Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/459

 432 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Ant. Lolling also picked up chips of pottery whose family likeness to the Mycenian vases is unmistakable.^ He would identify the spot with the Ormenion mentioned in the catalogue of ships. On the other hand, the idea, if ever entertained, of connecting the ruinous circular chamber situate between the twin summits of the citadel of Pharsales with a domed-grave, must be abandoned.^ It has neither a dromos, nor ever had a cupola ; it is no more than an old cistern. The open gutter or channel which brought rain-water to the cistern appears along the rocky height overhanging the reservoir.^ TAe Islands of the yEgean. m Tradition pointed to Crete as a land above all others where monuments both numerous and stately, belonging to the primitive epoch, might be expected to turn up. Crete was nearer to Egypt, Phoenicia, and Cyprus than Peloponnesus ; it lay on the track of maritime expeditions and international trafific. It is easy to see that everything poetry has to tell of Minos is but the remem- brance which the Greeks had preserved of warlike princes, whose long dominion over the sea had enabled them to surround themselves in their island home with a luxury and outward show of power which yielded in no respect to the splendour and magnificence of the Pelopidae on the mainland. They made Cnosus, situated at the foot of Mount Ida — which latter had been the cradle of Zeus, the greatest god of the Hellenic race — in the very heart of the island, their capital ; * a town which one ^ Athenische Mittheiiungen, '^ The notion of a bee-hive grave was propounded by Ussing, Griechischc Reisen und Studien, ^ Athenische Mittheiiungen. ^ Herodotus and Thucydides are nearly at one with regard to the Thalas- socracy of Minos ; both represent him as the conqueror of the Carians, whom he deprived of the Cyclades. Aristotle, whose vigorous mind was directed to the study of the past history of Greece, is quite as assertive on this question, and he forcibly points out the geographical advantages possessed by Crete. "The island," he says, " looks as if purposely made for the subjugation of Greece. It enjoys a capital situation, and rules the sea around which nearly all the Greek-speaking people is established. It lies at no great distance from Peloponnesus in one direction, and on the other the promontory of Triopion, opposite to Rhodes, serves to bring it near to Asia. Hence it is that Minos assumed the empire of the ocean, subdued the islands, and established colonies in some of them."