age after passage,
until at last he met the dreadful monster; and there, in the depths
of the Labyrinth, the Minotaur, who had slain so many, was himself
slain. Then Theseus and his companions escaped, taking Ariadne
with them, and fled to their black ship, and set sail for Attica
again; and landing for awhile in the island of Naxos, Ariadne there
became the hero's wife. But she never came to Athens with Theseus,
but was either deserted by him in Naxos, or, as some say, was taken
from him there by force. So, without her, Theseus sailed again
for Athens. But in their excitement at the hope of seeing once
more the home they had thought to have looked their last upon, he
and his companions forgot to hoist the white sail; and old AEgeus,
straining his eyes on Sunium day after day for the returning ship,
saw her at last come back black-winged as he had feared; and in
his grief he fell, or cast himself, into the sea, and so died, and
thus the sea is called the AEgean to this day. Another tradition,
recorded by the poet Bacchylides, tells how Theseus, at the challenge
of Minos, descended to the palace of Amphitrite below the sea, and
brought back with him the ring, 'the splendour of gold,' which
the King had thrown into the deep.

So runs the great story which links Minos and Crete with the favourite
hero of Athens. But other legends, not so famous nor so romantic, carry
on the story of the great Cretan King to a miserable close. Daedalus,
his famous artificer, was also an Athenian, and the most cunning of
all men. To him was ascribed the invention of the plumb-line and
the auger, the wedge and the level; and it was he who first set
masts in ships and bent sails upon them. But having slain, through
jealousy, his nephew Perdix, who promised to excel him in skill, he
was forced to flee from Athens, and so came to the Court of Minos.
For the Cretan King he wrought many wonderful works, rearing for him
the Labyrinth, and the Choros, or dancing-ground, which, as Homer
tells us, he 'wrought in broad Knossos for fair-haired Ariadne.'
But for his share in the great crime of Pasiphae Minos hated him,
and shut him up in the Labyrinth which he himself had made. Then
Daedalus made wings for himself and his son Icarus, and fastened
them with wax, and together the two flew from their prison-house
high above the pursuit of the King's warfleet. But Icarus flew too
near the sun, and the wax that fastened his wings melted, and he
fell into th