INDEX 93 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A Lady of the Minoan Court _Frontispiece_ Bull Leaping _facing page_ 35 The Cupbearer ” 39 Polychrome Cups ” 62 Chapter 1: _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_ Mr. Veniselos was brought up in Crete. It is not the first time in history that Crete has passed on her products to Greece and to Europe. Four thousand years ago the very foundations of Greek and of European civilization were laid in Crete, which was then mistress of the sea and the dominant factor in the Ægean. Yet we none of us were aware of this until Sir Arthur Evans, a few years ago, began digging in Crete. When Mr. Veniselos was a boy the very existence of a prehistoric Cretan civilization was unknown. Our knowledge of it has been almost entirely revealed since 1900. In this short time the spades of Sir Arthur Evans have revolutionized our whole conception of the early history of Europe. Excavation at Knossos, Phæstos and other sites in Crete has disclosed the existence of a people whose form of civilization, the earliest in Europe, flourished long before recorded history begins. It has told us about their daily life, games, amusements, art, religion, writing (though the language is not yet understood); their physical type, dress, the homes they lived in. The fashion of the women’s dresses, as revealed on ornaments and other art relics, with an open neck and flounced skirts, made a French scholar exclaim: “Mais ce sont des Parisiennes!” A big palace, as big as Buckingham Palace, has been unearthed at Knossos. It has a drainage system which an eminent Italian archæologist, Dr. Halbherr, has described as “absolutely English,” and which certainly forestalls the hydraulic engineering of the nineteenth century. This four thousand years ago. The digging in Crete has created all the excitement of exploration. When the painted panel was discovered giving a sensational bull-baiting scene from a Minoan circus-show, or the Phæstos disc covered with picture writing, or the fresco painting of the Cupbearer at Knossos, the excitement reached its height. It was not confined to the excavators. An old workman who was on night duty watching the Cupbearer fresco during the delicate operation of its removal, was woke up by disturbing dreams and declared after that “The whole place was full of ghosts.”