Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/426

 396 The European Sky -god.

to him the laws that he was to give the Cretans. ^^^ In other words, Minos renewed his divine commission as king and law-giver at intervals of eight years. This custom he is said to have borrowed from a more ancient ruler, Rhada- manthys by name,^^" so that doubtless it was an extremely archaic Cretan institution. It was also every ninth year that the Minotaur received his tribute of human victims,^'^ a usage which probably implies that the solar powers of the king needed renewal at the same recurring period.^^ These examples lead us to conjecture that the restriction of the Athenian kings {^aaikel^) or rulers {dpxovTe<;) from a life tenure, first to ten years, and then to one year,^*^ was due not merely to political but also to religious motives. A suggestive tale is told about one of the old life-kings named Thymoetes.-^'*^ In a war between the Athenians and Boeotians he was challenged to a single combat by Xanthus, king of Bceotia, but declined the challenge through old age or cowardice and offered his kingdom as a reward to any man who would venture to fight the Boeotian champion. Melanthus the Neleid, a recent immigrant from Messenia, undertook the task and, thanks to divine assistance, succeeded. The throne thus passed from the Theseids to the Neleids, who had proved themselves physically com- petent to reign. But the new dynasty did not remain sans peur et sans reproche for long. Melanthus was followed by a son worthy of him, the heroic Codrus : Codrus' son Medon was lame of one leg and therefore had much ado to

'*' Plat. Mi7i., 319 c, legg., 624 B., Strab. 476, 762, Eustath., i86r, 25 ff., Val. Max., i. 2 ext. I.

'*^ Ephorus ap. Strab. 476, Eustath., 1S61, 25 ff.

'" Plut. vit. Thes., 15, Diod. 4. 61, Ov. 7?iet., 8. 171 ; cp. Hock Kreta, ii.,

93 f-

'" Class. Rev., xvii., 410 f.

'■'* Busolt, Griechische Geschichte, ii.,- 135.

"^ Con. 39, schol. Aristoph. Ach.., 146, pax, 890, cp. Ildt., 5. 65, Paus., 2.

18. 9, Strab., 393, Ephor./r(7^. 25 Miiller, alib.