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θαλασσοκρατέειν. The idea of ‘thalassocracy’ was in the air in the fifth century, when Themistocles had revealed its possibilities, and Cimon and Pericles had realized them. Myres (J. H. S. xxvi) has given good reasons for assigning the list of ‘thalassocracies’ in Eusebius to a fifth-century origin. Fotheringham (ib. xxvii. 88) doubts the date; but his arguments on this point are quite unconvincing, though he makes valuable corrections in Myres' interpretation of the list.

H. here for once is more really critical than Thucydides (i. 4), who says, probably by implication correcting H., Minos παλαίτατος ὧν ἀκοῇ ἴσμεν . . . τῆς νῦν Ἑλληνικῆς θαλάσσης ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐκράτησε. Whatever is true in the traditions as to Minos, H. is right in implying that they are not strictly historical.

But modern research has here, as elsewhere, largely vindicated the Greek view that the myths contained a large element of history (cf. Burrows, Discoveries in Crete, especially pp. 11-14, for the Minoan empire); Burrows ingeniously suggests that the eight ‘Minoas’ (cf. Fick, Vorg. Ortsn. p. 27) scattered from Syria to Sicily, may perhaps reveal the greatness of their founder (cf. the ‘Alex andrias’ and ‘Antiochs’ of the fourth and third centuries. The argument that founders' names are not given to colonies till quite late proves nothing against this; for the Greek colonies from the eighth century onwards were founded by republics, not by kings.

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