Water is the birthplace of civilisation, as of life itself, and the original home of the Ægean or Mycenæan civilisation is probably to be found in the island of Crete. It is crammed with remains of pre-Hellenic culture. It is a big stepping-stone from Greece to Asia Minor, Karpathos and Rhodes lying between. It is in the line of communication with Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt on the East, and with Sicily and the coastlines of the Western Mediterranean. The earliest Greek tradition looks back to Crete "as the home of divinely inspired legislation and the first centre of maritime dominion." And, what is of the highest moment to remember, so far as the origin of the art of navigation in Ægean waters goes, there can be no question between the old claims on behalf of the Phœnicians and the present claims on behalf of Crete. The Syrian seaboard is harbourless and unsheltered; the men who first braved the "unvintaged wine dark" waters (how fine are all the Homeric sea-words) were island-dwellers, shooting forth from snug creek and harbour on quick and sudden enterprise, and growing bolder and bolder as they sailed by the rising and setting of the stars and the recurring moon. "The early sea-trade of the inhabitants of the island world of the Ægean gave them a start over their neighbours, and produced a higher form of culture, which was destined to react on that of a vast European zone, nay, even upon that of the older civilisations of Egypt and Asia." (Evans, Address, B. Assoc., p. 530.) For the diffusion of culture throughout the Ægean was followed by expeditions to the East. While Cyprus yielded the metal to which it has given its name, the gold of Asia Minor was poured into the lap of the pre-Hellenes, and moulded into forms of beauty through which their own artistic skill challenged comparison with that of the Oriental. In his comment on the source of the Mycenæan civilisation Mr. Frazer aptly remarks that "the existence at this early date of a great maritime power in Crete, which by its central position between Greece and the empires of the East was well fitted to receive and amalgamate the characteristics of both, is just what is needed to explain the rise and wide diffusion of a type of civilisation like the Mycenæan, in which Oriental influences seem to be assimilated and transmuted by a vigorous and independent nationality endowed with a keen sense of its own for art. The spade will probably one day decide the question of priority between Argolis and Crete, but in the meantime the probability appears to be that the Mycenæan civilisation rose in Crete and spread from it as a centre, and that it was not until the Cretan power was on the wane that the palmy days of Tiryns and Mycenæ began." (_Commentary_ on Pausanias, vol. iii. p. 151.) The Mycenæan civilisation perished in a great catastrophe. Somewhere near the middle of the twelfth century B.C. the Dorian invaders in their southward march reached the