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The Gortyn ‘Labyrinth’ and its Visitors in the Fifteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

A. M. Woodward
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Extract

The ‘Labyrinth’ near Gortyn in southern Crete has attracted the interest and the curiosity of many generations of travellers visiting the island. When Tournefort explored it systematically in 1700 he observed and recorded the dates inscribed by visitors, who had sometimes added their names, on the rock-face, either at the farthest point which can be reached, or on the sides of the passage leading to it. As the earliest date which he noted was 1444, it may be of interest to draw attention to an even earlier literary source for such visits.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 44 , November 1949 , pp. 324 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1949

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References

1 Relation d'un Voyage du Levant, par M. Pitton de Tournefort [Lyon, 1717, 8vo], I. pp. 76–83.

2 Other dates in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which he noted were 1495, 1516, ‘qui fu el strenuo Signor Zan da Como, cap.no de la Fanteria, 1526’, 1539, 1560, 1579. I do not know of any published description by a traveller from the West earlier than that of Belon, Pierre, Observations sur plusieurs Singularitez, bk. 1. ch. 6 [Paris, 1553], quoted by Tournefort.Google Scholar

3 Sabbadini, R., Studi Italiani XI (1903), 364–8Google Scholar, concludes that Barzizza composed two versions of this treatise, the first at Padua, before he left it in 1421 (or 1422?), for the instruction of two young Venetian pupils; and the second at Milan between 1422 and 1430.

4 Ba. = Balliol College Library, No. 132 (now deposited in the Bodleian), which includes also 145 of Barzizza's letters.

5 Bo. = Bodleian, Canonici Ms. No. 375 (paper, ca. 1500?). I am much indebted-to Mr. R. W. Hunt, Keeper of Western MSS., for enabling me to examine these two MSS. There are, I believe, two more examples of the same work in the Canonici collection, but I had no time to see them.

6 (Paris, Gering, Crantz and Friburger, 1470/71). Professor Louis Robert most kindly sent me a copy of the entry Laberinthos from the (unique?) copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale.

7 From a MS., written probably at or near Naples, which is in my possession.

8 See above, note (3).