DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0134
io8 THE LABYRINTH AND THE MINOTAUR
be inadequate, and Dr. Rouse might have ground for
saying that Buckingham Palace would do just as well.
Early Greek writers, however, do not, as a matter of
fact, give any description of the Knossian Labyrinth at
all. The connection of the word with Gortyna, a town
that lies between Knossos and Phaestos, is principally
due to the poet Claudian, who wrote in 404 a.d.1 It is
strange that Dr. Rouse should think it supports his case
to notice that " both Knossos and Gortyna actually pos-
sess a rock cave of the catacomb type." 2 We have no
more right, too, to quote Strabo's application of the term
to a catacomb near Nauplia as a proof that an ancient
tradition connected the word with a cave,' than we have
to argue in the other direction from Virgil's use of the
word " domus " 4 of the actual maze of Knossos. Long
before the Augustan age the word had got to mean any-
thing out of which it was hard to find a way, and Strabo
would doubtless have cheerfully applied the term to the
open-air shrub maze at Hampton Court, just as Plato be-
fore him had applied it to arguments,5 and Theocritus to
traps for fish.6 All that we get in literature that cer-
tainly represents an earlier Greek tradition is the Cretan
rationalistic version, preserved by Philochorus,7 that
there was no such thing as a Minotaur, and that the
Labyrinth was a prison ; and the fact that comes to us
from Herodotus 8 that the name Labyrinth was given to
the great funerary temple of Amenemhat III.8 of the
Xllth Dynasty at Hawara, close to the opening of the
Fayum.
In the long account that Pliny the elder gives of this
1 Dc Sexto Consulatu Honorii, 634 ; sec Gibbon, chap. xxx.
Gortyna is even here probably only a synonym for Crete, as in
Catullus, lxiv. 76, Virgil, Eel. vi. 60 ; cp. Virg. Mn. xi. 773, vi. 23.
2 Sat. Rev. 3 Strabo, viii. 369 ; Rouse, op. cit.
* JEn. vi. 27. So Ovid, Met. viii. 158 ; cp. Catullus, lxiv. 115.
5 Euthyd. 291B. 8 xxi. 10.
7 ap. Plutarch, Theseus. 8 ii. 148 ; cp. Diodorus, i. 61.
• H. R. Hall in J.H.S. xxv. p. 327, xxvi. p. 177.
be inadequate, and Dr. Rouse might have ground for
saying that Buckingham Palace would do just as well.
Early Greek writers, however, do not, as a matter of
fact, give any description of the Knossian Labyrinth at
all. The connection of the word with Gortyna, a town
that lies between Knossos and Phaestos, is principally
due to the poet Claudian, who wrote in 404 a.d.1 It is
strange that Dr. Rouse should think it supports his case
to notice that " both Knossos and Gortyna actually pos-
sess a rock cave of the catacomb type." 2 We have no
more right, too, to quote Strabo's application of the term
to a catacomb near Nauplia as a proof that an ancient
tradition connected the word with a cave,' than we have
to argue in the other direction from Virgil's use of the
word " domus " 4 of the actual maze of Knossos. Long
before the Augustan age the word had got to mean any-
thing out of which it was hard to find a way, and Strabo
would doubtless have cheerfully applied the term to the
open-air shrub maze at Hampton Court, just as Plato be-
fore him had applied it to arguments,5 and Theocritus to
traps for fish.6 All that we get in literature that cer-
tainly represents an earlier Greek tradition is the Cretan
rationalistic version, preserved by Philochorus,7 that
there was no such thing as a Minotaur, and that the
Labyrinth was a prison ; and the fact that comes to us
from Herodotus 8 that the name Labyrinth was given to
the great funerary temple of Amenemhat III.8 of the
Xllth Dynasty at Hawara, close to the opening of the
Fayum.
In the long account that Pliny the elder gives of this
1 Dc Sexto Consulatu Honorii, 634 ; sec Gibbon, chap. xxx.
Gortyna is even here probably only a synonym for Crete, as in
Catullus, lxiv. 76, Virgil, Eel. vi. 60 ; cp. Virg. Mn. xi. 773, vi. 23.
2 Sat. Rev. 3 Strabo, viii. 369 ; Rouse, op. cit.
* JEn. vi. 27. So Ovid, Met. viii. 158 ; cp. Catullus, lxiv. 115.
5 Euthyd. 291B. 8 xxi. 10.
7 ap. Plutarch, Theseus. 8 ii. 148 ; cp. Diodorus, i. 61.
• H. R. Hall in J.H.S. xxv. p. 327, xxvi. p. 177.