Androgeus having been treacherously murdered in the confines of Attica,
not only Minos, his father, put the Athenians to extreme distress by a
perpetual war, but the gods also laid waste their country both famine
and pestilence lay heavy upon them, and even their rivers were dried up.
Being told by the oracle that, if they appeased and reconciled Minos,
the anger of the gods would cease and they should enjoy rest from the
miseries they labored under, they sent heralds, and with much
supplication were at last reconciled, entering into an agreement to send
to Crete every nine years a tribute of seven young men and as many
virgins, as most writers agree in stating; and the most poetical story
adds, that the Minotaur destroyed them, or that, wandering in the
labyrinth, and finding no possible means of getting out, they miserably
ended their lives there; and that this Minotaur was
(as Euripides hath it)

A mingled form, where two strange shapes combined,
And different natures, bull and man, were joined.

But Philochorus says that the Cretans will by no means allow the truth
of this, but say that the labyrinth was only an ordinary prison, having
no other bad quality but that it secured the prisoners from escaping,
and that Minos, having instituted games in honor of Androgeus, gave, as
a reward to the victors, these youths, who in the mean time were kept in
the labyrinth; and that the first that overcame in those games was one
of the greatest power and command among them, named Taurus, a man of no
merciful or gentle disposition, who treated the Athenians that were made
his prize in a proud and cruel manner. Also Aristotle himself, in the
account that he gives of the form of government of the Bottiaeans, is
manifestly of opinion that the youths were not slain by Minos, but spent
the remainder of their days in slavery in Crete; that the Cretans, in