And through all these changes, and ever since, the ruined House of
Minos remained absolutely deserted, until, more than 3,000 years
after the sack, its echoes were wakened by the spades and picks
of Dr. Evans's workmen. Around the ruins grim and cruel legends
swiftly grew up. The old traditions, dimly surviving in the minds
of the native Cretans, of the bull-fight and the prize-ring, and
the tribute of toreadors from the conquered nations, seemed to be
corroborated by the very decorations of the palace walls, still
visible amidst the ruins, and around them were woven the stories
which have come down to us as legends of early Greece. 'Let us
place ourselves for a moment,' says Dr. Evans, 'in the position of
the first Dorian colonists of Knossos after the great overthrow,
when features now laboriously uncovered by the spade were still
perceptible amid the mass of ruins. The name [Labyrinth] was still
preserved, though the exact meaning, as supplied by the native
Cretan dialect, had been probably lost. Hard by the western gate,
in her royal robes, to-day but partially visible, stood Queen Ariadne
herself--and might not the comely youth in front of her be the
hero Theseus, about to receive the coil of thread for his errand
of liberation down the mazy galleries beyond? Within, fresh and
beautiful on the walls of the inmost chambers, were the captive
boys and maidens locked up here by the tyrant of old.
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