Not long after
his arrival at Athens and acknowledgment by his father, the time
came round when the Minoan heralds should come to Athens to claim
the victims for the Minotaur. Seeing the grief that prevailed in
the city, and the anger of the people against his father, AEgeus,
whom they accounted the cause of their misfortune, Theseus determined
that, if possible, he would make an end of this humiliation and
misery, and accordingly offered himself as one of the seven youths
who were to be devoted to the Minotaur. AEgeus was loth to part with
his newly-found son, but at length he consented to the venture;
and it was agreed that if Theseus succeeded in vanquishing the
Minotaur and bringing back his comrades in safety, he should hoist
white sails on his returning galley instead of the black ones which
she had always borne in token of her melancholy mission.
So at length the sorrowful ship came to the harbour in the bay below
broad Knossos where Minos reigned, and when the King had viewed
his captives they were cast into prison to await their dreadful
doom. But fair-haired Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, had marked
Theseus as he stood before the King, and love to him had risen
up in her heart, and pity at the thought of his fate; and so by
night she came to his dungeon, and when she could not persuade
him to save himself by flight, because that he had sworn to kill
the Minotaur and save his companions, she gave him a clue of thread
by which he might be able to retrace his way through all the dark
and winding passages of the Labyrinth, and a sword wherewith to
deal with the Minotaur when he encountered him.
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