Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/262

 V30 HISTORY OF GREECE. from Athens may be based in some expiatory offerings ren- dered to a Kretan divinity. The orgiastic worship of Zeus, sol emnized by the armed priests with impassioned motions and vio- lent excitement, was of ancient date in that island, as well as the connection with the worship of Apollo both at Delphi and at Delos. To analyze the fables and to elicit from them any trust- worthy particular facts, appears to me a fruitless attempt. The religious recollections, the romantic invention, and the items of matter of fact, if any such there be, must forever remain indis- solubly amalgamated as the poet originally blended them, for the amusement or edification of his auditors. Hoeckh, in his in- structive and learned collection of facts respecting ancient Krete, construes the mythical genealogy of Minos to denote a combina- tion of the orgiastic worship of Zeus, indigenous among the Eteokretes, with the worship of the moon imported from Phre- nicia, and signified by the names Europe, Pasiphae, and Ariad- ne. 1 This is specious as a conjecture, but I do not venture to speak of it in terms of greater confidence. From the connection of religious worship and legendary tales between Krete and various parts of Asia Minor, the Troad, the coast of Miletus and Lykia, especially between Mount Ida in Krete and Mount Ida in .ZEolis, it seems reasonable to infer an ethnographical kindred or relationship bet ween the inhabitants anterior to the period of Hellenic occupation. The tales of Kre- tan settlement at Minoa and Engyion on the south-western coast of Sicily, and in lapygia on the Gulf of Tarentum, conduct us to a similar presumption, though the want of evidence forbids our tracing it farther. In the time of Herodotus, the Eteokretes, or aboriginal inhabitants of the island, were confined to Polichna and Prsesus ; but in earlier times, prior to the encroachments of the Hellenes, they had occupied the larger portion, if not the whole of the island. MinGs was originally their hero, subse- quently adopted by the immigrant Hellenes, at least Herodotus considers him as barbarian, not Hellenic. 2 1 Hoeckh, Kreta, vol. ii. pp. 56-67. K. O. Miiller also (Dorier. ii. 2, 14) ?uts a religious interpretation upon these Kreto-Attic legends, br t he ex- plains them in a manner totally different from Hoeckh.
 * Herodc*. i. 1 73