nd its merchants coming from all parts, the
elaborate bathrooms, the stadium, and the solemn sacrifice of a bull,
are all thoroughly, though not exclusively, Minoan; but when we read
how the bull is hunted "in the temple of Poseidon without weapons
but with staves and nooses," we have an unmistakable description of
the bull-ring at Knossos, the very thing which struck foreigners
most, and which gave rise to the legend of the Minotaur.'[*]

[Footnote *: 'The Lost Continent,' _Times_, February 19, 1909. The
anonymous writer was the first to identify Crete with the 'Lost
Atlantis.']

The boundaries which Plato assigns to the Empire of the lost State
are practically identical with those over which Minoan influence
is now known to have spread, while the description of the island
itself is such as to make it almost certain that Crete was the
original from which it was drawn. 'The island was the way to other
islands, and from these islands you might pass to the whole of
the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean.' So Plato
describes Atlantis; and when you set beside his sentence a modern
description of Crete--'a half-way house between three continents,
flanked by the great Libyan promontory, and linked by smaller island
stepping-stones to the Peloponnese and the mainland of Anatolia'--there
can be little doubt that the two descriptions refer to the same
island.

The only difficulty in the way of accepting the identification is
that it is stated that the lost Atlantis lay beyond the Pillars
of Hercules; but doubtless this statement is due to Solon's
misinterpretation of what was said by his Egyptian informant, or to
the Saite priest's endeavour to accommodate his ancient tradition
to the wider geographical knowledge of his own time. The old Egyptian
conception of the universe held that the heavens were supported
on four pillars, which were actual mountains; and probably the
original story placed the lost island beyond these pillars as a
metaphorical way of stating that it was very far distant, as indeed
it was to voyagers in those early days. But by Solon's time the
limits of navigation were extended far beyond those of the early
seafarers. The Phoenician trader had pushed at least as far west
as Spain; Necho's fleet had circumnavigated Africa; and so 'the
island farthest west,' which naturally meant Crete to the Egyptian
of the Eighteenth Dynasty who first recorded the catastrophe of the
Minoan Empire, had to