Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/254

 222 HISTORY OF GREECE. and Athens was plunged in the deepest affliction, when Theseus determined to devote himself as one of them, and either to ter- minate the sanguinary tribute or to perish. He prayed to Posei- 46n for help, and the Delphian god assured him that Aphrodite would sustain and extricate him. On arriving at Knossus he was fortunate enough to captivate the affections of Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, who supplied him with a sword and a cluo of thread. With the former he contrived to kill the Minotaur, the latter served to guide his footsteps in escaping from the labyrinth. Having accomplished this triumph, he left Krete with his ship and companions unhurt, carrying off Ariande, whom however he soon abandoned on the island of Naxos. On his way home to Athens, he stopped at Delos, where he offered a grateful sacrifice to Apollo for his escape, and danced along with the young men and maidens whom he had rescued from the Minotaur, a dance called the Geranus, imitated from the twists and convolutions of the Kretan labyrinth. It had been concerted with his father ^Egeus, that if he succeeded in his enterprise against the Mino- taur, he should on his return hoist white sails in his ship in place of the black canvas which she habitually carried when employed on this mournful embassy. But Theseus forgot to make the change of sails ; so that jEgeus, seeing the ship return with her equipment of mourning unaltered, was impressed with the sorrow- ful conviction that his son had perished, and cast himself into the sea. The ship which made this voyage was preserved by the Athenians with careful solicitude, being constantly repaired with new timbers, down to the time of the Phalerian Demetrius : every year she was sent from Athens to Delos with a solemn sacrifice and specially-nominated envoys. The priest of Apollo decked her stern with garlands before she quitted the port, and during the time which elapsed until her return, the city was understood to abstain from all acts carrying with them public impurity, so that it was unlawful to put to death any person even under for- mal sentence by the dikastery. This accidental circumstance dcr Religions Geschichte und Mytbologie, vol. ii. ch. xiii. p. 133. He main- tains that the tribute of these human victims paid by Athens to Minos is an historical fact. Upon what this belief is grounded, I confes* I do not tee.