Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/253

 ERETAN LEGENDS. -MINOS AND HIS FAMILY. 2l] taries. He undertook several expeditions against various place? on the coast one against Nisos, the son of Pandion, king of Me- gara, who had amongst the hair of his head one peculiar lock of a purple color : an oracle had pronounced that his life and reign would never be in danger so long as he preserved this precious lock. The city would have remained inexpugnable, if Scylla. the daughter of Nisus, had not conceived a violent passion for Minos. While her father was asleep, she cut off the lock on which his safety hung, so that the Kretan king soon became vic- torious. Instead of performing his promise to carry Scylla away with him to Krete, he cast her from the stern of his vessel into the sea : l both Scylla and Nisus were changed into birds. Androgeos, son of Minos having displayed such rare qualities as to vanquish all his competitors at the Panathenaic festival in Athens, was sent by .2Egeus the Athenian king to contend against the bull of Marathon, an enterprise in which he perished, and Minos made war upon Athens to avenge his death. He was for n long time unable to take the city : at length he prayed to his father Zeus to aid him in obtaining redress from the Athenians, and Zeus sent upon them pestilence and famine. In vain did they endeavor to avert these calamities by offering up as pro- pitiatory sacrifices the four daughters of Hyacinthus. Their sufferings still continued, and the oracle directed them to submit to any terms which Minos might exact. He required that they should send to Krete a tribute of seven youths and seven mai- dens, periodically, to be devoured by the Minotaur, 2 offered to him in a labyrinth constructed by Daedalus, including countless different passages, out of which no person could escape. Every ninth year this offering was to be despatched. The more common story was, that the youths and maidens thus des- tined to destruction were selected by lot but the logographer Hellanikus said that Min6s came to Athens and chose them him- self- 3 The third period for despatching the victims had arrived, 1 Apollodor. iii. 15, 8. See the Ciris of Virgil, a juvenile poem on the subject of this fable; also Hyginus, f. 198; Schol. Eurip. Hippol. 120tt Propertius (iii. 19, 21) gives the features of the story with tolerable fidel ity ; Grid takes considerable liberties with it (Metam. viii. 5-150).
 * Apollodor. iii. 15, 8.
 * See, on the subject of Theseus and the Minotaur, Eckermann, Lchrbodi