DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0156
130 THE LABYRINTH AND THE MINOTAUR
basements and upper stories would be new and con-
fusing to the Northerner, and make him feel as Pliny felt
when he wandered " for the greater part in the dark " 1
through the Temple of Hawara. On the corrridor
walls, too, were frescoes that helped out the story, and
suggested its details. There were the life-size plaster
bulls in high relief, and the toreadors painted at their
work, and the beautiful youths and maidens who gave
the touch of romance. The idea of a maze was itself
known to Minoan art, and in a corridor by the Hall
of the Double Axes, on the eastern slope, there have
been found the remains of an elaborate " labyrinth "
design, painted in reddish brown on a white ground,
which might well suggest to the intruder the idea of a
" Palace Plan," and of a clue that could be found and
followed.2 Mr. Evans was amply justified when, at
the end of his first season's work, he claimed that the
ruins of the Palace enabled us to see how the whole
legend grew. Their effect on the Greek invader was just
the effect that the guarding of the Cupbearer fresco had
on Manolis.5
" Everything around," he wrote,4—" the dark passages,
the lifelike figures surviving from an older world—would
conspire to produce a sense of the supernatural. It was
haunted ground, and then, as now, ' phantasms ' were
about. The later stories of the grisly king and his man-
eating bull sprang, as it were, from the soil, and the
whole site called forth a superstitious awe. It was left
severely alone by the newcomers. Another Knossos
grew up on the lower slopes of the hill to the north,
and the old Palace site became a ' desolation and
hissing.' "
One last word before we pass from Dr. Rouse's criti-
cisms. If we are convinced that the Palace of Knossos
is what the Greeks meant by a Labyrinth, it is a matter
1 xxxvi. 13. I B.S.A. viii. fig. 62, p. 104.
3 See pp. 2-3. * M.R. March 1901, p. 132.
basements and upper stories would be new and con-
fusing to the Northerner, and make him feel as Pliny felt
when he wandered " for the greater part in the dark " 1
through the Temple of Hawara. On the corrridor
walls, too, were frescoes that helped out the story, and
suggested its details. There were the life-size plaster
bulls in high relief, and the toreadors painted at their
work, and the beautiful youths and maidens who gave
the touch of romance. The idea of a maze was itself
known to Minoan art, and in a corridor by the Hall
of the Double Axes, on the eastern slope, there have
been found the remains of an elaborate " labyrinth "
design, painted in reddish brown on a white ground,
which might well suggest to the intruder the idea of a
" Palace Plan," and of a clue that could be found and
followed.2 Mr. Evans was amply justified when, at
the end of his first season's work, he claimed that the
ruins of the Palace enabled us to see how the whole
legend grew. Their effect on the Greek invader was just
the effect that the guarding of the Cupbearer fresco had
on Manolis.5
" Everything around," he wrote,4—" the dark passages,
the lifelike figures surviving from an older world—would
conspire to produce a sense of the supernatural. It was
haunted ground, and then, as now, ' phantasms ' were
about. The later stories of the grisly king and his man-
eating bull sprang, as it were, from the soil, and the
whole site called forth a superstitious awe. It was left
severely alone by the newcomers. Another Knossos
grew up on the lower slopes of the hill to the north,
and the old Palace site became a ' desolation and
hissing.' "
One last word before we pass from Dr. Rouse's criti-
cisms. If we are convinced that the Palace of Knossos
is what the Greeks meant by a Labyrinth, it is a matter
1 xxxvi. 13. I B.S.A. viii. fig. 62, p. 104.
3 See pp. 2-3. * M.R. March 1901, p. 132.