XVIII.  When the lots were drawn Theseus brought the chosen youths from the Prytaneum, and proceeding to the temple of the Delphian Apollo, offered the suppliants’ bough to Apollo on their behalf.  This was a bough of the sacred olive-tree bound with fillets of white wool.  And after praying he went to sea on the sixth day of the month Munychion, on which day even now they send maidens as suppliants to the temple of the Delphian Apollo.  And there is a legend that the Delphian oracle told him that Aphrodite would be his guide and fellow-traveller, and that when he was sacrificing a she-goat to her by the seaside, it became a he-goat; wherefore the goddess is called Epitragia.

XIX.  When they reached Crete, according to most historians and poets, Ariadne fell in love with him, and from her he received the clue of string, and was taught how to thread the mazes of the Labyrinth.  He slew the Minotaur, and, taking with him Ariadne and the youths, sailed away.  Pherekydes also says that Theseus also knocked out the bottoms of the Cretan ships, to prevent pursuit.  But Demon says that Taurus, Minos’s general, was slain in a sea-fight in the harbour, when Theseus sailed away.  But according to Philochorus, when Minos instituted his games, Taurus was expected to win every prize, and was grudged this honour; for his great influence and his unpopular manners made him disliked, and scandal said, that he was too intimate with Pasiphae.  On this account, when Theseus offered to contend with him, Minos agreed.  And, as it was the custom in Crete for women as well as men to be spectators of the games, Ariadne was present, and was struck with the appearance of Theseus, and his strength, as he conquered all competitors.  Minos was especially pleased, in the wrestling match, at Taurus’s defeat and shame, and, restoring the children to Theseus, remitted the tribute for the future.  Kleidemus tells the story in his own fashion and at unnecessary length, beginning much farther back.  There was, he says, a decree passed by all the Greeks, that no ship should sail from any post with more than five hands on board, but Jason alone, the master of the great ship Argo, should cruise about, and keep the sea free of pirates.  Now when Daedalus fled to Athens, Minos, contrary to the decree, pursued him in long war galleys, and being driven to Sicily by a storm, died there.  When his son Deukalion sent a warlike message to the Athenians, bidding them give up Daedalus to him, or else threatening that he would put to death the children whom Minos had taken as hostages, Theseus returned him a gentle answer, begging for the life of Daedalus, who was his own cousin and blood relation, being the son of Merope, the daughter of Erechtheus.  But he busied himself with building a fleet, some of it in Attica, in the country of the Thymaitadae, far from any place of resort of strangers, and some in Troezen, under the management of Pittheus, as he did not wish his preparations to be known.