Crēta

, now Candia , one of the largest islands of the Mediterranean sea, at the south of all the Cyclades. It was once famous for its 100 cities, and for the laws which the wisdom of Minos established there. The inhabitants have been detested for their unnatural loves, their falsehood, their piracies, and robberies. Jupiter, as some authors report, was educated in that island by the Corybantes, and the Cretans boasted that they could show his tomb. There were different colonies from Phrygia, Doris, Achaia, . , that established themselves there. The island, after groaning under the tyranny of democratical usurpation, and feeling the scourge of frequent sedition, was made a Roman province, B.C. 66, after a war of three years, in which the inhabitants were so distre ed that they were even compelled to drink the water of their cattle. Chalk was produced there and thence called Creta , and with it the Romans marked their lucky days in their calendar. Horace , bk. 1 , ode 36, li. 10 ; epode 9.— Ovid , Fasti , bk. 3 , li. 444 ; Epistles , bk. 10 , li. 106 .— Valerius Maximus , bk. 7 , ch. 6 .— Strabo , bk. 10 .— Lucan , bk. 3 , li. 184 .— Virgil , Æneid , bk. 3 , li. 104 .— Mela , bk. 2 , ch. 7 .— Pliny , bk. 4 , ch. 12 .