The Historians' History of the World 03

Riches and pleasure! It was to the interest of the Corinthians not to get rid of these women, in order to enjoy life, and this was in itself a guarantee against the rule of a demagogue in the city of Periander and of Timoleon. Pindar can say with great truth in one of his Olympics, “Harmony and good legislation are found in Corinth, also justice and peace. The daughters of the prudent Themis dispense happiness to mankind and watch over their cities.”

This prosperity had a tragic ending. When the Romans triumphed over the Achæan League, Corinth perished miserably. Such lamentable ruin was like the last day of Ilium. Everything condemned the town before the Roman tribunals: its admirable position, the key to the whole of Greece; its riches and works of art, which were placed in the Capitol at Rome.c

Ruins of a Tower of Tithorea, in Phocis

(Near Mt. Parnassus)

CHAPTER XI. CRETE AND THE COLONIES

Crete was an island, which, from its position, should have dominated over the whole of Greece, as it had for its neighbours the coasts of the Peloponnesus and of Asia. The Cretans were remarkable amongst the Hellenic nations for their institutions, which bore a singular physiognomy. Diodorus describes all the legends relating to the Greek divinities of whom Crete boasted to be the cradle; he then adds that during the generations succeeding the birth of the gods, many heroes lived in the island, the most illustrious of whom were Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon. These heroes are not truly historic, and an exact place cannot be given to their genius and passions, but at any rate they indicate deeds and customs which have left strong impressions on the lives of men. Antiquity believed that Crete, even from the most ancient period, had good laws which were imitated by many of the peoples of Greece, and above all by the Lacedæmonians.

Before teaching Greece, Crete, for a short time, dominated over her. The Cretans, who were an insular and warlike nation made up chiefly of Pelasgians and Dorians, at an epoch made great by the name of Minos, had a navy with which they were able to take possession of the greater number of the islands belonging to Greece. They also reigned over part of the coast of Asia Minor. They were the guardians of the sea, suppressed the Athenian pirates and made them pay tribute. These pirates had their revenge according to the fable of the Minotaur. The Cretans pushed on as far as Sicily, and it was there, so goes the legend, that Minos was killed by the daughters of King Cocalus, who suffocated their father’s guest in a bath. A few generations later, Crete sent a fleet of eighty vessels against Priam, a new proof of maritime greatness. About the time when the Odyssey was written, this is how Greece imagined the island of Minos: “In the middle of the vast ocean is glorious Crete, a fertile island, where countless men live; there are eighty-six towns,[14] which have each a different language; they are inhabited by the Achæans, the autochthonous Cretans, high-minded heroes, the Cydonians, the Dorians, who are divided into three tribes, and the divine Pelasgi. In the midst of all these people is the beautiful town of Knossos, where Minos reigned, and every nine years had an audience with Jupiter.” Thus is the divine or religious type of legislator formed in the mind of the Greeks and with the double help of time and poetry the name of Minos becomes great.

Crete was as little spared from the revolutions which Thucydides foretold would be one of the results of the Trojan War, as the peculiar state of her soil and customs warranted. The inhabitants, living in a mountainous and divided country, were separated into many cantons, jealous of one another’s independence. In Crete, as in Switzerland, nature prepared republics. For a long time royal power succeeded in preventing the germs of discord from bursting forth; this was in the time of Minos, of Rhadamanthus, and of Sarpedon, when the Cretans were conquerors and masters of the sea and possessed of a legislation inspired by the first of all the gods. Later, everything which had helped to make a sovereign authority gave way, the towns of Crete quarrelled internally and with one another for individual government. This spirit of independence was doubtless encouraged by the presence of the Greeks, who, on their return from Troy, founded colonies on the island. Little by little, royal power, weakened by the absence of the chiefs, who had joined the princes of the Peloponnesus in order to attack Asia, disappeared.