Now Crete is much nearer Egypt than the rest of Greece is; and may very likely have shared in a measure of Egyptian culture at the very beginning of the European manvantara, and even before.  Of course, in past cycles it had been a great center of culture itself; but that was long ago, and I am not speaking of it.  In the tenth century A.D., three hundred years before civilization, in our own cycle, had made its way from the West Asian Moslem world into Christendom, Sicily belonged to Egypt and shared in its refinement—­was Moslem and highly civilized, while Europe was Christian and barbarous; later it became a main channel through which Europe received enlightenment.  May not Crete have played a like part in ancient times?  I mean, is it not highly probable?  May it not have been—­as Sicily was to be—­a mainly European country under Egyptian influence, and a seat of Egyptianized culture?

Let us, then, suppose Homer a Greek, born early in the ninth century B.C., taken in childhood to Crete, and brought up there in contact with cultural conditions higher than any that obtained elsewhere among his own people.

But genius stirs in him, and he is Greek altogether in the deep enthusiasms proper to genius:  so presently he leaves Crete and culture, to wander forth among the islands singing.—­

     En delo tote Proton ego Kai Homeros aoidoi
     Melpomen,

says Hesiod:  “Then first in Delos did I and Homer, two Aoidoi, perform as musical reciters.”  Delos, of course, is a small island in the Cyclades.

He would have had some training, it is likely, as an Aoidos:  a good founding in the old stories which were their stock in trade, and which all pointed to the past glory of his race.  In Crete he had seen the culture of the Egyptians; in Asia Minor, the strength and culture of the Lydians; now in his wanderings through the isles he saw the disunion and rudeness of the Greeks.  But the old traditions told him of a time when Greeks acted together and were glorious:  when they went against, and overthrew, a great West Asian Power strong and cultured like the Lydians and Egyptians.  Why should not he create again the glory that once was Greece?

     Menin aeide, Thea, Peleiadeo Achileos!

—­Goddess, aid me to sing the wrath (and grandeur) of a Greek hero!—­Let the Muses help him, and he will remind his people of an ancient greatness of their own:  of a time when they were united, and triumphed over these now so much stronger peoples!  So Dante, remembering ancient Rome, evoked out of the past and future a vision of United Italy; so in the twelfth century a hundred Welsh bards sand of Arthur.