THE SEA-KINGS OF CRETE 
19 
closely that they furnish one of the 
strongest links between the first great 
civilization of Europe and our own. 
Such tools were, of course, of bronze. 
Probably the chief industry of the 
island was the manufacture and export 
of olive oil. The palace of Knossos has 
its room of the olive press and its con- 
duit for conveying the product of the 
press to the place where it was to be 
stored for use, and probably many of 
the great jars now in the magazines were 
used for the storage of this indispensable 
article. 
life; e;vide:ntly was democratic 
Of the social life of the people in these 
prehistoric times we know practically 
nothing. Only one inference, possibly 
precarious enough, may be made from 
one of the features of the architecture 
of Knossos. There is no attempt to se- 
clude the life of the palace from that 
of the town and country around it. On 
the contrary, the building seems almost 
to have been arranged with the view of 
affording the citizens of the Minoan Em- 
pire every facility for intercourse with 
the royal household. The great West 
Court, with its portico and its seats along 
the palace wall, suggests considerable 
freedom of access for the populace to 
the immediate neighborhood of royalty. 
It is perhaps rather a large inference 
to conclude that "the very architecture 
of the palaces of Knossos and Phsestos 
may testify to the power of the democ- 
racy," but at least the thoughtfulness 
with which the comfort of the people 
visiting the palace was provided for and 
the general openness and lack of any 
jealous seclusion, testified to by the 
whole style of the buildings, suggest that 
the relations between the kings of the 
house of Minos and their subjects were 
much more human and pleasant than 
those obtaining in most ancient king- 
doms. 
From their art one would, on the 
whole, conclude the people to have been 
a somewhat attractive race, frankly en- 
joying the more pleasant aspects of life 
and capable of a keen delight in all the 
beauties of nature. Minoan art has little 
that is somber about it : it is redolent of 
the open air and the free ocean, and a 
people who so rejoiced in natural beauty 
and delighted to surround themselves 
with their own reproductions and inter- 
pretations of it can scarcely have been 
bowed beneath a heavy yoke of servi- 
tude or have lived other than a compara- 
tively free and independent life. 
How much the Greeks of the classic 
period imbibed of the spirit of this 
gifted and artistic race we can only im- 
agine. The artistic standpoint of the 
Hellenic Greek is somewhat different 
from that of his Minoan or Mycenaean 
forerunner, and he has lost that keen 
feeling for nature which is so conspicu- 
ous in the work of the earlier stock ; but 
the two races are at least at one in that 
profound love of beauty which is the 
dominant characteristic of the Greek na- 
ture, and it may well be that something 
of that feeling formed part of the heri- 
tage which the conqueror took over from 
the conquered, and which, added to the 
virility and intellectual power of the 
northern race, made the historic Greek 
the most brilliant type of humanity that 
the world has ever seen. 
THE GREAT PALACE WAS NOT EORTlElED 
The main entrance of the palace at 
Knossos seemingly lay on the north side,, 
where the road from the harbor, now 
Candia, 3^^ miles distant, ran up to the 
gates. Here was the one and only trace 
of fortification discovered in all the ex- 
cavations. The entrance passage was a 
stone gangway, on the northwest side 
of which stood a great bastion with a 
guard-room and sally-port — a slender 
apology, for defense in the case of a prize 
so vast and tempting as the palace of 
Knossos. Obviously the bastion, with 
its trifling accommodation for an insig- 
nificant guard, was never meant to de- 
fend the palace against numerous assail- 
ants or a set siege ; it could only have 
been sufficient to protect it against the 
sudden raid of a handful of pirates 
sweeping up from the port. 
How was it that so great and rich a 
structure came to be left thus practically 
defenseless? The mainland palaces of 
the Mycenaean age at Tiryns and Mycena? 
are, so to speak, buried in fortifications. 
