It is to my friend Dr. Ronald Montagu Burrows that I, in common with thousands, owe my interest in Crete. He died on May 14, 1920, before his time. He was incredibly, challengingly young and vigorous both in appearance and in activity, and at fifty-two was producing work at the top of his brilliant form. His work was a mixture of youth and maturity such as one does not often find. In 1907, when he first published his _Discoveries in Crete_, men were confused by the avalanche of discovery in Crete which had been going on since the opening of the century. Burrows’s achievement--for which scholars and the intellectual public have ever since been grateful--was to give a comprehensive and interpretive account of the whole revelation and to place it in its perspective. Before that even scholars as a whole had not seen wood for trees. Dr. Burrows’s own excavations at Pylos and Sphacteria and at Rhitsona were typical of him. He cleared up the narrative and established the good faith of the historian Thucydides. Scholars had in vain tried to find any trace of the fortifications said by Thucydides to have been erected there by the Spartans in the Peloponnesian war. Only a few months before Burrows first went out--he was then a young man who did not know the difficulty of what he attempted--a celebrated geographer, Dr. Grundy, had explored the site and reported that there was no trace of the fortifications. Burrows discovered substantial remains hidden away under the brushwood, and succeeded in proving that they fully corresponded with Thucydides’s account. I am grateful to Professor R. S. Conway and to Sir Arthur Evans for reading my manuscript and helping me with suggestions; but neither must be held responsible for anything that appears in the book. 1922. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE PREFACE 7 1 CRETE THE FORERUNNER OF GREECE 13 2 THE SEA-FARING PEOPLE OF CRETE 20 3 MINOS AND THE MINOTAUR 24 4 KNOSSOS 30 5 PREHISTORIC ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE 37 6 INTERNAL POLITICS: THE RELATIONS OF KNOSSOS AND PHÆSTOS 44 7 MINOAN ARCHITECTURE AND FRESCO PAINTING 48 8 THE POTTERY 55 9 THE ORIGIN OF WRITING 65 10 CRETAN RELIGION 75 11 MEN AND WOMEN, CLOTHES AND CUSTOMS 83 12 FROM PREHISTORIC CRETE TO CLASSICAL GREECE 90