Cretans (Κνωσός) — a Homeric kingdom of the Odyssey, c. 1200 BC

Cretans — Crete of the hundred cities — Minos' grandson led eighty ships to Troy, and brought them home whole.

Idomeneus, grandson of Minos, led eighty Cretan ships to Troy and fought in the first rank; at the tenth year of the returns he has come home to Cnossus whole, one of the few clean Achaean nostoi.

Leader at Troy: Idomeneus.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Idomeneus.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean. Eighty black ships from Crete of the hundred cities under Idomeneus and Meriones — among the largest contingents, and among the fiercest by the ships, where the grey-haired Idomeneus cut down Othryoneus, Asios and Alkathoos.

The homecoming: Came home clean to Crete — the sea took none of his.

Crete of the hundred cities, "a fair land and a rich, begirt with water," lay in the midst of the wine-dark sea — home to Achaeans and true-born Cretans, to Cydonians and crested Dorians and goodly Pelasgians, a confusion of tongues under one sceptre. Its seat was mighty Cnossus, "wherein Minos when he was nine years old began to rule, he who held converse with great Zeus." From Minos came Deucalion, and from Deucalion the prince Idomeneus — so the lord of Crete was grandson of Minos and great-grandson of Zeus himself, and no Achaean king carried older or brighter blood to Troy.\n\nIdomeneus the famous spearman led the Cretan muster: Cnossus and Gortys of the great walls, Lyktos and Miletus and chalky Lykastos, Phaistos and Rhytion, "stablished cities all; and of all others that dwelt in Crete of the hundred cities." With him sailed Meriones, peer of Enyalios the slayer of men, his squire and brother-in-arms. Behind them followed eighty black ships — one of the largest contingents in the whole host, second only to Agamemnon's hundred and Nestor's ninety.\n\nAt Troy the Cretans stood in the first rank. Idomeneus, though "his hair was flecked with grey," was reckoned among the very foremost — when Agamemnon in the first assembly named who might captain a ship, he set Idomeneus beside Aias and Odysseus. His great hour came by the ships in the tenth year, when he "leaping among the Trojans, roused their terror." He cut down Othryoneus of Kabesos, the newcomer who had wooed Priam's daughter Kassandra for the promise of driving the Achaeans from Troy-land — and boasted grimly over the corpse; then Asios, felled like an oak, and Alkathoos beside him. Meriones matched him kill for kill; it was Meriones who lent the boar's-tusk helmet to Odysseus for the night-raid. This is why the entry cross-links **TRO** — the Trojans and their allies were the men the Cretans broke at the wall — and **CEP**, for the gift of arms between Meriones and Odysseus of the Cephallenians.\n\nIdomeneus served under the supreme command of Agamemnon (**MYC**), whose war-council he sat in as a first among equals — and here the contrast bites: while the king of men came home to the axe, Idomeneus came home whole. That safe return is reported to Telemachos by aged Nestor of Pylos (**PYL**), the two grey captains who had stood together in the din before Troy; it is Nestor's tally of the nostoi that preserves Crete's clean homecoming. As a former suitor of Helen, bound like the rest by Tyndareus' oath, Idomeneus owed his war-service to the house of Menelaos at Lacedaemon (**LAC**); and his eighty ships mustered beside the nine of Tlepolemos of Rhodes (**RHO**), the Cretans' neighbours in the catalogue and, in later telling, fellow-wanderers to Cretan shores.\n\nAt the dramatic present — the tenth year of the returns — the nostos is complete and untroubled: "Idomeneus brought all his company to Crete, all that escaped the war, and from him the sea gat none." Of the great Achaean captains, few could say as much. He rules again at Cnossus over the hundred cities, the sea-god's storms having spared him where they scattered so many. Only a later, darker tradition (an overlay, not the world as it now stands) whispers of Nauplius' poison and one Leucus seizing ten Cretan towns to drive the old king into exile — but that shadow has not yet fallen. For now, Minos' grandson sits his ancestral throne, the rare Achaean lord for whom the returns ended as they began: at home, and whole.

“And Idomeneus brought all his company to Crete, all that escaped the war, and from him the sea gat none.” — Odyssey 3.191