from the town of Sidon, and the Phoenician sailor knows her parents (_Odyssey_, xv. 415-433). No very clear distinction seems to have been drawn between Phoenicians and Sidonians. These Semitic peoples were persistently credited, till lately, with all the finer works of art and craft which Homer mentions. The discovery of the art of Minoan Crete has made this unqualified attribution impossible.[17] Certainly Homer conceives of the Semites as doing a large trade, and as kidnapping children in the Greek seas; but their own art was imitative, and it is unlikely that, in Homer's time, the characters of their alphabet had ousted those of Aegean civilisation. It is curious that the place in which Phoenicians exercised most influence, Cyprus, was also the place where the Phoenician alphabet was so long in supplanting the native syllabary, akin to the unread documents of Minoan Crete. We may thus conceive Homer's ancestors, by 1400 B.C., as men far from savage or barbarian,[18] who then succeeded to an Aegean civilisation much more luxurious and artistic than their own; and, centuries later, when Homer sang, the glow of the Aegean culture still flushed the sky: its art was known to the poet. [1] _Iliad_, i. 266-268. [2] _Iliad_, ii. 741-744. [3] _Proceedings, British School of Athens_, xiv., 1907, 1908, p. 223. [4] _Iliad_, ii. 681-684, xvi. 233-235. [5] Mackenzie, "Cretan Palaces," in _Brit. School of Athens_, xii. pp. 216-258. [6] The parallel has been brought to my notice in detail by Mr. J. W. Mackail; it had already occurred to me in a general way. [7] _Iliad_, ii. 867, ii. 804. [8] In the line just cited, and in the Carians Βαρβαροθώνω of _Iliad_, ii. 867, we cannot positively know whether Homer is thinking of different languages, or of differences in accent and dialect. [9] Leaf, on _Iliad_, ii. 502. [10] Save in the interpolated name of Theseus, twice, and in doubtful parts of _Odyssey_, xi. [11] These various views are held, or have been held, by Mr. Evans, Mr. Ridgeway, Dr. Mackenzie, and others (_Monthly Review_, 1901, pp. 121-131; _Times_, Oct. 31, 1905; _Annuals, British School of Athens_, xi. p. 14; _ibid._ xii. 216 _et seqq._, xiii. 423 _et seqq._). In Dr. Mackenzie's ample arguments, cf. Hogarth, _Ionia and the East_, pp. 32, 33, the Pelasgians were the sackers of Cnossos. The evidence is mainly archaeological, and might be argued over endlessly. [12] _Iliad_, xiii. 450. [13] These views are suggested by Professor Ridgeway in a paper read to the British Academy; see _Athenaeum_, June 5, 1909. [14] _Iliad_, xiii. 5, 6, and Leaf's note.