Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/99

The Coming oj the Greeks 55 79. Greeks take Possession of the JEgean World. Gradually their vanguard (called the Achaeans) pushed southward into the Peloponnesus, and doubtless some of them mingled with the dwellers in the villages which were grouped under the walls of Tiryns and Mycenae. But our knowledge of the Greek invasions is very meager, because the Greeks could not yet write and there- fore have left no written documents to tell the story. It is evident, however, that a second wave of Greek nomads (called the Do- rians) reached the Peloponnesus by 1500 B. c. and gradually sub- dued and absorbed their earlier kinsmen (the Achaeans) as well as the ^gean townsmen, the original inhabitants of the region. The Dorians did not stop at the southern limits of Greece, but, learning a little navigation from their ^Egean predecessors, soon passed over to Crete, where they arrived by 1400 B.C. Cnossus, unfortified as it was, must have fallen an easy prey to the invading Dorians. They conquered Crete and likewise seized the other southern islands of the ^Egean. Between 1300 and 1000 B. c. the several Greek tribes then established in Greece took the remaining islands and the coast of Asia Minor, the Dorians in the south, the lonians in the middle, and the ^Eolians in the north. Here a memorable Greek expedition in the twelfth century B.C., after a long siege, captured and burned the prosperous city of Troy (75), a feat which the Greeks never after forgot. Thus during the thousand years be- tween 2000 and 1000 B.C. the Greeks took possession not only of the whole Greek peninsula but likewise of the entire ^Egean world. 80. Flight of the ^Egeans and Fall of their Civilization (by 1200 B. c.). The northern Mediterranean all along its eastern end was thus being seized by invading peoples of Indo-European blood coming in from the north. The result was that both the ^Egeans and their Hittite neighbors in Asia Minor were over- whelmed by the advancing Indo-Europeans. The Hittite Empire was crushed, and the leading families among the yEgeans fled by sea, chiefly to the south and east. In only one place were they able to land in sufficient numbers to settle and form a nation. This was on the coast of southern Palestine (see map, p. 44),