* The Greeks called the Mediterranean Ho Pontos, the Passage or Road, and euphemistically termed the Black Sea Ho Pontos Euxeinos—the Sea Kindly to Guests—perhaps because it welcomed ships from the south with adverse currents and winds. The broad rivers that fed it, and the frequent mists that reduced its rate of evaporation, kept the Black Sea at a higher level than the Mediterranean, and caused a powerful current to rush through the narrow Bosporus (Ox-ford) and the Hellespont into the Aegean. The Sea of Marmora was the Propontis, Before the Sea.

* All dates in this volume are B.C. unless otherwise stated or obviously A.D.

† The modern capital, now officially renamed Heracleum.

* Evans labored brilliantly at Cnossus for many years, was knighted for his discoveries, and completed, in 1936, his monumental four-volume report, The Palace of Minos.

* Since the earliest layer of copper implements at Cnossus may be dated, by correlation with the remains of neighboring cultures, about 3400 B.C., i.e., about 5300 years ago, and since the neolithic strata at Cnossus occupy some fifty-five per cent of the total depth from surface to rock, Evans calculated that the Neolithic Age in Crete had lasted at least 4500 years before the coming of metals—approximately from 8000 to 3400. Such calculations of time from depth of strata are, of course, highly problematical; the rate of deposition may change from age to age. Allowance has been made for a slower rate after the abandonment of Cnossus as an urban site in the fourteenth century B.C.⁷ No paleolithic remains have been found in Crete.

† For the approximate duration of these epochs cf. the Chronological Table on p. 2.

* Current anthropology divides post-neolithic Europeans into three types, respectively preponderating in north, central, and southern Europe: (i) “Nordic” man—long-headed, tall, and fair of skin and eyes and hair; (2) “Alpine” man—broad-headed, of medium height, with eyes tending to gray and hair to brown; and (3) “Mediterranean” man—long-headed, short, and dark. No people is exclusively any of these “races.”

* The usually cautious and accurate Thucydides writes: “The first person known to us by tradition as having established a navy is Minos. He made himself master of what is now called the Hellenic Sea, and ruled over the Cyclades. . . . He did his best to put down piracy in those waters, a necessary step to secure the revenues for his own use.”²⁰

* The ascription of rooms is, of course, highly conjectural. It should be added that nearly all the exhumed decorations of the palace have been removed to the museum at Heracleum or elsewhere, while much of what remains in site has been tastelessly restored.

† It is no longer agreed that the square depressions found in the floors of some rooms were baths; they have no outlets, and are made of gypsum, which water would gradually dissolve.³⁷

‡ Mosso found similar drainage pipes in the villa at Hagia Triada. “One day, after a heavy downpour of rain, I was interested to find that all the drains acted perfectly, and I saw the water flow from the sewers, through which a man could walk upright. I doubt if there is any other instance of a drainage system acting after four thousand years.”⁴⁰

* If archeological chronology would permit the deferment of this conflagration to the neighborhood of 1250 it would be convenient to interpret the tragedy as an incident in the Achaean conquest of the Aegean preliminary to the siege of Troy.

* Pausanias, father of all Baedekers, credits Daedalus with several statues, mostly of wood, and a marble relief of Ariadne dancing, as all extant in the second century A.D.⁵¹ The Greeks never doubted the reality of Daedalus, and the experience of Schliemann warns us to be skeptical even of our skepticism. Old traditions have a way of being easily rejected by one generation of scholars, and laboriously confirmed by the next.

* The Athenians counted all this as history. They treasured for centuries, by continually repairing it, the ship in which Theseus had sailed to Crete, and used it as a sacred vessel in sending envoys annually to the feast of Apollo at Delos.