'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 Mycenaean
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 Daedalus, 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.
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