totle points out to us how conveniently Krête is situated to exercise empire over the Ægaean. The expedition against Kamikus, instead of being directed to the recovery of the fugitive Dædalus, is an attempt on the part of the great thalassokrat to conquer Sicily. Herodotus gives us generally the same view of the character of Minos as a great maritime king, but his notice of the expedition against Kamicus includes the mention of Dædalus as the intended object of it.[1] Ephorus, while he described Minos as a commanding and comprehensive lawgiver imposing his commands under the sanction of Zeus, represented him as the imitator of an earlier lawgiver named Rhadamanthus, and also as an immigrant into Krête from the Æolic Mount Ida, along with the priests or sacred companions of Zeus called the Idaei Dactyli. Aristotle too points him out as the author of the Syssitia, or public meals common in Krête as well as at Sparta,—other divergences in a new direction from the spirit of the old fables.[2]
The contradictory attributes ascribed to Minos, together with the perplexities experienced by those who wished to introduce a regular chronological arrangement into these legendary events, has led both in ancient and in modern times to the supposition of two kings named Minôs, one the grandson of the other, Minôs I., the son of Zeus, lawgiver and judge, Minôs II., the thalassokrat,—a gratuitous conjecture, which, without solving the problem required, only adds one to the numerous artifices employed for imparting the semblance of history to the disparate matter of legend. The Krêtans were at all times, from Homer downward, expert and practised seamen. But that they were ever united
- ↑ Herodot. vii. 170. (
Greek characters), etc.
- ↑ Aristot. Polit. ii. 7, 1 ; vii. 9, 2. Ephorus, Fragm. 63, 64, 65. He set aside altogether the Homeric genealogy of Minos, which makes him brother of Rhadamanthus and born in Krête.
Strabo, in pointing out the many contradictions respecting Minôs, remarks, (
Greek characters) By the former he doubtless means Ephorus. though he has not here specified him (x. p. 477).
which must have been prevalent at that time respecting the maritime empire of Athens.
