The Greek Islands by Lawrence Durrell

Lasithion are the towns you will pass. Then suddenly cloud-cradled Dicte will come into view, another place sacred to the gods of Crete.
    Whatever else has changed, the cast-iron rule of hospitality has not and, if you are lucky enough to rent a remote villa for a few days, you will certainly find that, for during the night invisible hands have placed a basket of fruit or eggs on your door-step . Nor is it possible even today to pay for your drinks if you are with a Cretan. The far countryside is still remote and savage and intact; the vendetta still flourishes in a manner unknown to the Ionian Islands. In Crete, with its rough accent and manly, chivalrous uprightness of temper, a hero is a sort of Young Lochinvar – a pallikar or ‘buck’. In a remote village it might even be difficult to get away without eating a whole sheep – including the eye, a great delicacy, which might be offered to you on a fork, with an Odysseian flourish. There are few hazards in such warm-hearted company, but I can think of one. The drink called tsikudi , a kind of local marc or grappa , which has been piously distilled from dragon’s bones, fills one with a strange Byzantine effulgence if drunk by the pailful. The resulting hangover makes you feel like one of those sad, haloed saints in the icons. However, these are trifling worries of an everyday sort and are soon mastered under the guidance of a native. In all this blue air and racing sea, everyday life seems easy to live; it is the intellectual problems, caused by the muddle of history, that tend to dismay one most.
    What about Minos? He was, in terms of mythology, the old king who ruled Crete during its rise as a seapower and itsdevelopment into the most important civilization ever to flower in the Mediterranean. It was a stepping-stone between Egypt and Athens, on the one hand, and between Egypt, Athens, and Asia Minor on the other. During the period of its greatest glory, it succeeded in combining and refining dissimilar influences from the neighbouring countries and stamping them with a specific Cretan personality. Yet, as always, accurate dating remains a bugbear; were there many Minoses – was Minos a generic name for all the rulers of Crete? Or did they all descend from one? At any rate, the ancient myth of the Cretan civilization has clung on so successfully that, when Sir Arthur Evans was casting about for a frame into which to fit all his exciting new finds at Knossos, he took the old name and christened the civilization he was examining a Minoan one.
    The son of Zeus and Europa, according to the legends, was Minos who, after getting rid of his brother Sarpedon, obtained the throne of Crete with the help of Poseidon. From his capital in Knossos, he developed the island’s seapower and overran the neighbouring islands, in which he smoked out the nests of pirates and generally established order. He was venerated for his wise laws and the security his fleet bestowed on the surrounding countries. His wife Pasiphae was the daughter of the Sun, and the children she bore him were called Androgeos, Ariadne and Phaedra. But trouble loomed ahead, possibly due to hubris, or overweening; maybe power had made him too cock-sure about his importance. At any rate, he incurred the wrath of Poseidon for not sacrificing a marvellous white bull which had been sent to him for that purpose. The punishment was dire. Poseidon made Pasiphae fall in love with the bull; with the help of Daedalus she then disguised herself as a cow and the fruit of this union was a grotesque monster with a man’s body and a bull’s head. It ran amuck and ravaged Crete, so that finally it was locked up in the labyrinth which had been constructed byDaedalus on the pattern of the Egyptian one, as described by Herodotus.
    These legends, with their graphic symbolism to which unfortunately the key has been lost – or not yet recovered – are sometimes more irritating than enlightening. The Minotaur is one of the puzzles;