Lyttus in 218 B.C.

Lyttus — Spring 218 BC · The City That Was.

Lyttos — Lyktos — a colony of Sparta and allied in blood to the Lacedaemonians, the most ancient of the cities of Crete, and by common consent the mother of the bravest men in the island. When Knossos and Gortyn had bent the whole of Crete to their will, Lyttos alone refused obedience — and for that the Knossians resolved to wipe it from the earth as a terror to the rest. While the Lyttian army was away on campaign in the enemy’s country, Knossos seized the undefended city, sent its women and children into captivity, and burned and threw down the town. The men, returning, could not bear to enter their ruined home; they marched once around its walls in grief and lamentation and turned away to Lappa, which received them kindly. Cityless and aliens in a single day, the Lyttians fight on among the allies against Knossos — a people without a country, but not without a cause.

Lyttos no longer stands. The most ancient and most valiant of the cities of Crete, colony of Sparta and kin to the Lacedaemonians in blood, it alone had the courage to refuse Knossos and Gortyn when all the rest of the island submitted — and for that courage it was destroyed. While the whole Lyttian host was out on campaign, the Knossians fell on the city they had left bare of defenders: they carried the women and children off to Knossos, set fire to the houses, threw down the walls, and marred the place in every way they could before they withdrew. When the men came home and saw it, not one of the whole army had the heart to set foot inside; they marched once around the ruined walls with cries and lamentation for their city and themselves, and then turned their backs on it for ever, going to Lappa. So in a single day a people grown old in their own land became homeless and aliens — and joined the allies of Polyrrhenia and Lappa in the war against the city that had unmade them.