After the death
of Minos, the Cretans, with a great armada, invaded Sicily, and
besieged Kamikos ineffectually for five years; but finding themselves
unable to continue the siege, and being driven ashore on the Italian
coast during their retreat, they founded there the city of Hyria.
Crete, being thus left desolate, was repeopled by other tribes,
'especially the Grecians'; and in the third generation after the
death of Minos the new Cretan people sent a contingent to help
Agamemnon in the Trojan War, as a punishment for which famine and
pestilence fell on them, and the island was depopulated a second
time, so that the Cretans of the time of the Persian invasion are
the third race to inhabit the island. In this tradition we may
see a distorted reflection of the various vicissitudes which, as
we shall see later, appear to have befallen the Minoan kingdom,
and of the incursions which, after the fall of Knossos, gradually
changed the character of the island population.
Such, then, are the most familiar of the legends and traditions
associated with prehistoric Crete. Some of these, touching on the
personality of Minos and his relationship with Zeus, have their
own significance in connection with the little that is known of
the Minoan religion, and will fall to be discussed later from that
point of view.
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