'
But the evidence for the existence of this early Sea-King and his
power rests on surer grounds than the vague tradition recorded by
the two great historians. The power of Minos has left its imprint
in unmistakable fashion in the places which were called by his
name. Each of the Minoas which appear so numerously on the coasts
of the Mediterranean, from Sicily on the west to Gaza on the east,
marks a spot where the King or Kings who bore the name of Minos
once held a garrison or a trading-station, and their number shows
how wide-reaching was the power of the Cretan sea-Kings.
But the great King was by no means so fortunate in his domestic
relationships as in his foreign adventures. The domestic skeleton
in his case was the composite monster the Minotaur, half man, half
bull, fabled to have been the fruit of a monstrous passion on the
part of the King's wife, Pasiphae. This monster was kept shut up
within a vast and intricate building called the Labyrinth, contrived
for Minos by his renowned artificer, Daedalus. Further, when his own
son, Androgeos, had gone to Athens to contend in the Panathenaic
games, having overcome all the other Greeks in the sports, he fell
a victim to the suspicion of AEgeus, the King of Athens, who caused
him to be slain, either by waylaying him on the road to Thebes,
or by sending him against the Marathonian bull.
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