Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/465

 43^ Pkimetive Greece: Mycenian Art. gauge the level reached by this early civilization in the great Achaean centres, it is not on these forbidding heights, beaten by every wind of heaven, that we must look for it, but rather on the site of cities erected on or near the sea ; such as Kydonia, Gortyna, and Cnosus, with the command, too, of the best lands of the country. The town of Kydonia, now Xawa, Canea, has been so often razed to the ground that, although it has always been rebuilt and never ceased to be a bustling little place, it has preserved no vestige of its pristine existence. The site of Gortyna is now occupied by a mere straggling village, called Haghios-Deka ; but under the Roman dominion it became the 169. —Funerary residence of a pro-consul, when its population rapidly increased ; its old stones, it is to be feared, were then re-used for the construction of new buildings, Cnosus, on the contrary, was and remained in a state of decadence throughout the Roman period. When, in media;val times, Candia rose on the site of Heraclion,— which had been the ancient harbour of Cnosus, — the builders of the new city found an abundance of material to their hand in the apparent portions of the deserted erections, and had no need to uncover or disturb the old foundations. For reasons adverted to above, the constructions in question must have been important. " In the middle of the deep," says Homer, " rises a smiling and fertile land, the island of Crete, inhabited by so many men that no one can count them ; they live in ninety cities, and speak many