s on surer grounds than the vague tradition recorded by
the two great historians. The power of Minos has left its imprint
in unmistakable fashion in the places which were called by his
name. Each of the Minoas which appear so numerously on the coasts
of the Mediterranean, from Sicily on the west to Gaza on the east,
marks a spot where the King or Kings who bore the name of Minos
once held a garrison or a trading-station, and their number shows
how wide-reaching was the power of the Cretan sea-Kings.

But the great King was by no means so fortunate in his domestic
relationships as in his foreign adventures. The domestic skeleton
in his case was the composite monster the Minotaur, half man, half
bull, fabled to have been the fruit of a monstrous passion on the
part of the King's wife, Pasiphae. This monster was kept shut up
within a vast and intricate building called the Labyrinth, contrived
for Minos by his renowned artificer, Daedalus. Further, when his own
son, Androgeos, had gone to Athens to contend in the Panathenaic
games, having overcome all the other Greeks in the sports, he fell
a victim to the suspicion of AEgeus, the King of Athens, who caused
him to be slain, either by waylaying him on the road to Thebes,
or by sending him against the Marathonian bull. In his sorrow and
righteous anger, Minos, who had already conquered Megara by the
treachery of Scylla, raised a great fleet, and levied war upon
Athens; and, having wasted Attica with fire and sword, he at length
reduced the land to such straits that King AEgeus and his Athenians
were glad to submit to the hard terms which were asked of them.
The demand of Minos was that every ninth year Athens should send
him as tribute seven youths and seven maidens. These were selected
by lot, or, according to another version of the legend, chosen by
Minos himself, and on their arrival in Crete were cast into the
Labyrinth, to become the prey of the monstrous Minotaur.

The first and second instalments of this ghastly tribute had already
been paid; but when the time of the third tribute was drawing nigh,
the predestined deliverer of Athens appeared in the person of the
hero Theseus. Theseus was the unacknowledged son of King AEgeus
and the Princess Aithra of Troezen. He had been brought up by his
mother at Troezen, and on arriving at early manhood had set out
to make his way to the Court of AEgeus and secure acknowledgment
as the rightful son of the Athenian King. The lege