THE SEA-KINGS OF CRETE 
23 
GREAT STAIRCASE: PH^STOS, CRETE) 
The chief glory of the palace at Ph^stos is the great flight of steps, 45 feet in width, 
which formed its state entrance, the broadest and most splendid staircase that ever a royal 
palace had. "No architect," says Mosso, "has ever made such a flight of steps out of 
Crete." . . . The palaces of Knossos and Phsestos wonderfully resemble each other in 
the general ideas that determine their structure, though, of course, there are many variations 
in detail. But, as contrasted with the sister palace, the stately building at Phsestos has 
exhibited a most extraordinary dearth of the objects of art which formed so great a part of 
the treasures of Knossos. 
panied by plunder, and the plundering 
was thorough. A few scraps of gold 
leaf, and the little deposit of bronze ves- 
sels that had been preserved from the 
plunderers by the fact that the floor of 
the room in which they were found had 
sunk in the ruin of the conflagration, are 
•evidences, better than absolute barren- 
ness would have been, to the fact that 
the place was pillaged with minute thor- 
■oughness, and the unfinished stone jar 
in the sculptor's workshop tells its own 
tale of a sudden summons from peaceful 
and happy toil to the stern realities of 
warfare. 
The evidences from Phsestos and 
"Haaria Triada tallies with that from 
Knossos. Everywhere there are the 
traces of fire on the walls and a sudden 
interruption of quiet and luxurious life. 
The very stone lamps still stand in the 
rooms at Hagia Triada, and on the stairs 
of the Basilica and Knossos, as they 
stood to lighten the last night of the 
doomed Minoans. 
Of course there are no records, and if 
there were we could not read them; but 
it is easy to imagine the disastrous sea 
fight off the coast ; the wrecks of the 
once invincible Minoan fleet driven 
ashore in hopeless ruin in the shallow 
bay, like the Athenian fleet at Syracuse ; 
the swift march of the mainland con- 
querors up the valley ; the brief, des- 
