The Sea-Kings of Crete | Page 5

the first colonies, expelling
the Carians, and appointing his own sons governors; and thus did his
best to put down piracy in those waters, a necessary step to secure the
revenues for his own use.' To Herodotus also, Minos, though obviously
a shadowy figure, is the first great Thalassokrat. 'Polykrates is the first
of the Grecians of whom we know who formed a design to make
himself master of the sea, except Minos the Knossian.' But the evidence
for the existence of this early Sea-King and his power rests 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, Dædalus. 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 Ægeus, 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
Ægeus 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 Ægeus and the
Princess Aithra of Trœzen. He had been brought up by his mother at
Trœzen, and on arriving at early manhood had set out to make his way
to the Court of Ægeus and secure acknowledgment as the rightful son
of the Athenian King. The legend tells how on his way to Athens he
cleared the lands through which he journeyed of the pests which had
infested them. Sinnis, the pine-bender, who tied his miserable victims
to the tops of two pine-trees bent towards one another and then allowed

the trees to spring back, the young hero dealt with as he had dealt with
others; Kerkuon, the wrestler, was slain by him in a wrestling bout;
Procrustes, who enticed travellers to his house and made them fit his
bed, stretching the short upon the rack and lopping the limbs of the
over-tall, had his own measure meted to him; and various other plagues
of society were abated by the young hero. Not long after his arrival at
Athens and acknowledgment by his father, the time came round when
the Minoan heralds should come to Athens to claim the victims for the
Minotaur. Seeing the grief that prevailed in the city, and the anger of
the people against his father, Ægeus, whom they accounted the cause of
their misfortune, Theseus determined that, if possible, he would make
an end of this humiliation and misery, and accordingly offered himself
as one of the seven youths who were to be devoted to the Minotaur.
Ægeus was loth to part with his newly-found son, but at length he
consented to the venture; and it was agreed that if Theseus succeeded in
vanquishing the Minotaur and bringing back his comrades in safety, he
should hoist white sails on his returning galley instead of the black ones
which she had always borne in token of her melancholy mission.
So at length the sorrowful ship came to the