New Britain herald., 1916-10-09

 l far more to the Greek nation than her native son Venizelos, the former pre-
 mier who for nearly two years has been l recurrently hailed as ''the man of the ! hour while his country has been 1 poised on the brink of the European conflict, afraid to yield to his plea to plunge forward, yet fearful lest, re- maining inert, she be engulfed and left without a rescuer when the vic toriOus powers meet to parcel out the rewards of war. According to a war geography bulletin or National Geo. graphic society this island is viewed by leading scientists and arohaelolo J.
 gists as the very cradle of ancient Greek culture.
 Tt was not the Pnoenicians who in vented the art of Writing,' says the bulletin, ''but the Cretans who, under the sway of their remarkable sea- kings, ante-dated by several hundred years the culture of the comm mercial nation which fourshed on the shores of Asia Minor. Recent excavations on this island, the home of Minos, of Ariadne and of the hOrror-inspirlnS Min otaur of Fomeric legend, have disclosed evidences of a civilization which reached it's apOgee fourteen hundred years before the birth oT Christ and more than six centuries be- fore the First Olympiad, the starting point of recorded Attic history. Nor was Cretes a civilization which in any degree paled in comparison with the grandeur of the BabylOnian emplrc, the magnif1cence of ancient Assyrla, or the remarkable achievements of the
 Egyptians under the early Pharaohs.
 When the spade of the explorer un-
 H. hn I, oin q nj
 tai of Knossos, or Cnossus, near the
 site of the modern seaport of Candid,
 there was revealed to archaeologists
 treasures which had scarcely been
 euualed since the secrets of the buried
 cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum
 were laid bare.
 "C1ay tablets bearing inscriptions in linear form far more graceful than any produced by the PhOenicians were found by the thousands; remarkable frescoes in brilliant cOlors depicting a race of men and women of rare phy- sical beauty and high mental accom- plishments; pottery, bronzes, tools, and gaming tables that for perfection of workmanship, elaborate decoration, and artistic developme have hardly been surpassed in the thirtyfivc cen- turies which stretch between that day and this.
 "One of the most astonishing discov- cries made in the palace of Minos
 (the name should probably be applied to a dynasty, like the Pharaohs of Egypt rather than to one king, as myth ology recites), was the style of dress among the women. Indeed, the artists who executed the frescoes might have had modern Parissienes for their models, judged by the decol- cite gowns, the rOuged cheeks, the
 1aring hats, the high heels and the tightly corrected figures.
 "A romantic revelation of these ruins was a picture of the Cretan sport Of bull-grappling, a pastime which was a forerunner of the trOcaderO com-
 bats of twentieth century Spain Ac-
 cording to conjectures of leading au-
 thorities, bull-grappling occupied the
 samo place in Cretan social life that the arenic games and gladiatOrial bat ties did in Rome centuries later, with the exception that captive maidens as we'll as youths were trained for the hazardous sport of the island kings and patricians. One fresco, which re- tains it's original brilliant colors, shows two girls and boy engaged in the conflict The boy has succeeded in SGlI11lS nal and has executed a somersault over the beasts back. The first girl has also completed the daring evolu- ton but the artist shows the second i girl at the moment when she is reaching out for horns and the spec 1 tator is left in doubt as to whether 1 she succeeds or is impaled on the 1 dea dly points.
 "A sinister discovery in connection 1 with this freScO was the lection of the 1 gloomy subterranean cells in which l the captured youths and maidens were confined before the contests. Perhaps to these cells and these bull-fights is ! to be traced the famous legend of the 1 despatch to King Minos of seven | Athenian maidens and seven youths l every ninth year, tho human tribute l being fed to the half-man and half
 bull known as the Minotaur, the off spring of NTinos' mOnStrOus wife Pas iphae. It is highly probable that the | story of Theseus slaughter Of the Mi
 notaur in the Labyrinth had an actual ! historical basis. Certainly, only with l the aid of an outsider such as the | fabIed Ariadne could a captive es- 1 caped from E1e duneeOns in which l the MinOan rulers confined the unfor- ! tunates condemned to furnish diver 1 sion for the court.
 ,,"Unlike Babylon Nineveh, Assur,
 and many other cities of antiquity, 1 Cretan culture was not a victim of de- | cadence. but fell before some myster- 1 iOus catacIysnl, the exact details of l which may never be shown. The only i certainty about the fall of knOsso and of sister cities of the island is
 that they were wiped out by an aL- l consuming cOnflagration after the pal 1 aces had been systematically footed OI
 all. their gold, silver, bronze and other
 treasure. As to who the invaders
 were. or how they achieved their pur-
 nose even legend is silent but the Rev. l To,,oc poilzip who chrOniCled the