"Megalo Kastro in those olden heroic times was not a band of houses, shops and alleyways huddled together along a Cretan shore line in front of an incessantly angry sea. Its inhabitants were not a disorderly, headless (or multiheaded) troop of men, women, and children who dissipated all their efforts in the daily concerns: food, children, women. A strict unwritten order governed them. No one lifted a rebellious hand against the harsh law above him. Someone over his head gave the orders. The entire city was a garrison, each inhabitant himself a garrison eternally besieged, and as his captain he had a saint, Saint Minas, the defender of Megalo Kastro."

(Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco, translated by Peter Bien, New York: Bantam Books 1966, p. 74)