The Sea-Kings of Crete | Page 9

during the historic period. The chief cities of Hellas are
Mycenæ, Tiryns, and Orchomenos. Crete, although its chiefs,
Idomeneus and Meriones, are only of secondary rank among the heroes
of the Iliad, is obviously one of the most important of Grecian lands. It
sends eighty ships to the Achæan fleet at Troy, it is described both in
the Iliad and the Odyssey as being very populous (a hundred cities,
Iliad II.; ninety cities, Odyssey XIX.), and to its capital, Knossos, alone
among Greek cities does Homer apply the epithet 'great.' All which
offers a striking contrast to the comparative insignificance of the towns
of the Argolid in later Greek history, and to the uninfluential part
played by Crete.
The centres of power, then, in the Homeric story are widely different
from those of the historic period. The same divergence from later
realities is manifest when we come to look at the social organization
contemplated in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Homeric state of
society is, in some respects, rude enough. Piracy, for instance, is
recognized as, if not a laudable, at all events a quite ordinary method of
gaining a livelihood. 'Who are you?' says Nestor to Telemachus.
'Whence do you come? Are you engaged in trade, or do you rove at
adventure as sea-robbers who wander at hazard of their lives, bringing
bane to strangers?' The same question is addressed to Odysseus by
Polyphemus, and was plainly the first thing thought of when a seafaring
stranger was encountered. As among the Highlanders and Borderers of

Scotland, cattle-lifting was looked upon as a perfectly respectable form
of employment, and stolen cattle were considered a quite proper gift for
a prospective bridegroom to offer to his father-in-law. The power of the
strong hand was, in most respects, supreme, and the rights of a tribe or
a city were respected more on account of the ability of its men to
defend them than because of any moral obligation. 'We will sack a
town for you,' says Menelaus to Telemachus, as an inducement to him
to settle in Laconia.
Along with this primitive rudeness goes, on the other hand, a strongly
aristocratic constitution of society. The great leaders and chiefs, the
long-haired Achæans, are absolutely separated from the common
people, not in rank only, but to all appearance in race. They are a
superior caste, and of a different breed. Even to their King their
subjection is not much more than nominal, and he has to be very
careful of offending their susceptibilities or wounding their sense of
their own importance, while their treatment of the commons beneath
them is sufficiently disdainful. Though the commons are summoned
sometimes to the Council, their function there is merely a passive one;
they are called to hear what has been determined, and to approve of it,
if they so desire, but in no case have they any alternative to accepting it,
even should they disapprove. Altogether the superiority of the Achæan
nobles, and the haughtiness with which they bear themselves, is such as
to suggest that they hold the position, not of tribal chieftains ruling over
clansmen of the same stock as themselves, but of a separate and
conquering race holding dominion over, and using the services of, the
vanquished, much after the manner of the Norman lordship in Sicily.
All this is sufficiently different from the state of things during the
historic period. It is not an undeveloped condition of the same society
that is in contemplation; it is a totally distinct social organization. With
regard to the position of woman, the facts are even more remarkable,
for if the Homeric picture be a true one, historic Hellas, instead of
representing an advance upon the prehistoric age, presents a distinct
retrogression. In the Homeric poems woman occupies a position, not
only important, but even comparable in many respects to that held by
her in modern life. She is not secluded from sight and kept in the

background, as in later Hellenic society; on the contrary, she mixes
freely with the other sex in private and in public, and is uniformly
depicted as exercising a very strong, and generally beneficent,
influence. The very names of Andromache, Penelope, Nausicaa, stand
as types of all that is purest and sweetest in womanhood. The fact that a
wife is purchased by bride-gifts does not militate against the respect in
which she is held or the regard which is paid to her rights. The contrast
between this state of affairs and that prevailing in later Greek society is
sufficiently marked to render comment unnecessary.
But perhaps the most striking feature of the setting of the Homeric
story is the type of material civilization which is described in the poems.
We are confronted with a society not by any means in a