6:30 a.m. Yesterday afternoon I did a quick search at amazon.com for books on Minoan civilization. I was hoping for a "coffee table" book of photographs of the excavation sites and the artifacts and art found there. No such luck.

Although my personal library only contains a couple of introductory books that I purchased a week ago, it suddenly occurred to me that the 11 volume series by the Durants "The Story of Civilization" might contain some information on ancient Greece. A quick check shows that volume 2 is called "The Life of Greece". The following are some notes I made while reading the first chapter on Crete. This is a step back in the chronology: I am now back in the period 3000 - 1300 B.C.

What a literary/historical style! The book begins, "As we enter the fairest of all waters, leaving behind the Atlantic and Gibralter, we pass at once into the arena of Greek history". We don't write like this today.

"Like frogs around a pond," said Plato, "we have settled down upon the shores of this sea." (p. 3)

Mainland Greece was but a small part of the the ancient Greek world.

Durant quotes Homer (here is Allan Mellenbaum's translation - which I read as I began this odyssey)

Along the winedark sea, by water ringed,
there lies a land both fair and fertile: Crete,
the home of countless men, of ninety cities.
Some speak in one, some in another fashion -
an isle of mingled tongues.
...
                           Their greatest city
is Cnossus; there for nine years Minos ruled:
...
                           In his curved ship,
together with the sons of Atreus,    [Menelaus & Agamemnon]
Idomeneus sailed off to Ilion.   [Troy]
           The Odyssey, XIX, 172-185

Thus the Minoan civilization contributed to the Trojan war.

Will Durant continues: The rediscovery of that lost civilization [Minoan] is one of the major achievements of modern archeology. The first excavations of Cnossis began in 1900.

"The halls of the king are noisy with scribes taking inventories of goods distributed or received; with artists making statuary, paintings, pottery, or reliefs; with high officials conducting conferences, hearing judicial appeals, or dispatching papers stamped with their finely wrought seals; while wasp-waisted princes and jewelled duchesses, alluringly decolate, crowd to a royal feast served on tables shining with bronze and gold." (p. 8)

Here are a few additional facts I noted:

• the double axe was a prominant symbol
• men and women seemed to be treated as equals
• Cnossus and Phaestus were the two principal cities, both impressive
• bull fighting was a popular sport
• they worshipped almost everything (mountains, sun, moon, animals, 3)
• their language is still a matter of controversy today
• large outdoor amphitheatres
• frescoes are the dominant remnant of their civilization
• the palace of Cnossis is spectacular
• The legend of  Daedelus: an Athenian "Leonardo" who killed his brother, is exiled to Crete, becomes chief engineer, offends the king, is confined to the maze in the Labyrinth with his son Icarus, they make wingts out of feathers and wax and escape, Icarus flies to close to the sun - the wax melts and he falls into the sea, Daedulus continues on to Sicily where he helps found another civilization.

Minoan civilization is a fascinating "dead-end" civilization that left no real legacy for future generations.

Returning to the Project Perseus site, and typing Minoan into the search engine doesn't give much, but typing Cnossus is quite rewarding - 35 color slides of the excavation site.

I plan to stay with the Durant book (written in 1939) for a day or two and see how it supplements the modern Ancient Greece book (1996).
 

The second chapter from Durant is equally engaging.

He devotes a few pages to describing Heinrich Schliemann. a German businessman with a passion for Troy. He succeeds in locating the ruins of Troy, and later Mycenae (and he had the correct idea about the location of Cnossus!).

Here is Schliemann's account of learning Ancient Greek: "In order to acquire quickly the Greek vocabulary, I procured a modern Greek translation of Paul et Virginie, and read it through, comparing evry word with its equivalent in the French original. When I had finished this task I knew at least ibe half the Greek words the book contained; and after repeating the operation I know them all, or nearly so, without having lost a single minute by being obliged to use a dictionary... Of the Greek grammar I learned only the declensions and the verbs, and never lost my precious time in studying its rules; for I saw that boys, after being troubled and tormented for eight years and more in school with the tedious rules of grammar, can nevertheless none of them write a letter in ancient Greek without making hundreds of atrocious blunders, I thought the method pursued by the schoolmasters must be altogether wrong... I learned ancient Greek as I would have learned a living language." (p. 25). It might be fun to discuss this with someone from Modern Languages!

"Like Columbus he [Schliemann] had discovered a world stranger than the one he sought" (p. 27).

The ancient Greeks used the term cyclopean to refer to structures that looked like they must have been built by giants. The term is used, even today, to refer to structures made of large unmortared stones that are roughly cut.

Schliemann also located the ancient city of Tiryns. This was built for the Argive prince Proetus two centuries before the Trojan War. Proetus gave the palace to Perseus who ruled Tiryns with his queen Andromeda. Perseus was considered the sone of Zeus and was considered to be a model hero. The Dictionary of Classical Mythology claims he is one of the best known (! - not to me) and pleasantest heros in Greek Mythology.

"These gloomy ruins [Mycenae] are the reminders of a civilization as ancient to Pericles as Charlemagne is to ourselves." (p. 29)  A glorious comparison!

Seeing Crete grow rich on orderly trade, Mycenae learned that piracy - like its civilized offspring, tariff dues - can strangle commerce and internationalize poverty; it reformed, and allowed piracy to subside into trade. By 1400 B.C. its mercantile fleet was strong enough to defy the sea power of Crete. (p. 31). I continue to marvel at Durant's style. And another example:

"Today, standing on the ruins of Mycenae, one sees, in the little village below, a modest Christian church. Grandeur is gone; simplicity and consolation remain. Civilizations come and go; they conquer the earth and crumble into dust; but faith survives every desolation.' (p. 32).