The Minotaur was the Sun;
Pasiphae, 'the very bright one,' wife of Minos, was the Moon; and
the Labyrinth was the tower on whose walls the astronomers of the
day traced the wanderings of the heavenly bodies, 'an image of
the starry heaven, with its infinitely winding paths, in which,
nevertheless, the sun and moon so surely move about.' Among
rationalizing explanations this must surely hold the palm for
cumbrousness and complexity, and we may be thankful that the explorer's
spade has demolished it along with other theories, and given back
to us, as we shall see, at least the elements of a romance such
as that which was so dear to the Athenian public.
CHAPTER II
THE HOMERIC CIVILIZATION
Between the Greece of such legends as those which we have been
considering and the Greece of the earliest historic period there
has always been a great gulf of darkness. On the one side a land
of seemingly fabulous Kings and heroes and monsters, of fabulous
palaces and cities; on the other side. Greece as we know it in
the infant stages of its development, with a totally different
state of society, a totally different organization and culture; and
in the interval no one could say how many generations, concerning
which, and their conditions and developments, there was nothing
but blank ignorance. So that it seemed as though the marvellous
fabric of Greek civilization as we know it were indeed something
unexampled, rising almost at once out of nothing to its height of
splendour, as the walls of Ilium were fabled to have risen beneath
the hands of their divine builders.
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