This
period of gradual decadence is, however, the period of greatest
diffusion of the products of Minoan, or, rather, as we may now
call it, of Mycenaean art. At Ialysos in Rhodes, and in the lower
town of Mycenae, types parallel with the work of Crete are found,
and Tell-el-Amarna furnishes specimens of pottery whose degeneracy
from the type of the Palace period declares them to belong to these
days of decadence. Specimens of Late Minoan III. work are found
at Tarentum, and the island of Torcello, near Venice, and even
as far west as Spain. One of the characteristic features of the
period is the fact that the stirrup-vase, found at Hagia Triada
and Gournia in Late Minoan I., but almost totally wanting in Late
Minoan II., now becomes common.
Towards the close of the period the site of the palace at Knossos
was partially reoccupied by a humbler race of men, who used the
rooms that had once witnessed the pride of the Minoan Sovereigns,
dividing them up by flimsy partition-walls to suit their smaller
needs. An age of transition succeeded, during which the character
of the Cretan population was gradually modified by successive waves
of invasion from the mainland, until Crete assumed the guise of
'the mixed land,' under which Homer knew it; and finally came the
great invasion of the Dorians, which brought in for Crete, as for
the rest of Greece, the dark age which preceded the dawn of the
true Hellenic culture.
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