These are details of which we cannot speak with certainty at present, but all the isolated data available are best explained by believing that the great activities of the trade in the Ægean and especially in Crete were organised by and were in the hands of Prospectors, who had come originally, though not necessarily directly, from the Persian Gulf, and who were employing the Mediterranean aborigines as mariners, miners and craftsmen. When in Middle and Late Minoan times these Cretans made settlements on the mainland, in the Argolid, in Bœotia, and at Pylos, settlements which are recorded in the legends of Danaus, Cadmus and Neleus, we can well believe that, while some of their subjects were of the Mediterranean race, and others, perhaps, drawn from the Alpine aborigines of the mainland, the rulers were in all cases Prospectors.
Professor Ure[368] has recently shown us that in Greek lands, as well as in renaissance Italy, we find two types of rulers, who may be described as Kings and Tyrants. The king is a military chief, of aristocratic bearing and origin, and one more often interested in the territory than in the city. The tyrant, on the other hand, is essentially a merchant or a business man, his outlook bourgeois, and he rules over a city and its trading connections, rather than over a wide expanse of land. In Greece, Ure believes, the introduction of metal currency caused the earlier kings to be replaced by these tyrants or merchant princes. He has supported his thesis by a vast mass of evidence, which we need not repeat here, but in his conclusions I think we may see the supplanting of the Nordic lord by the Prospector, as times became more settled and trade, rather than fighting, became the more important occupation.
Many of Ure’s arguments would apply equally to the Minoan age, when piracy had been put down and oversea trade was booming. The rise of the Greek tyrants was due, he thinks, to the rise of a coinage, just as the modern plutocrat has risen to power on the development of paper currency; the Minoan tyrant, comes to the front as metal, an easily portable and exchangeable commodity, succeeds flint or obsidian. It was into these trading cities, each governed by a Prospector tyrant, that I believe these Nordic “Achæan” adventurers to have arrived from the Danube basin with their leaf-shaped swords.
Now there are two classes of men, both of them wielding large powers over others, whose characters have been sharply contrasted by many writers. The kingly type is found in noblemen, at any rate of the old school, mediæval knights, landed proprietors and officers of the army and navy; the same traditions hold good in the upper ranks, at least, of the civil service and among the professional classes. The relations between these lords and the people committed to their charge, whether subjects, tenants or employés, are usually good, and friction rarely arises unless the subject class is of an alien race. These kings or lords have usually been able to retain for generations the respect of their subjects, often to inspire very great love and devotion.
On the other hand the leader, whose claim to his position rests only upon wealth or the power to create wealth, is often even extravagantly generous, and has usually ingratiating manners, which are in sharp distinction from the hauteur which is more characteristic of the lord; yet he rarely makes himself loved or even liked by those dependent on him, even though his actions be kind and his judgments just. This contrast has furnished a theme to many writers, and has been ably summarised by Ure,[369] who quotes in support pregnant passages from the works of H. G. Wells[370] and William James.[371] Such differences, Ure thinks, distinguished the king from the tyrant, and the same contrast, I would suggest, held good between the “Achæan” heroes and the rulers of the Minoan cities.
We have seen reason for believing that the population of the Minoan cities of Greece consisted of Mediterraneans and perhaps some few Alpines, under the rule of a Prospector tyrant. The latter’s rule was possibly just, he made money for his city, but most of all for himself, and, in spite of occasional fits of lavish generosity, he would not have been popular. He was engaged in exploiting the proletariat, and they were fully conscious of the fact. Though his manner was outwardly ingratiating, he was distrusted by his subjects, who felt that they were but pawns in his game. Thus the sword swayed over his head as over that of Damocles, held only by a slender thread; revolutions or rumours of revolutions were of constant occurrence, and the tyrant, intent on money making, had little leisure or inclination, even if he had the capacity, for maintaining order or of inspiring loyalty in the hearts of his subjects.
We can well imagine that the arrival in such a community of one or two northern barbarians, rough and rude, but strong and honest, would have been like a breath of fresh air entering a stuffy room. The tyrant would have welcomed a man who could put down highwaymen or lead his mercenaries to battle. He would, perhaps, have made him chief of his police or generalissimo of the town forces, and, as the hero restored law and order and kept the populace quiet, he would have promised him much reward, including perhaps his daughter’s hand. All would have gone well until the tyrant, with the instinct of the Prospector to make a bargain and to get something for nothing, endeavoured, like Laomedon of Troy, to cheat his Nordic ally or to offer him a base substitute for promises made.
The Nordic, as incapable of understanding such double-dealing as of thus acting himself, would quite naturally have been incensed. We can picture him accusing the tyrant of dishonesty and ejecting him from his palace, when he would have fallen a speedy victim to the anger of his subjects. The hero would have placed himself upon the vacant throne with the help and goodwill of the people, who had admired his strength, courage and fair dealing. Lastly, he would, perhaps, have married the daughter of his predecessor, not so much from romantic motives as to establish more completely his right to the throne, for, despite what has been written to the contrary, some form of matrilinear succession seems to have obtained in Minoan Greece.[372]