreboding the worst, Creon bids his slaves roll away the stones and widen the entrance to the tomb. The sight which meets their eyes, as the set scene in the background opens, is piteous beyond all expression. ”