ABSTRACT
Despite the social changes which brought about modifications in the organization of the Cretan system of training their youth, that system preserved, with remarkable tenacity, particularly in its final stages, certain archaic features, including, as we saw, collective marriage. The Drerian oath shows that, even in the Hellenistic period, the training of the youth was still deeply imbued with ritualistic ideas based on initiation ceremonies and fertility cults. These survivals illustrate the most significant feature of Cretan religion throughout antiquity. The conventional Olympian pantheon of gods and goddesses was introduced into the official religion of the Cretan cities in the course of the first millennium B.C. as elsewhere throughout Greece, but not far below the surface, and indeed sometimes openly at the surface, survived myths, cults, beliefs and practices inherited from Minoan and even pre-Minoan times.
