34 HISTORICAL TALES.

of fable. It had the body of aman and the head
of a bull, and so great was the havoc it wrought
among the Cretans that Minos engaged the great
artist Dedalus to construct a den from which it
could not escape. Dedalus built for this purpose
the Labyrinth, a far-extending edifice, in which were
countless passages, so winding and intertwining that
no person confined in it could ever find his way out
again. It was like the catacombs of Rome, in which
one who is lost is said to wander helplessly till death
ends his sorrowful career. In this intricate puzzle
of a building the Minotaur was confined.

Every ninth year the fourteen unfortunate youths
and maidens had to be sent from Athens to be de-
voured by this insatiate beast. We are not told on
what food it was fed in the interval, or why Minos
did not end the trouble by allowing it to starve in
its inextricable den. As the story goes, the living
tribute was twice sent, and the third period came
duly round. The youths and maidens to be devoured
were selected by lot from the people of Athens, and
left their city amid tears and woe. But on this oc-
casion Theseus, the king’s son and the great hero of
Athens, volunteered to be one of the band, and
vowed either to slay the terrible beast or dic in the
attempt.

There seem to have been few great events in those
early days of Greece in which Theseus did not take
part. Among his feats was the carrying off of Helen,
the famous beauty, while still a girl. He then took
part in a journey to the under-world,—the realm
of ghosts,—during which Castor and Pollux, the