An oldie but goodie by Mary Renault and another gift from my sis-in-law in honor of our Greece trip. It does give you a whole other perspective on viewing ruins that are thousands of years old to think of people actually living, loving, working in those places. For those of you not familiar, this is Renault's version of the Theseus legend. Was he the son of the god Poseidon? or of mortal king Aigeus and priestess Aithra. The story goes that Theseus was sent to Crete as part of Athens tribute--usually 7 girls and 7 boys--which was paid to avoid having Crete attack them. The youths were sent to the "Bull Court" where they "danced" with the bulls and usually didn't live very long, although they often lived well. The frescoes recovered from Knossos show the bull dancers. In the legend, Theseus manages to navigate the labyrinth and defeat the minotaur--half man, half bull--and sail home. But he forgets to change the colors of his sails to white. When his father the king spies the returning ships with dark sails, he despairs at his lost son and throws himself down the cliff to his death. In Renault's version, Theseus has already become a king in his own right by the time he volunteers to become part of Athen's tribute. He finds the Cretans have fallen away from the gods and become bored and irreverent, hence their eventual demise is inevitable. Knossos, once a city of 100,000 people according to historians, was in fact wiped out, perhaps by a tidal wave resulting from a cataclysmic volcanic explosion on Thera, followed by invasion by the Myceneans. There is no agreed upon explanation for the decline of a robust civilization that lasted for over 1600 years.
No comments:
Post a Comment