'the men of Praesos
were no doubt, in the true saga spirit, foreshortening history by
crystallizing a process into a single event.' It is very improbable,
in view of the evidence afforded by the long survival and gradual
decay of the Minoan tradition, that there was any immediate general
occupation of the island on the part of the conquering race. The
process which finally resulted in the island of Crete becoming
'the mixed land,' with a heterogeneous population of Pelasgians,
Dorians, Achaeans, and other tribes, must have been a gradual one,
extending, in all probability, over several centuries. Any large
influx of foreign elements was impossible so long as Crete was
dominated by a great and warlike central power; but once that power
was broken by the catastrophe in which the Palaces of Knossos and
Phaestos were overthrown, there was nothing to hinder the gradual
drifting in of the wandering tribes of the AEgean and of the North.

How that catastrophe came about we can see, not with any certainty
of detail, but with some amount of probability as to its general
outlines, from that echo of a period of wandering and strife in
the Mediterranean area which comes to us from the records of Ramses
III. at Medinet Habu. 'The isles were restless, disturbed among
themselves,' and it was one of the later waves of that storm which
broke itself against the armed strength of Egypt about 1200 B.C.
Probably the process of migration had been going on for several
generations. The rude but vigorous tribes of the North had been
pressing down upon the races which had created that remarkable
Bronze Age civilization of the Danubian area, whose relics have
been coming to light of late years; and these in their turn, under
the pressure from the North, had been moving down towards the
Mediterranean, driving before them the peoples, probably of kindred
stock to themselves, who had occupied the lands of the Mycenaean
civilization.

We know that long before the Homeric poems took shape the Achaeans
had established themselves as the ruling caste in the Argolid,
in Laconia, and elsewhere; and that the pressure had begun even
while Mycenae was at the height of its power is suggested by the
figures on one of the steles of the Circle-Graves, where a Mycenaean
chieftain in his chariot is pursuing an enemy whose leaf-shaped
sword shows that he was one of the Danubian race. The Mycenaean
was the victor in the first shock; but the steady pressure of the