And it has been in Crete that exploration and discovery
have led to the most striking illustration of many of the statements
in the legends and traditions, and have made it practically certain
that much of what used to be considered mere romantic fable represents,
with, of course, many embellishments of fancy, a good deal of historic
fact.
Our first task, therefore, is to gather together the main features
of what the ancient legends of Greece narrated about Crete and its
inhabitants, and their relations to the rest of the AEgean world.
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 AEgean race, and, in point of fact, ancient
traditions unanimously pointed to the great island as being the
birthplace of Greek civilization. The most ambitious tradition
boldly transcended the limits of human occupation, and gave to
Divinity itself a place of nurture in the fastnesses of the Cretan
mountains. That many-sided deity, the supreme god of the Greek
theology, had in one of his aspects a special connection with the
island. The great son of Kronos and Rhea, threatened by his unnatural
father with the same doom which had overtaken his brethren, was said
to have been saved by his mother, who substituted for him a stone,
which her unsuspecting spouse devoured, thinking it to be his son.
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