Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/252

 220 HISTORY OF GREECE. rious mythical genealogies with Krete, though the Sarpedon ol the Iliad has no connection with Krete, and is not the son of Europe. Sarpedon having become king of Lykia, was favored by his father, Zeus, with permission to live for three generations. 1 At the same time the youthful Miletus, a favorite of Sarpedon, quitted Krete, and established the city which bore his name on the coast of Asia Minor. Rhadamanthus became sovereign of and lawgiver among the islands in the JEgean : he subsequently went to Boeotia, where he married the widowed Alkmeno, mother of Herakles. Europe finds in Krete a king Asterius, who marries her and adopts her children by Zeus : this Asterius is the son of Kres, the eponym of the island, or (according to another genealogy by which it was attempted to be made out that Minos was of Dorian race) he was a son of the daughter of Kres by Tektamus, the son of Dorus, who had migrated into the island from Greece. Minos married Pasiphae, daughter of the god Helios and Per- se'is, by whom he had Katreus, Deukalion, Glaukus, Androgeos, names marked in the legendary narrative, together with seve- ral daughters," among whom were Ariadne and Phaedra. He offended Poseidon by neglecting to fulfil a solemnly-made vow, and the displeased god afflicted his wife Pasiphae v. r ith a mon- strous passion for a bull. The great artist Daedalus, son of Eu- palamus, a fugitive from Athens, became the confidant of this amour, from which sprang the Minotaur, a creature half man and half bull. 2 This Minotaur was imprisoned by Minos in the laby- rinth, an inextricable inclosure constructed by Daedalus for that express purpose, by order of Minos. Minos acquired great nautical power, and expelled the Karian inhabitants from many of the islands of the JEgean, which he placed under the government of his sons on the footing of tribu- 1 Apollodor. iii. 1, 2. Kdi avrfi diduai Zevf lirl rpsif -yevtuf yv. This tircumstancc is evidently imagined by the logographers to account for the appearance of Sarpedon in the Trojan war, fighting against Idomeneus, the grandson of Minos. Nisus is the eponymus of Nisaea, the port of the town of Megara : his tomb was shown at Athens (Pausan. i. 19, 5). Minos is the eponym of the island of Minoa (opposite the port of Nisaea), where it was affirmed that the fleet of Minos was stationed (Pausan. i. 44, 5). 1 Apollodor iii. 1 2.