e perfidy of Scylla, the daughter of its
king, Nisus. Pausanias and other historians say that the story here
related by the Poet is based on fact; and that Scylla held a secret
correspondence with Minos during the siege of Megara, and, at
length, introduced him into the town, by opening the gates to him
with the keys which she had stolen from her father, while he was
asleep. This is probably alluded to under the allegorical
description of the fatal lock of hair, though why it should be
depicted in that form especially, it is difficult to guess. The
change of Scylla into a lark, or partridge, and of her father into a
sea eagle, are poetical fictions based on the equivocal meanings of
their names, the one Greek and the other Hebrew; for the name 'Ciris'
resembles the Greek verb +keiro+, which signifies 'to clip,' or 'cut
short.' 'Nisus,' too, resembles the Hebrew word 'Netz,' which means
a bird resembling the osprey, or sea eagle. Apollodorus says, that
Minos ordered Scylla to be thrown into the sea; and Zenodotus, that
he caused her to be hanged at the mainmast of his ship.

FABLE II. [VIII.152-182]

Minos, having overcome the Athenians, obliges them to pay a tribute
of youths and virgins of the best families, to be exposed to the
Minotaur. The lot falls on Theseus, who, by the assistance of
Ariadne, kills the monster, escapes from the labyrinth, which
Daedalus made, and carries Ariadne to the island of Naxos, where he
abandons her. Bacchus wooes her, and, to immortalize her name, he
transforms the crown which he has given her into a Constellation.

Minos paid, as a vow to Jupiter, the bodies of a hundred bulls, as soon
as, disembarking from his ships, he reached the land of the Curetes; and
his palace was decorated with the spoils there hung up. The reproach of
his family had {now} grown up, and the shameful adultery of his mother
was notorious, from the unnatural shape of the two-formed monster. Minos
resolves to remove the disgrace from his abode, and to enclose it in a
habitation of many divisions, and an abode full of mazes. Daedalus, a man
very famed for his skill in architecture, plans the work, and confounds
the marks {of distinction}, and leads the eyes into mazy wanderings, by
the intricacy of its various passages. No otherwise than as the limpid
Maeander sports in the Phrygian fields, and flows backwards and forwards
with its varying course, and, meeting itself