The Sea-Kings of Crete. James Baikie
'Also he set therein a vineyard teeming plenteously with clusters, wrought fair in gold; black were the grapes, but the vines hung throughout on silver poles. And around it he ran a ditch of kuanos, and round that a fence of tin. … Also he wrought therein a herd of kine with upright horns, and the kine were fashioned of gold and tin.'
Such are some of the points which countenance the idea that in the Mycenæan people we have the originals of the people of the Homeric poems. On the other hand there are difficulties, by no means inconsiderable, in the way of such a belief. Of these the chief is the question of the method in which the bodies of the dead are disposed of. The men of the Homeric poems burned their dead; the men of the Mycenæan civilization buried theirs. Undoubtedly this is a serious difficulty in the way of identification, presupposing, as it does, a different view of the destiny of the soul after death. The men who burned the bodies of their dead believed that the soul had no further use for its body after death, but departed into a distant, shadowy, immaterial region, so that the body, if it had any connection with the soul, acted rather as a drag and a defilement, from which it was well that the soul should be released. Therefore they dematerialized the body, and often the things used by the body during life, by the action of fire. On the other hand, those who buried their dead believed that the spirit of the dead man dwelt in some fashion in the tomb, or at least hovered around the body, waiting, perhaps, for a reincarnation, and capable of using the weapons, the utensils, and the foods of its former life. Therefore the body was carefully interred, sometimes even embalmed, and its weapons and foods, or at all events simulacra of these, were laid beside it.
The distinction between the two lines of thought is clear and strong; but it does not necessarily presuppose an absolute distinction of race. It is not improbable that towards the end of the Mycenæan period, to which in any case the connection with the Homeric poems would belong, cremation was beginning to supersede the older practice of interment. In late Mycenæan graves at Salamis evidences of cremation are found, and at Mouliana, in Crete, there are instances of uncremated bones being found along with bronze swords on one side of a tomb, while on the other were found an iron sword and cremated bones in a cinerary urn. The distinction, then, is not necessarily one of race, but of custom, gradually changing, perhaps within a comparatively short period. It has even been suggested that no interval of time of any great extent is needed, as the practice of cremation may quickly develop among any race, being prompted by the comfortable idea that when the flesh is disposed of, the possibly inconvenient, possibly even vampire, ghost of a disagreeable ancestor goes along with it.
Another difficulty arises from the fact that the Homeric poems certainly contemplate a much wider use of iron than can be found among the remains of the Mycenæan people. But the weight of this objection may easily be exaggerated. Certainly the equipment contemplated for the Homeric heroes is in most cases of bronze, though the well-known line from the Odyssey, 'iron does of itself attract a man,' bears witness to a time when iron had become the almost universal fighting metal. But even in some of the Mycenæan tombs iron appears in the shape of finger-rings; and in East Cretan tombs of the latest Minoan period iron swords have been found. And if, as is generally agreed, the Homeric poems represent the work of several bards covering a considerable period of time, there is nothing out of the way in the supposition that, while the earlier writers represented bronze as the material for weapons, because it was actually so in their time, the later ones, writing at a period when iron was largely superseding, but had not altogether superseded, the older metal, should, while clinging in general to the old poetic word used by their predecessors, occasionally introduce the name of the metal which was becoming prevalent in their day. From this point of view the difficulty seems to disappear. The Homeric age proper is one of bronze-using people; but, in the later stages of the development of the poems, iron makes its appearance, just as it had been gradually doing in the generally bronze-using Mycenæan civilization.
The same remark applies to the differences of equipment between the warriors of the Mycenæan and those of the Homeric period. The Mycenæans used the great hide-shield, either oblong or 8-shaped, covering its bearer from head to foot, with a leather cap for the head, and no defensive armour of metal. In the Iliad, on the other hand, what is obviously contemplated in general is a metal helmet, a metal cuirass, and a comparatively small round shield. But, again, in later Mycenæan work, such as the famous Warrior Vase, there is evidence of the use of the small round shield, while, moreover, in some parts of the poem there are evidences of the use of the true Mycenæan shield 'like a tower.' Periphetes of Mycenæ is slain by Hector owing to his having tripped over the lower edge of his great shield, and his slayer himself bears a shield of no small proportions. 'So saying, Hector of the glancing helm departed, and the black hide beat on either side against his ankles and his neck, even the rim that ran uttermost about his bossed shield.' So that the poems represent a gradual development in the use of armour which may not unfairly be compared with the similar development traceable in the Mycenæan remains.
On the whole, then, our conclusion is something like this: The civilization which Schliemann discovered is not precisely that of the Homeric poems, for the bloom of it belongs to a period considerably anterior to the period of Achæan supremacy in Greece, and was the work of a race differing from that of the chiefs who fought at Troy; but, broadly speaking, what Homer describes is the same civilization in its latest stage, when the men of Mycenæan or Minoan stock who created it had passed under the dominion of the invading Achæan overlords. The Achæan invasion was not, like that which succeeded it, subversive of the great culture that belonged to the conquered Mycenæan race; on the contrary, the invaders entered into and became partakers of it, carrying on its traditions until the gradual decay, which had begun already before they made their appearance in Greece, was terminated by the Dorian invasion, or whatever process of gradual incursion by ruder tribes may correspond to what the later Greeks called by that name. And it is this last stage of the Mycenæan culture, still existing, though under Achæan supremacy, which is depicted in the Homeric poems. 'Take away from the picture,' says Father Browne, 'all the features which have been borrowed from the Dorian invasion, give the post-Dorian poets the credit of the references to iron and other post-Dorian things, and nothing remains to disprove the view of those who hold that Schliemann found—not, indeed, the tomb of Agamemnon—but the tomb of that Homeric life which Agamemnon represents to us. In the Mycenæan remains we have uncovered before our eyes the material form of that impulse of which we had already met the spiritual in the Homeric page.'[*]
[Footnote *: H. Browne, 'Homeric Study,' pp. 313, 314.]
CHAPTER IV
THE PALACE OF 'BROAD KNOSSOS'
In the revival of interest in the origins of Greek civilization it was manifest that Crete could not long be left out of account, for the traditions of Minos and his laws, and of the wonderful works of Dædalus, pointed clearly to the fact that the great island must have been an early seat of learning and art. Most of these traditions clustered round Knossos, the famous capital of Minos, where once stood the Labyrinth, and near to which was Mount Juktas, the traditional burying-place of Zeus. The remains apparent on the site of the ancient capital were by no means imposing. In 1834 Pashley found that 'all the now existing vestiges of the ancient metropolis of Crete are some rude masses of Roman brick-work'; and Spratt in 1851 saw very little more, mentioning only 'some scattered foundations and a few detached masses of masonry of the Roman time,' though in the time of the Venetian occupation there was evidently more to be seen, as Cornaro speaks of 'a very large quantity of ruins, and in particular a wall, many paces long and very thick.' But expectation still fixed on Knossos as the most probable site for any Cretan discoveries.
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