Minos

And Zaleucus the Locrian is recorded as the first to lay down laws, though some say it was Minos, the son of Zeus, in the time of Lynceus.

Under Lynceus were the rape of the maiden and the founding of the precinct at Eleusis, and the husbandry of Triptolemus, and the coming of Cadmus to Thebes, and the kingdom of Minos.

For they relate that Minos received his laws from Zeus every ninth year, going to the cave of Zeus;

For this reason Homer too says that true kings are nurtured of Zeus and like Zeus in counsel, and he declared that Minos, who had the greatest renown for justice, became the companion of Zeus.

" "There," he said, "where he calls Minos the familiar of Zeus.

He says, then, that Minos was the companion of Zeus, as though he said his disciple.

Now there was a dispute in Crete about the royal power between Sarpedon and Minos, sons of Europa;

Since Minos had subjected a good deal of territory for himself and was victorious in war, this made the Carians too at that time by far the most respected of all nations.

for in the past they were islanders, called Leleges and under the rule of Minos, not (as far as I can learn by report) paying tribute, but manning ships for him when he needed them.

"Then I saw Minos son of Zeus with his golden scepter in his hand sitting in judgment on the dead, and the ghosts were gathered sitting and standing round him in the spacious house of Hades, to learn his sentences [ dikai] upon them.

"Then I saw Phaedra, and Procris, and fair Ariadne daughter of the magician Minos, whom Theseus was carrying off from Crete to Athens, but he did not enjoy her, for before he could do so Artemis killed her in the island of Dia on account of what Bacchus had said against her.

He says there is an old friendship between his house and that of Odysseus, and that he comes from Crete where the descendants of Minos live, after having been driven here and there by every kind of misfortune;

Perhaps too the inexorable judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus?

To think that, when you have escaped from those who wish to be reckoned in the number of judges, you should come to those who are truly called judges — Minos, Rhadamanthus, Aeacus, Triptolemus — and meet with those who have lived justly and in good faith — can this journey seem to you a mean one?

Zeus first begot Minos chief ruler in Crete, and Minos in his turn begot a son, noble Deukalion;

Then there was the daughter of Phoenix, who bore me Minos and Rhadamanthus:

These things being so, if you speak the truth when you assert that they were the discoverers of the best ways of life, then it must follow that those who lived many generations before the Spartans settled there had no part in them—neither those who made the expedition against Troy nor those who were of the generation of Heracles and Theseus or of Minos, son of Zeus, or Rhadamanthus or Aeacus or an …

First they took the islands of the Cyclades, about which there had been much contention during the overlordship of Minos of Crete and which finally were occupied by the Carians, and, having driven out the latter, refrained from appropriating the lands of these islands for themselves, but instead settled upon them those of the Hellenes who were most lacking in means of subsistence.

Why then, so has Aeacus, and Minos, and his brother as well!

because in those others there had generally been single men, each of whom had established his own commonwealth by his laws and institutions—as Minos among the Cretans, Lycurgus among the Lacedaemonians, and among the Athenians, whose constitution had very often been changed, now Theseus, now Draco, now Solon, now Cleisthenes, now many others;

For surely you did not believe a poetic myth that records Minos the Cretan as the familiar of Zeus, and yet will disbelieve us, who have become disciples of God, having taken up the truly true wisdom, which the topmost of the philosophers only hinted at, but the disciples of Christ both grasped and proclaimed.

Sir William Jones compares him to the Cretan Minos and the Egyptian Men, partly on account of the consonance of names.

And golden-haired Dionysus made brown-haired Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, his buxom wife:

And while he considered this, he became aware of a swift ship upon the wine-like sea in which were many men and goodly, Cretans from Cnossos, the city of Minos, they who do sacrifice to the prince and announce his decrees, whatsoever Phoebus Apollo, bearer of the golden blade, speaks in answer from his laurel tree below the dells of Parnassus.

For if a man when he reaches the other world, after leaving behind these who claim to be judges, shall find those who are really judges who are said to sit in judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and all the other demigods who were just men in their lives, would the change of habitation be undesirable?

let them say before the tribunal, if they will, that Minos and Rhadamanthus, by the consent of Plato and the poets, have this lot;

The poets too, trembling not before the tribunal of Rhadamanthus nor of Minos, but of the unexpected Christ?

For Minos was the most ancient of all with whom we are acquainted by report, that acquired a navy:

But when the navy of Minos was established, there were greater facilities of sailing to each other.

have you not heard how Daedalus was seized by Minos because of his wisdom, and was forced to be his slave, and was robbed of his country and his liberty, and essaying to escape with his son, lost the boy and could not save himself, but was carried off to the barbarians and again lived as a slave there?