Mazes and Labyrinths: A General Account of Their History and DevelopmentMatthews, W. H.
History
Mazes and Labyrinths: A General Account of Their History and Development
Matthews, W. H.
Labyrinths; Maze gardens
The name Daedalus has likewise been thought by some to have been
applied indiscriminately to various artificers and inventors of
unusual ingenuity. The principal feats associated with this name
are, in addition to the planning of the Labyrinth, the construction
of a _Choros_, or dancing-place, for Ariadne, the modelling of a
great hollow cow for Pasiphaë, wife of Minos, in order that she might
interview the great white bull for which she had conceived an unnatural
affection (the outcome being, in the words of Euripides, "A form
commingled, and a monstrous birth, half man, half bull, in twofold
shape combined"), and the invention of wings, wherewith Daedalus
escaped from the Labyrinth when imprisoned there by Minos for his share
in the Pasiphaë episode. Daedalus was also credited with the invention
of the auger, the plumb-line and other tools, and of masts and sails
for ships.
The Theseus-Minotaur incident has been often celebrated in ancient
and mediaeval art, instances of which we shall later have occasion
to mention. Modern artists, also, have not disdained the theme; a
particularly fine example is the colossal marble group by Canova
(1819), now at the Museum of Art History at Vienna, formerly in the
Theseus Temple in the Volksgarten.
The question naturally arises: Was there actually such a thing as the
Labyrinth, and, if so, where was it and what was its nature?
CHAPTER V
THE CRETAN LABYRINTH (_continued_)
(ii) _The Caverns of Gortyna_
According to the Romano-Greek writer Apollodorus,[1] whose
"Bibliotheke" consisted of a history of the world from the fall of
Troy onwards, Daedalus built the Labyrinth at Knossos for King Minos
on the lines of the Egyptian Labyrinth, but of only one-hundredth part
of the magnitude of the latter. This statement, which was repeated
by various other ancient writers such as Pliny and Diodorus, caused
many subsequent inquirers to look for evidence in Crete of a building
similar to, though smaller than, that described by Herodotus and Strabo.
[1] Often erroneously alluded to as "the Athenian Grammarian."
Nothing corresponding to such a description appeared to exist, but at
Gortyna, on the south side of Crete, there was a remarkable series of
winding passages, opening on the side of Mount Ida. Some authors of
antiquity, such as the Roman poets Catullus and Claudian, held the
opinion that this cavern, or one of the many other caves or quarries
in Crete, was the real Labyrinth, and this view has been largely
entertained in recent times, right up to the beginning of the present
century.
The first modern traveller of note to explore the cavern was the French
botanist, G. P. de Tournefort, who spent three years, from 1700 to
1702, travelling about Asia Minor and the Levant.
Tournefort's book, as well as being a mine of information on various
subjects, makes delightful reading, whether in the original French or
in John Ozell's English translation of 1718, from which we quote.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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