BOOK IIIda, he has the same brilliant sire, but his mother is the earth. In his name he is simply man, the measurer or thinker, the Indian Manu : and if in the Hindu legend Manu enters the ark with the seven rishis at the time of the great deluge, so Minos is the father of Deu- kalion, in whose days the floods are let loose in the western land. Thus as the representative of the great human family, he becomes not merely like Manu the giver of earthly codes or institutes, but a judge of the dead in the nether world, with Rhadamanthys and Aiakos, who were admitted to share this oftice. The conception which made Manu the builder of the ark is seen apparently in the maritime power and supremacy attributed to the Cretan Minos, a supremacy which to Thucydides seemed as much a fact of history as the Peloponnesian war. This power, according to Apollodorus, Minos the grim[1] obtained by overcoming his brothers, who quarrelled after Asterion the king of Crete had married their mother Europe. But although Minos had boasted that whatever he desired the gods would do, he was none the more shielded against disaster. At his wish Poseidon sent up a bull from the sea, on the pledge of Minos that he would offer the beast in sacrifice. Minos offered one of his own cattle in his stead ; and Poseidon not only made the bull mad, but filled Pasi- phae with a strange love for the monster. From the union of the bright heaven with this sombre progeny of the sea sprang the Mino- tauros, who in his den far away within his labyrinth of stars devoured the tribute children sent from the city of Athene, and who, by the help of Ariadne, falls under the sword of Theseus as lason by the aid of Medeia conquers the fire-breathing bulls of Kolchis. So trans- parent is the legend of the " solar hero and solar king of Crete,"[2] who rules over the island in the nine years' cycle which reappears in the myth of the tribute children. Like Indra and Krishna, like Phoibos and Alpheios and Paris, he is the lover of the maidens, the hot and fiery sun greeting the moon and the dew.[3] Hence, in the words of one who professes to distrust the conclusions of Comparative Mythology, " the great king of Crete met his end in the distant evening-land where the sun goes down."[4] Pie is slain in Sicily by king Kokalos,
- ↑ Od. xi. 322.
- ↑ Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 118.
- ↑ In this aspect of his character Minos is the lover of Diktynna and of Prokris, according to the strange story told by Apollodoros, iii. 15,1. Prokris avoids the doom which befalls all other victims of his love by making Minos take the antidote of Kirkê. Of these myths Preller says, "In noch andern Sagen von Kreta erscheint Minos als grosser Jäger, der in den Bergen und Wäldern seiner Insel das Wild und die Kymphen jagt, wie wir namentlich von seiner Liebe zur Diktynna und zur Prokris wissen, die wieder den Mond bedeuten, wie Minos in solchen Fabeln die heisse und feurige Sonne zu bedeuten scheint."—Gr. Myth. ii. 122.
- ↑ Preller, Gr. Myth. ibid.
