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[568] Minos, son of Zeus and Europa, and king in Crete ( Il.13. 450 foll.), is described in Od.19. 179 as “Διὸς μεγάλου” “ὀαριστής”, which Plato interprets by “ὁμιλητὴς καὶ μαθητής”, and Horace ( Od.1. 28. 9) reproduces by ‘Iovis arcanis Minosadmissus.’ It is not to be understood that he is represented here as performing the office which later legends assigned to him; viz. of trying and sentencing the dead in Hades (cp. Virg. Aen.6. 431, etc.). He only presents a shadowy counterpart of himself as he was when alive. Lawgiver, king, and judge in the flesh, he is also lawgiver, king, and judge in the shades. In a later mythological period, his brother Rhadamanthys (who is, according to Hom. Od.4. 564, in Elysium) is given him as an assessor, as well as his other brother, Sarpedon or Aeacus.

Homer's Odyssey. W. Walter Merry. James Riddell. D. B. Monro. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1886-1901.

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