nd tells how on
his way to Athens he cleared the lands through which he journeyed
of the pests which had infested them. Sinnis, the pine-bender,
who tied his miserable victims to the tops of two pine-trees bent
towards one another and then allowed the trees to spring back,
the young hero dealt with as he had dealt with others; Kerkuon,
the wrestler, was slain by him in a wrestling bout; Procrustes,
who enticed travellers to his house and made them fit his bed,
stretching the short upon the rack and lopping the limbs of the
over-tall, had his own measure meted to him; and various other
plagues of society were abated by the young hero. Not long after
his arrival at Athens and acknowledgment by his father, the time
came round when the Minoan heralds should come to Athens to claim
the victims for the Minotaur. Seeing the grief that prevailed in
the city, and the anger of the people against his father, AEgeus,
whom they accounted the cause of their misfortune, Theseus determined
that, if possible, he would make an end of this humiliation and
misery, and accordingly offered himself as one of the seven youths
who were to be devoted to the Minotaur. AEgeus was loth to part with
his newly-found son, but at length he consented to the venture;
and it was agreed that if Theseus succeeded in vanquishing the
Minotaur and bringing back his comrades in safety, he should hoist
white sails on his returning galley instead of the black ones which
she had always borne in token of her melancholy mission.

So at length the sorrowful ship came to the harbour in the bay below
broad Knossos where Minos reigned, and when the King had viewed
his captives they were cast into prison to await their dreadful
doom. But fair-haired Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, had marked
Theseus as he stood before the King, and love to him had risen
up in her heart, and pity at the thought of his fate; and so by
night she came to his dungeon, and when she could not persuade
him to save himself by flight, because that he had sworn to kill
the Minotaur and save his companions, she gave him a clue of thread
by which he might be able to retrace his way through all the dark
and winding passages of the Labyrinth, and a sword wherewith to
deal with the Minotaur when he encountered him. So Theseus was
led away by the guards, and put into the Labyrinth to meet his
fate; and he went on, with the clue which he had fastened to his
arm unwinding itself as he passed through pass