d is not precisely that
of the Homeric poems, for the bloom of it belongs to a period
considerably anterior to the period of Achaean supremacy in Greece,
and was the work of a race differing from that of the chiefs who
fought at Troy; but, broadly speaking, what Homer describes is the
same civilization in its latest stage, when the men of Mycenaean
or Minoan stock who created it had passed under the dominion of the
invading Achaean overlords. The Achaean invasion was not, like that
which succeeded it, subversive of the great culture that belonged to
the conquered Mycenaean race; on the contrary, the invaders entered
into and became partakers of it, carrying on its traditions until
the gradual decay, which had begun already before they made their
appearance in Greece, was terminated by the Dorian invasion, or
whatever process of gradual incursion by ruder tribes may correspond
to what the later Greeks called by that name. And it is this last
stage of the Mycenaean culture, still existing, though under Achaean
supremacy, which is depicted in the Homeric poems. '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';