About 1000 B.C. there happened a final catastrophe. The palace at Cnossus was once more destroyed, and never rebuilt or re-inhabited. Iron took the place of Bronze, and Aegean art, as a living thing, ceased on the Greek mainland and in the Aegean isles including Crete, together with Aegean writing. In Cyprus, and perhaps on the south-west Anatolian coasts, there is some reason to think that the cataclysm was less complete, and Aegean art continued to languish, cut off from its fountain-head. Such artistic faculty as survived elsewhere issued in the lifeless geometric style which is reminiscent of the later Aegean, but wholly unworthy of it. Cremation took the place of burial of the dead. This great disaster, which cleared the ground for a new growth of local art, was probably due to yet another incursion of northern tribes, more barbarous than their predecessors, but possessed of superior iron weapons—those tribes which later Greek tradition and Homer knew as the Dorians. They crushed a civilization already hard hit; and it took two or three centuries for the artistic spirit, instinct in the Aegean area, and probably preserved in suspended animation by the survival of Aegean racial elements, to blossom anew. On this conquest seems to have ensued a long period of unrest and popular movements, known to Greek tradition as the Ionian Migration and the Aeolic and Dorian “colonizations”; and when once more we see the Aegean area clearly, it is dominated by Hellenes, though it has not lost all memory of its earlier culture.
Bibliography.—Much of the evidence is contained in archaeological periodicals, especially Annual of the British School at Athens (1900–); Monumenti Antichi and Rendiconti d. R. Ac. d. Lincei (1901–); Ephemeris Archaiologiké (1885–); Journal of Hellenic Studies, Athenische Mittheilungen, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, American Journal of Archaeology, &c. (all since about 1885). Special Works: H. Schliemann’s books (see Schliemann), summarized by C. Schuchhardt, Schliemann’s Excavations (1891); Chr. Tsountas, Μυκῆναι (1893); Chr. Tsountas and J. I. Manatt, The Mycenaean Age (1897); G. Perrot and Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité, vol. vi. (1895); W. Dörpfeld, Troja (1893) and Troja und Ilios (1904); A. Furtwängler and G. Löschke, Mykenische Vasen (1886); A. S. Murray, Excavations in Cyprus (1900); W. Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece (1901 foll.); H. R. Hall, The Oldest Civilization of Greece (1901); A. J. Evans, “Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult” in Journ. Hell. Studies (1901) and “Prehistoric Tombs of Knossos,” in Archaeologia (1905); F. Noack, Homerische Paläste (1903); Excavations at Phylakopi, by members of the British School at Athens (1904); Harriet A. Boyd (Mrs Hawes), Excavations at Gournia (1907); D. G. Hogarth, “Aegean Religion” in Hastings’ Dict. of Religions (1906). For a recent view of the place of Aegean civilization in the history of Hellenic culture see Die Hellenische Kultur by F. Baumgarten, &c. (1905). Various summaries, controversial articles, &c., formerly quoted, are now superseded by recent discoveries. See also Crete, Mycenae, Troad, Ceramics, Plate, &c. (D. G. H.)
AEGEAN SEA, a part of the Mediterranean Sea, being the archipelago between Greece on the west and Asia Minor on the east, bounded N. by European Turkey, and connected by the Dardanelles with the Sea of Marmora, and so with the Black Sea. The name Archipelago (q.v.) was formerly applied specifically to this sea. The origin of the name Aegean is uncertain. Various derivations are given by the ancient grammarians—one from the town of Aegae; another from Aegea, a queen of the Amazons who perished in this sea; and a third from Aegeus, the father of Theseus, who, supposing his son dead, drowned himself in it. The following are the chief islands:—Thasos, in the extreme north, off the Macedonian coast; Samothrace, fronting the Gulf of Saros; Imbros and Lemnos, in prolongation of the peninsula of Gallipoli (Thracian Chersonese); Euboea, the largest of all, lying close along the east coast of Greece; the Northern Sporades, including Sciathos, Scopelos and Halonesos, running out from the southern extremity of the Thessalian coast, and Scyros, with its satellites, north-east of Euboea; Lesbos and Chios; Samos and Nikaria; Cos, with Calymnos to the north; all off Asia Minor, with the many other islands of the Sporades; and, finally, the great group of the Cyclades, of which the largest are Andros and Tenos, Naxos and Paros. Many of the Aegean islands, or chains of islands, are actually prolongations of promontories of the mainland. Two main chains extend right across the sea—the one through Scyros and Psara (between which shallow banks intervene) to Chios and the hammer-shaped promontory east of it; and the other running from the south-eastern promontory of Euboea and continuing the axis of that island, in a southward curve through Andros, Tenos, Myconos, Nikaria and Samos. A third curve, from the south-easternmost promontory of the Peloponnese through Cerigo, Crete, Carpathos and Rhodes, marks off the outer deeps of the open Mediterranean from the shallow seas of the archipelago, but the Cretan Sea, in which depths occur over 1000 fathoms, intervenes, north of the line, between it and the Aegean proper. The Aegean itself is naturally divided by the island-chains and the ridges from which they rise into a series of basins or troughs, the deepest of which is that in the north, extending from the coast of Thessaly fo the Gulf of Saros, and demarcated southward by the Northern Sporades, Lemnos, Imbros and the peninsula of Gallipoli. The greater part of this trough is over 600 fathoms deep. The profusion of islands and their usually bold elevation give beauty and picturesqueness to the sea, but its navigation is difficult and dangerous, notwithstanding the large number of safe and commodious gulfs and bays. Many of the islands are of volcanic formation; and a well-defined volcanic chain bounds the Cretan Sea on the north, including Milo and Kimolos, Santorin (Thera) and Therasia, and extends to Nisyros. Others, such as Paros, are mainly composed of marble, and iron ore occurs in some. The larger islands have some fertile and well-watered valleys and plains. The chief productions are wheat, wine, oil, mastic, figs, raisins, honey, wax, cotton and silk. The people are employed in fishing for coral and sponges, as well as for bream, mullet and other fish. The men are hardy, well built and handsome; and the women are noted for their beauty, the ancient Greek type being well preserved. The Cyclades and Northern Sporades, with Euboea and small islands under the Greek shore, belong to Greece; the other islands to Turkey.
AEGEUS, in Greek legend, son of Pandion and grandson of Cecrops, was king of Athens and the father of Theseus. He was deposed by his nephews, but Theseus defeated them and reinstated his father. When Theseus set out for Crete to deliver Athens from the tribute to the Minotaur he promised Aegeus that, if he were successful, he would change the black sail carried by his ship for a white one. But, on his return, he forgot to hoist the white sail, and his father, supposing that his son had lost his life, threw himself from a high rock on which he was keeping watch into the sea, which was afterwards called the Aegean. The Athenians honoured him with a statue and a shrine, and one of the Attic demes was named after him.
Plutarch, Theseus; Pausanias i. 22; Hyginus, Fab. 43; Catullus lxiv. 207.
AEGINA (Egina or Engia), an island of Greece in the Saronic Gulf, 20 m. from the Peiraeus. Tradition derives the name from Aegina, the mother of Aeacus, who was born in and ruled the island. In shape Aegina is triangular, 8 m. long from N.W. to S.E., and 6 m. broad, with an area of about 41 sq. m. The western side consists of stony but fertile plains, which are well cultivated and produce luxuriant crops of grain, with some cotton, vines, almonds and figs. The rest of the island is rugged and mountainous. The southern end rises in the conical Mount Oros, and the Panhellenian ridge stretches northward with narrow fertile valleys on either side. From the absence of marshes the climate is the most healthy in Greece. The island forms part of the modern nomos of Attica and Boeotia, of which it forms an eparchy. The sponge fisheries are of considerable importance. The chief town is Aegina, situated at the north-west end of the island, the summer residence of many Athenian merchants. Capo d’Istria, to whom there is a statue in the principal square, erected there a large building, intended for a barracks, which was subsequently used as a museum, a library and a school. The museum was the first institution of its kind in Greece, but the collection was transferred to Athens in 1834.
Antiquities.—The archaeological interest of Aegina is centred in the well-known temple on the ridge near the northern corner of the island. Excavations were made on its site in 1811 by
