Crete is the largest and most mountainous island in the Aegean; it is only on the map that its unity is apparent. The massifs of the White Mountains, Ida (Psiloritis), Dikte, and Thriphte make overland communication difficult, and effectively divide the island into regions (map 9): the far west, the center and the far east, with some grey areas in between. Regionalism is apparent both in material culture and in “ethnicity” - the Odyssey (19.172-7) mentions five “peoples” (Achaeans, Eteocretans, Cydonians, Dorians, and Pelasgians), and Herodotus (7.170-1) marks out the inhabitants of both Polichna (in the west) and Praisos (in the east) as being different from other Cretans.
The far west comprises a number of settlements (later “cities”) in the southwest corner of the island, whose archaic phases are little known, and the cities of Phalarssana, Polyrrhenia and Polichna, whose archaic phases remain underexplored. Ancient Cydonia (modern Khania) is the most important city of this region. This is the area of the Cydonians and Polichnitai (if they are not the same), and its pottery was distinct from the center from Protogeometric times onwards. To the east, the region of Sphakia (around Anopolis), the Ayios Vassilios valley, the cities of Aptera, Lappa, and “Onythe behind Rethymnon,” and the Amari valley (comprising ancient Sybrita) are something of a gray area. What little we know indicates closer affinities with the center than the far west.
The center, from Eleutherna in the west to Dreros in the east, is the largest region, and the one that figures most prominently in the literary and epigraphic record. It comprises the cities north of Mt. Ida, Eleutherna and Axos (Oaxos), and then Knossos, Eltynia, Lyttos and Dreros. To the south, it encompasses the cities of Phaistos, Gortyn (Gortys), Prinias (Rhizenia), Priansos, Afrati and Biennos (modernViannos).3 Though there are some slight differences between north and south, in material terms it is fairly homogeneous. To the east is another “grey area,” comprising the cities of Olous, Lato, Malla and Hierapytna and the complex of settlements around modern Kavousi. None of these cities seem to have been prominent in archaic times. Over the Thriphte range is the Siteia peninsula, the far east of Crete, at whose center is ancient Praisos, city of the Eteocretans. This is R. C. Bosanquet’s “Cretan Wales” (1940: 64), in whose “Pembrokeshire,” in the north-east corner, is the Greek city of Itanos.4
This regional diversity makes any “Cretan” generalization hazardous, and should raise suspicions about the tendency in ancient authors to refer to the “Cretans” rather than to the inhabitants of Lyttos, Knossos, and so forth. Similar caveats apply to the material record.
World History
