DIANA AND ACTEON.

185

who had also been his nurse, had by that means excited the displeasure of Juno: to wreak her vengeance upon this unfortunate female, Juno struck her husband Athamas with madness: Athamas met his wife and her two little sons, and thought them a lioness and her whelps: believing this, he caught up the eldest, and dashed out his brains: Ino, terrified with the shocking spectacle, fled with the youngest, and plunged into the sea, where they were turned into marine deities by the names of Leucothoe and Palæmons.

Another misfortune is related of the children of Cadmus: Autonoe, the youngest of Bacchus's aunts, had a son named Actæon, who was extremely fond of hunting: one day as he pursued the pleasures of the chase, he came to a beautiful fountain, environed with trees, and in the most solitary situation imaginable: this fountain was a peculiar favourite with Diana, the Goddess of hunting, who happened to be bathing in it naked, surrounded with her nymphs, just as Actæon came up: the youth imprudently gazed upon the Goddess: Diana felt all the indignation natural to the Goddess of Chastity: her quiver was not at hand, being left on the shore: she used such arms as were within her reach, and filling her joined hands with the waters of the fountain, cast them in the face of the hunter: they no sooner touched the face of Actæon than he was changed into a stag: his own hounds came up, and pursued him, and after a long chase, miserably tore him to pieces, while his companions made the woods resound with the name of Actæon, complaining that their leader was absent, and did not enjoy the glorious sport'.

s Ov. Met. iv. 416 et seqq.

t Id. iii. 138 et seqq.

CHAP. XIX.

OF MINOS AND THE MINOTAUR.

Minos, the Son of Jupiter and Europa, is chosen King of Crete-marries Pasiphae, Daughter of the Sun.— Birth of the Minotaur.-Idæi Dactyli.--Daedalus, the Athenian Artificer-murders his Nephew-flies to Crete-builds the Labyrinth as a Prison for the Minotaur.-Athenians thrown to the Minotaur to be devoured.-Nisus and Scylla.--Dædalus shut up in the Labyrinth-flies away with Wings of Wax.-Icarus, his Son, falls into the Sea, and is Drowned.

I HAVE already spoken of the manner in which Europa was carried off by Jupiter, and conducted to the island of Crete: here she became the mother of Minos and Rhadamanthus, princes celebrated for their justice, and who were supposed after their deaths to be appointed judges of the spirits of the departed in the infernal regions: Asterius, king of Crete, afterward married Europa, and, as she brought him no children, he adopted the sons she had borne to Jupiter.

Minos, king of Crete, after the death of Asterius, married Pasiphae, daughter of the sun, or Apollo, and was the father of Androgeus, Ariadne and Phædra: Minos, among his other royal

▾ Apollod. iii 1. It is supposed by many mythologists, that there were two kings of Crete, of the name of Minos, he of whom the following adventures are related, being in that case grandson to the Minos, who was the lawgiver of Crete and the son of Jupiter and Europa. The statement adopted in the text is according to the chronology of Sir Isaac Newton.

possessions, had a very beautiful white bull, and Pasiphae is said to have ridiculously taken it into her head to fall in love with this bull: she thought, I suppose, of the bull whose form Jupiter had assumed when he ran away with her husband's mother: but what is more extraordinary, the fabulous history goes on to relate, that in consequence of this absurd passion Pasiphae became mother to a strange monster, half man and half bull, called the Minotaur".

The age of Bacchus and Minos is beyond all others the age of the Demigods, and that for this reason: it was in this age principally that the refinements of civilisation were introduced into Greece: Bacchus taught the cultivation of the vine; the Ida Dactyli, a colony which Minos introduced into Europe, and who are said to have taken their name from the Greek word Dactylus, a “finger," because, like the fingers of a man, they were exactly ten in number, invented the manufacture of iron and brass: Minos taught the arts of ploughing and sowing, and introduced a system of legislation into Crete, which has ever since been the wonder of the world: the Greeks, in gratitude to these admirable benefactors of the human species, represented them as descended immediately from the race of the Gods.

In the period which produced all these ingenious characters, lived a man called Dædalus": he was a native of Athens: to him we are said to be indebted for the use of the axe, the wedge, the plummet, and of glue: he first contrived masts and yards for ships: beside this he carved statues so admirably, that they not only looked

188

LABYRINTH OF CRETE.

as if they were alive, but had actually the power of self-motion, and would even fly away from the custody of their possessor if they were not chained to the wall.

Admirable artists are accused of feeling keen jealousy against a rival; and accordingly it is said of Daedalus, that having a nephew called Talus, who invented the compasses, the saw, and other instruments of manufacture, and promised to be as excellent an artificer as his uncle, Dadalus conceived an ungenerous hatred against him, and privately murdered bim: for this crime he was obliged to fly from Athens.

From Athens Daedalus passed into Crete, and was employed by Minos to build the famous labyrinth of Crete: Minos was ashamed, as well he might, of having such a monster as the Minotaur born into his family, and intended the fabyrinth for his prison: the labyrinth was a wonderful structure: it covered several acres of ground: it contained a multitude of apartinents, and the passages met and crossed each other with such intricacy, that a stranger who had once entered the building, would have been starved to death before he could find his way out.

Androgeus, the son of Minos, being arrived at man's estate, determined to travel into foreign countries for his improvement: among other cities which he visited, he came to Athens; and there, either by accident, or the treachery of Egeus king of Athens, met with his death: Minos, who was much more powerful than Ægeus, made war upon the Athenians, nor would he be prevailed on to consent to any treaty

* Apollod. iii, 15.