War In Crete
At the same time the Cnossians sent an embassy to
note
the Rhodians, and persuaded them to send them
the ships that were under the command of Polemocles, and to launch three undecked vessels
besides and send them also to Crete. The Rhodians having
complied, and the vessels having arrived at Crete, the people
of Eleutherna suspecting that one of their citizens named
Timarchus had been put to death by Polemocles to please the
Cnossians, first proclaimed a right of reprisal against the
Rhodians, and then went to open war with them.
The people of Lyttos, note too, a short time before this, met note
with an irretrievable disaster. At that time
the political state of Crete as a whole was this.
The Cnossians, in league with the people of
Gortyn, had a short time previously reduced the whole island
under their power, with the exception of the city of Lyttos;
and this being the only city which refused obedience, they
resolved to go to war with it, being bent upon removing
its inhabitants from their homes, as an example and terror to
the rest of Crete. Accordingly at first the whole of the other
Cretan cities were united in war against Lyttos: but presently
when some jealousy arose from certain trifling causes, as is the
way with the Cretans, they separated into hostile parties, the
peoples of Polyrrhen, Cere, and Lappa, along with the Horii
and Arcades, note forming one party and separating themselves
from connexion with the Cnossians, resolved to make common
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cause with the Lyttians. Among the people of Gortyn,
again, the elder men espoused the side of Cnossus, the younger
that of Lyttos, and so were in opposition to each other. Taken
by surprise by this disintegration of their allies, the Cnossians
fetched over a thousand men from Aetolia in virtue of their
alliance: upon which the party of the elders in Gortyn
immediately seized the citadel; introduced the Cnossians
and Aetolians; and either expelled or put to death the young
men, and delivered the city into the hands of the Cnossians.
And at the same time, the Lyttians having gone out with their
full forces on an expedition into the enemy's territory, the
Cnossians got information of the fact, and seized Lyttos while
thus denuded of its defenders. The children and women they
sent to Cnossus; and having set fire to the town, thrown down
its buildings, and damaged it in every possible way, returned.
When the Lyttians reached home from their expedition, and
saw what had happened, they were struck with such violent
grief that not a man of the whole host had the heart to enter
his native city; but one and all having marched round its
walls, with frequent cries and lamentations over their misfortune
and that of their country, turned back again towards the city
of Lappa. The people of Lappa gave them a kind and entirely
cordial reception; and having thus in one day become cityless
and aliens, they joined these allies in their war against the
Cnossians. Thus at one fell swoop was Lyttos, a colony of
Sparta and allied with the Lacedaemonians in blood, the most
ancient of the cities in Crete, and by common consent the
mother of the bravest men in the island, utterly cut off.
