Civilization, Homeric; Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism; Homer; Homer -- Criticism and interpretation
Taking the Catalogue as it stands, the princes of whom Agamemnon of
Mycenae was Over Lord come from the Greek mainland, from southern
Thessaly and Aetolia to the southernmost point of the Morea, and the
islands as far south and east as Crete, Carpathos, and Rhodes.
Now, as Agamemnon is the Over Lord, and Idomeneus of Cnossos in Crete
is one of his thanes, so to speak, the poet clearly regards the Greek
mainland as the centre of an Achaean dominion, of which Crete is a
great dependency. He shows no idea that Crete had been the centre of
another power, and the focus of another civilisation, held by a people
who, since the age of stone weapons and implements, had developed its
culture without interruption, and had sent its arts to the mainland of
Greece. To Homer, Mycenae is the centre; the prince of Cnossos is a
great feudatory of Agamemnon.
The poet is much interested in Crete; not only does the _Iliad_ dwell
on the prowess of Idomeneus the prince of Cnossos, and of Meriones;
but in the feigned tales of Odysseus, when he returns to Ithaca, he
represents himself as a Cretan adventurer. Homer avoids the Athenian
tales about Cretan tyranny, about the Minotaur, and the prowess
of Theseus in aid of the freedom of Athens. These things are not
touched upon, as they certainly would have been had Athenians freely
interpolated the poems. Homer entirely ignores all Athenian and Ionian
traditions.[10]
This is not the place to ask whether Achaeans from the mainland were
the men who took and sacked the palace of Cnossos in Crete about 1400
B.C., or whether the spoilers were "Pelasgians," that is, people
living on the mainland in Cretan conditions of culture, driven from
the mainland by the Achaean irruption; or whether the palace was
wrecked during an internal revolution before the Achaeans came to the
island.[11] Homer undeniably regards Idomeneus as an Achaean and a
descendant of Minos; and Minos as a son of Zeus.[12] Rhadamanthus of
his blood, is "the golden-haired," like Menelaus, Meleager, and some
other heroes.[13] We are not here concerned with discrepant traditions,
and with the idea that Minos is an Aegean as Pharaoh is an Egyptian
name of kings in general. That may be so; Minos may have been a figure
in Cretan legend before the Achaeans came thither; if so, they adopted
him as their own. We are only stating Homer's view of the relations
between Crete and the Achaean power on the mainland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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