THESEUS AND ARIADNE.

Minos, king of Crete in the age of legend, made
war against Athens in revenge for the death of his
son. This son, Androgeos by name, had shown
such strength and skill in the Panathenaic festival
that Aigeus, the Athenian king, sent him to fight
with the flame-spitting bull of Marathon, a mon-
strous creature that was ravaging the plains of
Attica. The bull killed the valiant youth, and
Minos, furious at the death of his gon, laid siege to
Athens.

As he proved unable to capture the city, he prayed
for aid to his father Zeus (for, like all the heroes of
legend, he was a son of the gods). Zeus sent pesti-
lence and famine on Athens, and so bitter grew the
lot of the Athenians that they applied to the oracles
of the gods for advice in their sore strait, and were
bidden to submit to any terms which Minos might
impose. The terms offered by the offended king
of Crete were severe ones. He demanded that the
Athenians should, at fixed periods, send to Crete
seven youths and seven maidens, as victims to the
insatiable appetite of the Minotaur.

This fabulous creature was one of those destructive
monsters of which many ravaged Greece in the age

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