COIN OF KNOSSOS (SHOWING LABYRINTH).
This legend of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth is particularly worth attending to because it shows us so well how the unreal stories grew up out of the real, and how we are sometimes able to find out the real truth under the unreal story.
There was this real Labyrinth in Crete; and this tribute of seven maids and seven youths was, we may be tolerably sure, demanded of the Athenians. One or more of the drawings on the Minoan palace walls show bull-fights going on, and in the bull-ring are not only men, but also maidens, fighting the bull. One does not know whether all the Athenian maidens and youths were intended for this bull-fighting, but it is exceedingly likely that many of them were condemned to it, just as prisoners of war and others were made to fight lions in the amphitheatre at Rome. And out of this fact, of the maidens and youths in the bull-ring, might very easily grow the story of the Minotaur—the bull-monster of Minos—and his victim.
How Theseus slew the Minotaur and found his way out of the Labyrinth by a clue given him by Ariadne, the king's daughter, who had fallen in love with him, is all a further fancy that grew up out of the solid facts of the Labyrinth and the bull-fighting.
It is very wonderful that these ancient people should have been able to make their power felt so far from their home island, because of the difficulty in crossing the open seas. Their ships were propelled by the oars of rowers and by the wind in the sails when the wind was in their favour—that is to say, was blowing in the direction in which they wanted to go. The sails of modern sailing vessels are so arranged that our ships can sail up into the wind, as it is called. They can go in a direction at right angles to the direction of the wind very easily, and even when it is a little opposed to them, by means of setting the sails so as to catch the wind side-ways. But there is no evidence that the Minoans were able to do this, and we know that in far later days of our story no such device was used. They had a squarish-shaped sail attached to the mast, more like our lug-sail than any other kind of rigging that is used now. And yet, with these poor appliances, they went to Egypt, to Syria, and to Sicily, and no doubt farther west again. And they went in numbers, for otherwise they would not have been able to subjugate the native people as we know that they did at Athens.
The pirates
We may suppose that they went for a double purpose—for trade and also for piracy, to take forcible possession of what they wanted wherever they found it. In those days, and for a long time afterwards, it does not seem as if they had any idea that it was contrary to what was right and just to take anything that they were able to take from another nation. Any idea of what we call international justice was very little thought of, if thought of at all. They could, and they did, make laws among themselves which surprise us by their justice, but these laws were for each nation itself. We have seen the idea of a single god, supreme over a whole nation, held at times by them, but even that did not mean that they had an idea of a single god supreme over the whole of the world. He was a national god only, and if the idea of the divine law was thus national only, it was not likely that they would have the idea that any laws made by man were to be obeyed beyond the limits of the nation by which they were made.
So we may be sure that these ancient Minoans were what we should call pirates. They swept the sea in their ships attacking and capturing the ships of other peoples wherever they found them, and landing and making forays on the mainland much as the Vikings of Norway did around our own shores at a far later date. And this state of things in the Mediterranean is worth particular attention because these pirates, of one nation or another, will be found actively at work all through the pages of this great story of mankind. The Mediterranean was not freed from them until a very recent date.