Still they went on, getting deeper and deeper, until the pick of a digger struck a paving stone. They shovelled the rubbish away and disclosed another stone, then another. At last Sir Arthur Evans had reached the stone pavement of a palace.
Excavations were continued, and gradually the throne-room of the Palace of Knossos was bared once more to human eyes, after lying under the debris for countless generations. Here were the stone seats arranged round the walls for the councillors, here was the throne on which sat the king who laid tributary on all the lands about the Mediterranean, a stone throne, hollowed in the seat to give comfort, with a stone back carved in a series of six curves rising to a half-circle at the top, the solid block comprising the seat carved at the front to indicate legs. Here in this ancient palace he held audiences, sent his messengers forth in their galleys to claim tribute at Athens, issued his decrees.
“Go,” he said, and they went.
And when after feasting he desired amusement and relaxation, he would beckon his henchman. “Fetch me maidens to dance and sing,” he would say, and there would be the sound of twanging strings and the pitter-patter of little naked feet on the stone floor, feet with toes pink as rosebuds, lithe limbs, flowing draperies.
And the king, feasting his eyes on the beauty of his dancers, would dream of the youths and maidens even then aboard his galleys on their way from Athens to Crete, the youths and maidens who were the yearly tribute.
The hot sun, beating down on the well-tended vineyards, drew the nectar of the earth to the grapes, brushed them with a delicate bloom ere they fell beneath the feet of the winepressers to yield the juice that made the feasters merry. The blossom of the olive groves was succeeded by tiny green olives which swelled in the heat until they were ready to yield their rich oil which was so welcome to the people of other lands. Artists worked happily on the plaster walls, laying on their colours to delight the eye, potters kneaded their clay until it was as butter under the ball of the thumb. The people spun and sewed and draped their bodies in comely garments. But most of all they valued health, realized the necessity for adequate drainage.
Did they become too civilized, these ancient people? Did they grow lazy in their luxury, disinclined to work? Who knows! Perhaps it was so. At any rate, desolation swept over them and blotted them out, just as the cities on the site of Troy were blotted out again and again.
We can imagine the galleys of the invaders approaching the rocky coasts, the cries of alarm running through the palaces and over the island, the invaders springing ashore, fierce, strong, hard, not softened by too much civilization, relying on their own strength and weapons for sustenance, not upon the tribute exacted from other lands. Muscular arms that had thrust the galleys through the Mediterranean, dropped the sweeps and caught up weapons as the keels grounded. The sea curled about the legs of the invaders as they dropped over the prow and swarmed ashore. Fighters, every one, asking no quarter, giving none, seeking plunder with the sword, valuing other lives not at all and their own but little.
See the women shrinking into the corners of the palaces, eyes full of fear, sensing approaching doom; men shouting and gasping, the invaders sweeping forward and cutting them down. A semi-barbarous people conquering a civilized people, cold iron superseding bronze, uncultured men with superior weapons triumphing over culture with inferior weapons.
Long, long ago something like this happened in Crete; the palaces of the ancient people were toppled about their ears and palaces and people vanished into oblivion.