DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0170
144 THE COMING OF THE GREEKS
sound to call the Minoan culture Carian, it is racially
unsound as well to ascribe it to the Phoenicians of Sidon
and Tyre. The influence of Phoenicia in the .Egean was
foreign, late, sporadic. It developed in the gradual days
of decadence that followed the sack of Knossos. It
reached its height in the Dark Ages that swept away
before the iron swords of the Northern invaders all but
the memories of art and beauty. It was only then, when
the hand of Egypt was weary and relaxed, and the chaos
of conquest and migration left the /Egean without a
master, that the " grave Tyrian trader " saw that his day
had come to leave the southern coast-land and expand
north and west. It was only in virtue of the few cen-
turies which followed the twelfth that he could call " the
/Egean isles " " his ancient home," and see the " merry
Grecian coaster as " the intruder."
But Matthew Arnold's well-known stanzas 1 suggest a
deeper problem. This
Merry Grecian coaster
from Chios or Miletus—these
Young, light-hearted masters of the waves,
were they in any real sense entering upon their rightful
inheritance ? Were they the descendants in race, lan-
guage, beliefs, of the people who created the early art of
the iEgean ? Have we any right to call that art Greek ?
It may at once be frankly admitted that to these ques-
tions no full and adequate answer can yet be given ; we
can only suggest some of the lines of argument which
may some day, with the help of further discoveries,
succeed in solving them.
The first point that we must be clear about is that the
question is largely one of degree. No scholars suggest
or could suggest that the Minoans were Greek in the full
sense of the word. The Greek race of the Classical period
is admittedly a blend of Northern and Southern elements.
1 The Scholar Gipsy.
sound to call the Minoan culture Carian, it is racially
unsound as well to ascribe it to the Phoenicians of Sidon
and Tyre. The influence of Phoenicia in the .Egean was
foreign, late, sporadic. It developed in the gradual days
of decadence that followed the sack of Knossos. It
reached its height in the Dark Ages that swept away
before the iron swords of the Northern invaders all but
the memories of art and beauty. It was only then, when
the hand of Egypt was weary and relaxed, and the chaos
of conquest and migration left the /Egean without a
master, that the " grave Tyrian trader " saw that his day
had come to leave the southern coast-land and expand
north and west. It was only in virtue of the few cen-
turies which followed the twelfth that he could call " the
/Egean isles " " his ancient home," and see the " merry
Grecian coaster as " the intruder."
But Matthew Arnold's well-known stanzas 1 suggest a
deeper problem. This
Merry Grecian coaster
from Chios or Miletus—these
Young, light-hearted masters of the waves,
were they in any real sense entering upon their rightful
inheritance ? Were they the descendants in race, lan-
guage, beliefs, of the people who created the early art of
the iEgean ? Have we any right to call that art Greek ?
It may at once be frankly admitted that to these ques-
tions no full and adequate answer can yet be given ; we
can only suggest some of the lines of argument which
may some day, with the help of further discoveries,
succeed in solving them.
The first point that we must be clear about is that the
question is largely one of degree. No scholars suggest
or could suggest that the Minoans were Greek in the full
sense of the word. The Greek race of the Classical period
is admittedly a blend of Northern and Southern elements.
1 The Scholar Gipsy.