Boardman J., Hammond N.G. L. The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 3, Part 3: The Expansion of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries BC
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areas of the island.
3
And it was
a
Cretan purple-fisher, Corobius of Itanus
(Hdt. iv. 151—3), who led the Therans south to settle on the shores of
Cyrenaica in about 639 B.C. The story which introduces a Cretan
princess of Axus as mother of
Battus,
first Theran king of Cyrene, might
indicate Cretan involvement in the colonizing, for which we shall
observe further evidence. The same story involves a Theran merchant,
Themison, living in Axus. The special relationship between Crete and
Delphi has been mentioned in an earlier volume (in. i
2
, 778) and is
further explored in this (pp. 305
ff).
Delphi remains one of the few Greek
sites of the seventh century to receive Cretan goods.
A rather specialist market for orientalizing metalwork and armour
from Crete need not, however, indicate any especially close trading or
other links with the receiving areas. Shields of the type made for the
Idaean Cave
4
reached the Greek sanctuaries of Delphi and Dodona and,
surprisingly, Miletus. More practical pieces of armour are found in
Delphi and Olympia, but some of the bronzes of central Italy, notably
the stand from the Bernardini tomb at Praeneste, closely match both
work found in Olympia and the tympanum which was made, it seems,
especially for dedication in the Idaean Cave in Crete.
5
The island has
been suspected of being an important link in the routes from the east
to Italy and an earlier generation of scholars saw Cretan vases in several
Greek colonies in the west, but most of these identifications are now
discredited.
6
Other orientalizing studios in Crete may offer evidence for more
far-reaching cultural influence in the Greek world. The Cnossian ' guild'
is identified at the end of the ninth century but probably does not long
survive the eighth century.
7
The workshop for the Idaean Cave shields
seems to have continued in production until around the mid seventh
century. A more unusual phenomenon is the appearance of imitations
of eastern goods in clay in central and south Crete of the middle of the
seventh century (fig. 36). Some burials at Arkades resemble nothing so
much as contemporary burials on the Euphrates, and this is the time,
this the area, in which Greeks for the first time adopt the eastern practice
of writing down their law codes.
8
All this suggests influence borne not
by trade or even by travelling craftsmen but by immigrant families.
9
During the first quarter of the seventh century the 'Daedalic' style
of minor relief sculpture, expressed mainly in mould-made terracottas,
appears in Greece for the first time and it seems probable that its origin
was Near Eastern (Syria) and that the place in which it was first adopted,
3
H 2), 257, n. 4.
4
D 133; D 104A, 138-40; A 7, 58-60.
5
DIII,
17; E 233, 179-80.
6
c 42; H 25, 194-5, cf. 370; c 46, 268-9.
7
CAH
HI.I
s
,
776.
Pace
D 135, 172-4. A 7, 56-7.
8
A 36, 309-16. * DIII, 18-23
;
A 7, 60; D 124; H j I, 173-4.
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226 39^-
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36.
Clay vessel (the bowl partly reconstructed). Mid seventh century B.C.
Width 15*7 cm. (Heidelberg University 59/1; after D 124, pi. 7.)
certainly the place in which it was most vigorously later developed, was
Crete. It was rendered mainly in clay, for plaques or on relief clay vases
(pithoi) in the production of which Crete had enjoyed a long tradition,
but also in gold jewellery, reviving techniques long forgotten in Greece,
in ivory, and in stone works which bid to represent Greece's first major
sculptural style.
10
All this is best displayed in the island, and at Karteros
(Amnisus), Gortyn and Prinias we find the stone sculpture applied
decoratively to buildings,
in a
manner which anticipates the monumental
architectural statuary of the later Archaic period. These works, and
examples of seated or standing figures in the round, are found in Crete
to the very end of the century. By that time the new, truly monumental
styles of life-size and larger statuary, executed in hard white marble
rather than the soft limestone used in Crete, had appeared in the
Cyclades. The new style is that ascribed by ancient writers to the Cretan
Daedalus
11
(if we distinguish him from his Bronze Age namesake and
wizard, as they did not) but Crete had not the material for the new
fashion, though we may well believe that Crete's strong tradition in
statuary and in creating the tools of the craft helped determine the work
and styles of the new studios in the marble islands, Naxos and Paros.
The Idaean Cave shields were impractical, highly decorated objects,
intended for dedication. Other Cretan studios, working in a more purely
Greek style from soon after the middle of the seventh century to the
early sixth, produced equally decorative pieces of real armour
12
- hoplite
helmets whose origins may be traced back to the eighth century in the
island and which offered rather less protection for the front of the face
than the Corinthian; two-piece bell corselets; and the miscalled mitrai,
semicircular plaques which appear to have been suspended from a belt
(but not the corselet) to protect the belly. This is distinctive armour,
more elaborately decorated than any from other parts of Greece, and
10
H 19,
I 5-1 5; H47;
D
112;
D Hi;
H67;
D IOI.
11
H 60, nOS.
74-I42;
D III, (-I}; D
IO4A, I58-9;
D IO6.
12
D 126.
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227
some of it was taken to the mainland and imitated there. Its production
argues an interest in martial arts which Cretans must have practised
mainly on each other. That their society and legislation had been
designed to promote military efficiency had been observed in antiquity
(Plato, Leg. 626b). Cretan mercenaries were archers, not hoplites, and
these served Sparta in the Messenian Wars, Lyttus (a Spartan 'colony')
and Aptera being named as two of the sources (Paus. iv. 8.3
;
19.4; 20.8).
Mid-seventh-century dedications of miniature bronze armour at Bassae,
near Mt Hira, which was the setting for a long siege during the Second
Messenian War, are matched in Crete (at Gortyn) and may attest Cretan
mercenary participation.
13
This was a continuing role for them in the
Classical period and they may be credited with the development of a
particularly effective type of composite bow and the popularizing of the
heavy barbed and tanged arrowhead which figures on later Cretan coins
and rings.
14
An important find of armour,
15
dedicated in a shrine at Arkades and
datable by style to the later seventh century, may be evidence for a
military event of some importance. It includes five helmets, eight
corselets and sixteen mitrai. Several carry dedicatory inscriptions
naming the donor who took or seized (^Ae = etAe) the piece in battle.
This suggests local warfare with the dedication of booty by the victors,
presumably the men of Arkades, though an epigraphical peculiarity
(double circle for omega) is otherwise attested so far only at nearby
Lyttus. Decorated Cretan armour of this type has also been found at
Axus,
Drerus, Palaikastro and Onythe Goulediana (and perhaps
Rethymnum) and was carried to Delphi and Olympia.
The rich patchwork of the archaeological record of Archaic Crete
gives an impression of vigorous independence for the main centres but
no intense or damaging rivalries until, perhaps, the later seventh
century. The variety is expressed chiefly in artefacts and manners of
burial. We still know little of the cities in the west, though Cydonia
will figure later in a historical episode. The site at Onythe Goulediana,
possibly the ancient Phallanna, has been more productive of Archaic
finds, notably in the elaborate (for this period) architecture of a house
of around 600 B.C. (fig. 37), its store rooms packed with relief pithoi
and other vessels.
16
The cities around Mt Ida are of more moment
—
Eleutherna and Axus to the north of the massif both yield important
sculpture and the latter a sanctuary of Aphrodite with a remarkable
range of Daedalic terracottas which conflate eastern and Greek views
of the goddess, as well as bronze armour.
17
13
D 154- " H 69, 142-8; H 16,227, fig. 233.
15
D126. >«
DI
,
O
.
17
D 112, 37; D 142; D I53A.
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228 ^-
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37.
Houses at Goulediana. Seventh century B.C. (After D150, 1956, 227,
fig. ,.)
38.
Stele from Prinias. Second half of
seventh century B.C. Height 48
-
j cm.
(Heraklion Museum 396; after
D I
39A,
B
I
I ; cf. H 19, fig.
2J2.2.)
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229
South-east of Ida Prinias and Gortyn are the best known sites: Prinias
for its temple and incised stelai (fig.
3
8),
18
Gortyn for its acropolis temple
of
a
goddess assimilated
to
Athena,
and the
altar
and
votives found
lower on the east slope.
19
Gortyn may have dominated the rich Mesara
plain much as Phaestus did
in
the Bronze Age. Its port was
at
Lebena
and a late sixth-century inscription records a treaty between the towns.
It
was
also
the
home
of the
seventh-century poet
and
lawgiver
Thaletas.
20
Archaic Cnossus
is a
city
of the
dead,
and we
know
its
Archaic
history
as we
know
its
Geometric, from
the
rich cemeteries
in the
neighbourhood of the city.
21
Most are composed of reused Bronze Age
graves and if there was any new tomb digging subsequently
it
may have
been confined to the Protogeometric period. The cremations and grave
goods are packed into fine pithoi which display the distinctive Cnossian
orientalizing styles, notably
the
polychrome which
are
unique
in
appearance in the Greek world.
22
Some note is taken
of
the new styles
of Central Greece, including the black-figure technique
of
Corinthian
vase-painters, but the most distinguished work
of
the seventh century
is
in a
purely local tradition.
23
Since very close dating
is not
possible
the relative frequency
of
burials
in
different periods
is
hard
to
gauge
accurately, but maximum use of the cemeteries appears to centre on the
late eighth and early seventh centuries, then
to
decline with hardly any
burials
or
other finds assignable
to the
last quarter
of
the century.
Karteros (Amnisus), port
of
Cnossus,
is
also
a
source
of
Archaic
architectural sculpture,
24
and
there
are
seventh-century tombs
at
Gouves,
a
little farther east, inland.
25
Between the main north-south route in the island and Lasithi,
to
the
east, Lyttus
is the
major city, impressive
as a
site,
but the
finds have
yet
to
match
its
apparent importance
in
later sources.
26
To the
south
Arkades (Afrati)
is
the source
of
the armour already discussed and
its
cemetery presents a variety of burial types difficult to match in any other
Greek town of this date: circular tholoi for cremations, rectangular built
tombs
for
inhumations,
an
'urn field' with some burials covered with
upturned vessels, mainly above ground,
in
what
may be an
eastern
manner, and well defined cremation platforms.
27
Kato Syme lies
to
the east, site
of
a sanctuary
of
Hermes Dendrites
and Aphrodite, source
of
remarkable orientalizing
and
Archaic
bronzes,
28
and on the coast at Tsoutsouros, probably the ancient Inatus,
is
an
important cave sanctuary
of
Eileithyia.
29
18
D 147; D 139A; H 19, 14, 165. " D 143; D 155.
20
Ins. Cret. Gortyn no. 63.
21
D
I26A, l6-22.
22
D
,
O
8.
23
D
IOj;
D
104;
D
IIO.
24
D
I45 ;
D
2O, 21 1-12.
25
D
136.
2<i
D
137; A 54.
27
D
141
; H
51,
I7I-3.
28
D
138.
29
D
1O2.
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Around the Lasithi plain the towns seem to have declined, and with
them the attention paid to the cave at Psychro. To the east Drerus,
inveterate enemy of Lyttus and therefore friend of Cnossus, is
flourishing
30
and Lato becomes important, although the buildings and
plan of its agora, once dated to the Archaic period, have now been
shown to be later.
31
Scattered Archaic finds
32
suggest that settlement
may have been well distributed in minor villages though not populous.
Farther east the Eteo-Cretans are the only island community whose
substantial continuing prosperity into the sixth century can be demon-
strated, as we shall see.
The archaeological record of virtually all the sites named barely
outlasts the seventh century.
33
On many the finds appear to dry up well
before 600 and there is no major site which offers a continuous record
through the sixth century and into the fifth. In an island so carefully
explored and heavily excavated this observation cannot be dismissed as
an accident of survival or discovery, but we are at a loss to explain the
massive depopulation and possible abandonment of
sites
which it seems
to imply. The find of armour at Arkades (see above) may indicate
internal discord and it has been suggested that record of
a
war between
Cnossus and Sparta, possibly in aid of Sparta's colony Lyttus, is of this
period or soon after.
34
But it is generally placed much later, when
Spartan intervention would be more plausible. At any rate, these
military fracas cannot provide the whole explanation and a hypothetical
deterioration in trade could not have reduced such
a
naturally rich island
to this pass. While the rest of the Greek world, and even centres like
Naxos, Samos and Rhodes, wax rich and occupy the historical and
archaeological records, Crete falls into a silence which we can only
attribute to some unknown natural disaster, climatic or physiological.
Instead of the many towns with teeming cemeteries and well-visited
shrines we have isolated indications of life, not by any means impov-
erished, but extremely scant.
Thus,
at Cnossus, in the sanctuary of Demeter there is a sharp falling
off in the number of votives, which does not pick up again until the
construction of the late fifth-century temples,
35
and there are few finds
from occupation and tombs though these include Athenian pottery and
a fine bronze vessel (fig. 39).
36
South central Crete seems to have been
an area last affected, to judge from the architectural sculpture at Prinias,
30
Ins.
Cret. Dreros
no. i (3rd
century A.D.);
D 130; A f4; D
115
—
17;
D 156; D 146
(251-3
for
a stone gorgoneion decorating the temple in the sixth century).
31
D 119; D 120; D 130; D 156, 90-3;
A
J4.
32
D
114.
33
On the decline see Donbabin, 195-7 on D 113. D 132, 153. And for sixth-century finds in
the island, D 148, 327-44; D 129; D 103; D 105.
31
Paus. 11. 21.3; E 162, 67; D 126A.
35
D
109, 182.
36
D 105.
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59.
Bronze 'kothon' from near Cnossus. Late sixth century B.C. Diameter
21-6 cm (Heraklion Museum 2460; after D 105, 28-9.)
40.
Bronze plaque showing Hermes Den-
drites,
from the sanctuary at Kato Syme.
Late seventh century B.C. (After
D
138, 1974,
pi.
167a; Arch. Rep. 1974-), 28, fig. JJ.)
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232 39^- CRETE
the armour at Arkades and the attractive bronze appliques from Kato
Syme (fig. 40), which run into the sixth century. But the final generation
of major artists in Archaic Crete sought work elsewhere - the sculptors
Dipoinos and Scyllis, 'sons of Daedalus', in the Peloponnese;
37
Chersiphron of Cnossus and his son Metagenes, at Ephesus;
38
all these
in the second quarter of the sixth century.
In the west Phalasarna only begins to offer finds with the sixth century
but they are slight
;
39
yet it
is
in the west that we can find historical record
for an event, the character of which may typify the troubled state of
the island. In about
5
24
some Samians, expelled after an abortive revolt
against Polycrates in which they were helped by Sparta, moved off to
terrorize Siphnos and then, according to Herodotus (in.
5
7—9),
turned
to Crete whence they intended to expel the Zacynthians but instead
settled in Cydonia. There they stayed five years, building temples,
including that of Dictynna (of which a little of the early sixth century
has been found
40
); but were defeated at sea by Aeginetans with the help
of Cretans and reduced to slavery. The story of intervention in Crete
by men from a western Greek island (Zacynthos), Ionia and Aegina,
41
may be commentary enough on the island's condition in the sixth
century.
It is in the east of the island only that some measure of continuing
prosperity can be observed. This is the home of the Eteo-Cretans,
Minoan stock, no doubt, retaining their non-Greek language but totally
Hellenized in culture and, apparently, religion. Early stories of the birth
and nurture of Zeus in Crete had centred on Lyttus (Hes.
Theog.
477)
and it is likely that the so-called Dictaean Cave at Psychro had been
associated with the story,
42
as was the Idaean Cave to the west. Both
cave sanctuaries were still visited in the Archaic period, notably the
Idaean where the orientalizing bronze shields and the tympanum recall
stories of the Kouretes clashing their arms to drown the cries of the
infant god. By the sixth century, however, the finds in the caves
diminish and it is in the east, at Palaikastro, in Eteo-Cretan territory,
that a temple of Dictaean Zeus is built, and decorated with elaborate
terracotta revetments in the later sixth century.
43
It is here that the
famous later Hymn to Dictaean Zeus was found.
44
The area of
Palaikastro is rather bleak and hilly but this is not true of
all
east Crete,
and Praesus, the main Eteo-Cretan city, is set in rolling fertile hills and
valleys. Praesus too has yielded a number of sixth-century finds, some
of high merit, including major architectural terracotta sculpture.
45
The
37
H 6o, nos.
521-7-
38
Pliny,
NH
7.125; Vitruvius 10.2.12.
39
D 157.
4
° D 159.
41
Also Strabo
376;
Plato,
Leg.
707c
42
D 104A, ch. 1;
A
71.
43
D 127, 41-2.
44
D
123;
D 160.
45
D 107; D 122; D 127, 41-2, 56-9
(bronzes);
D 149.
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233
port at Itanus, a site with alleged Phoenician connexions and home of
Corobius who led the Therans to Africa, has something to offer in the
seventh century.
46
For other sixth-century activity we look south. The island's part in
the colonizing of Cyrenaica has been remarked and a Cretan sherd was
found at Aziris, the first, short-lived settlement on the African
mainland.
47
At Taucheira, a colony founded soon after Cyrene, near
modern Benghazi, Cretan pottery is found in a level of about 590—565
B.C., which is remarkable since it is rare enough on the island itself and
not otherwise exported, so it indicates a continuing interest.
48
In
mid-sixth-century Cyrene the reformer Demonax composed one of his
three new tribes of Peloponnesians (no doubt Spartan) and Cretans
(Hdt. iv. 161). And in the 470s
stasis
in Cnossus prompted Ergoteles,
an Olympic victor hymned by Pindar
{01.
xn), to
flee
to Himera in Sicily.
Emigration may be another factor or symptom in the decline of Archaic
Crete.
At the very end of the Archaic period there are signs of more
sophisticated life and art with the relief grave stelai found at Eleutherna,
Eltyna and Rethymnum.
49
Aeginetan coins appear in the island but
Crete does not strike its own coinage until the fifth century, and in the
Archaic period tripods, cauldrons and spits (or corresponding weights
of metal) are its currency.
50
Slowly the island creeps back into the light
of recorded history, but never again to dominate and influence the
Aegean world as it had in the Bronze Age and in the seventh century
B.C.
Its history had been long and brilliant. It is easy to understand why
Cretan scholars bridle still at Herodotus' account of
the
Cretans' alleged
absence from the Greek battle line at Salamis, and his explanation for
it, that the Delphic oracle had reminded them how they had suffered
at Minos' hands for helping Menelaus (vn. 168-71).
51
48
D Il8.
47
C 231,
I J
I.
48
C 232, 14, 78-9; D 23J, 36-7, 73. " D I39; D IO3.
50
A 36, 313; D I40, 167-8; H 48, 79.
51
D I j
5
.
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CHAPTER 39<r
CRETAN LAWS AND SOCIETY
R. F.
WILLETTS
The distinctive achievements of Cretan civilization in the colonization
period, based within a framework of early urbanization and of alphabetic
literacy, owed much to the legacies of a famous past. Though it is
not possible to present these influences in detail, our ancient sources
illustrate their prevalence and their stimulus towards a remarkable
renaissance, which once more allowed the island to make abiding
contributions to Greek and European cultural history.
Opinion differed in antiquity as to whether Homer taught others the
art of framing lies in the right way. However, the considerable evidence
now available to us from archaeological exploration and epigraphic
sources, confirms the correctness of Homeric descriptions of Crete as
an island of many cities. Similarly, the discovery of pre-alphabetic
Bronze Age scripts has brought a fresh significance to the familiar
passage of the
Odyssey
(xix. 172-9) describing Crete as thickly populated,
with ninety cities including Cnossus, with a mixture of languages, and
naming Achaeans, Eteocretans, Cydonians, Pelasgians and also Dorians
with their three tribes. The possibility that this description may really
apply to prehistoric times is supported by an ancient tradition of a
Dorian incursion into Crete which preceded the so-called 'Dorian
invasion' of the mainland.
1
If there is a genuine substance in this
tradition it could be that some Dorians had indeed followed Achaean
settlers into Crete in the later Bronze Age. For it seems to be the case
that Dorians normally possessed themselves of mainland areas and
islands already settled by Greek speakers. They were not, as compared
with earlier arrivals, in the habit of taking over places which had been
occupied by older indigenous peoples.
2
Despite the internecine struggles between the city-states of Crete
which "increasingly dominated the history of the island in Classical and
Hellenistic times, there is an emphasis in the writings of philosophers
and historians, and especially by Aristotle in the
Politics,
of a common
n. 12.
CAH 11.z
3
, 675-7, 689; D 162, 131-7. The possibility is controversial. Cf.
A
12, 99 and 524,
47.
239-
Z
34
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