The great white bull which Minos
ought to have sacrificed had left a horrible offspring, a monster called
the Minotaur, half man and half bull, which ate human flesh, and did
horrible harm, till a clever artificer named Daedalus made a dwelling for
it called the Labyrinth, approached by so many cross paths, winding in
and out in a maze, that everyone who entered it was sure to lose himself;
and the Minotaur could never get out, but still they fed him there; and
as Athens was subject to Crete, the people were required to send every
year a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens for the Minotaur to
devour. Theseus offered himself to be one of these, telling his father
that whereas a black sail was always carried by the ship that bore these
victims to their death, he would, if he succeeded in killing the
Minotaur, as he hoped to do, hoist a white one when coming home. When he
reached Crete, he won the heart of Minos' daughter Ariadne, who gave him
a skein of thread: by unwinding this as he went he would leave a clue
behind him, by which he could find his way out of the labyrinth, after
killing the monster. When this was done, by his great skill and
strength, he took ship again, and Ariadne came with him; but he grew
tired of her, and left her behind in the isle of Naxos, where Bacchus
found her weeping, consoled her, and gave her a starry crown, which may
be seen in the sky on a summer night. Theseus, meantime, went back to
Athens, but he had forgotten his promise about the white sail, and his
poor old father, seeing the black one, as he sat watching on the rocks,
thought that ill news was coming, fell down, and was drowned, just as
Theseus sailed safely into port. Theseus was a friend of Hercules, had
been with him on his journey to the land of the Amazons, and had married
one of them named Antiope.

[Picture: Warriors]

Two more of the Argonauts were Castor and Pollux, the twin sons of Leda,
queen of Sparta. She had also two daughters, named Helen and
Clytemnestra, and Helen was growing into the most beautiful woman in the
world. These children, in the fable, had been hatched from two huge
swans' eggs; Castor and Clytemnestra were in one egg, and Pollux and
Helen in the other. Castor and Pollux were the most loving of brothers,
and while Castor was famous for horsemanship, Pollux was the best of
boxers. They, too, had been pupils of Chiron; so was Peleus of AEgina,
who had wooed T