fortification
discovered in all the excavations. The entrance passage was a stone
gangway, on the north-west side of which stood a great bastion,
with a guard room and sally-port--a slender apology for defence in
the case of a prize so vast and tempting as the Palace of Knossos.
Obviously the bastion, with its trifling accommodation for an
insignificant guard, was never meant to defend the palace against
numerous assailants, or a set siege; it could only have been sufficient
to protect it against the sudden raid of a handful of pirates sweeping
up from the port (Plate XII. 2). How was it that so great and rich a
structure came to be left thus practically defenceless? The mainland
palaces of the Mycenaean Age at Tiryns and Mycenae are, so to speak,
buried in fortifications. Their vast walls, 57 feet thick in some
parts at Tiryns, 46 feet at Mycenae, towering still after so many
centuries of ruin to a height of 24-1/2 feet in the case of the
smaller citadel, and of 56 feet at the great stronghold of Agamemnon;
their massive gateways, and the ingenious devices by which the
assailant was obliged to subject himself in his approach to a
destructive fire on his unshielded side--everything about them points
to a land and a time in which life and property were continually
exposed to the dangers of war, and the only security was to be
found within the gates of an impregnable stronghold. But Knossos,
far richer, far more splendid, than either Tiryns or Mycenae, lies
virtually unguarded, its spacious courts and pillared porticoes
open on every side. Plainly, the Minoan Kings lived in a land where
peace was the rule, and where no enemy was expected to break rudely
in upon their luxurious calm. And the reason for their confidence
and security is not far to seek, if we remember the statements
of Thucydides and Herodotus.

[Illustration X: PART OF DOLPHIN FRESCO

A GREAT JAR, KNOSSOS]

'The first King known to us by tradition as having established
a navy is Minos,' says the great Athenian historian. The Minoan
Empire, like our own, rested upon sea-power; its great Kings were
the Sea-Kings of the ancient world--the first Sea-Kings known to
history, over-lords of the AEgean long before 'the grave Tyrian
trader' had learned 'the way of a ship in the sea,' or the land-loving
Egyptian had ventured his timid squadrons at the command of a great
Queen so far as Punt. And so the fortifications of their capital
and palace were not of the hu