There still remains to be mentioned a remarkable fact respecting Œnoë, which will greatly assist us in explaining the fable of the voyage of Theseus to Crete: I allude to the existence of a tomb of Androgeus, the son of Minos, whom the natives had put to death as he was passing on the Pythian road.(1041) A Cretan was murdered in the sacred way of the Cretan worship; Minos came to take vengeance for the violation of the sacred armistice; and hence Athens was obliged to send a tribute to Cnosus. Now the nature of this tribute may be perceived from a tradition preserved by Aristotle,(1042) that the boys who were sent to Crete by the Athenians lived at Cnosus as slaves; and that afterwards, when the Cretans, in consequence of an ancient vow, sent a tithe of men to Delphi, the descendants of these slaves went with them, and subsequently passed from thence to Italy. From this it appears that the Athenians were compelled to send sacred slaves to the chief temple at Cnosus, viz., that of Apollo. For this reason these missions took place every eight years (δι᾽ ἐννέα ἐτῶν);(1043) that is, probably at every Ennaëteris of the Cretan and Delphic festival; and for the same reason they consisted of seven young men and women, as this number was especially sacred to Apollo.(1044)
It is well known how much this tradition was disfigured by the Athenians (originally perhaps in their popular legends, and afterwards by the poets), in what an odious light it was represented, and so mixed up with extraneous matter, that we should only render the problem too difficult if we attempted to investigate the whole of its component parts.
We may however affirm with certainty that the voyage of Theseus to Crete had originally no other meaning than the landings at Naxos(1045) and Delos, which were connected with it—viz., a propagation of religious worship.
The landing at Delos is a mythical type of the theorias, which the Athenians, in common with all the Ionian islands, had from early times sent to this place;(1046) moreover, the ship which conveyed Theseus home was always regarded as a sacred vessel. It was sent out at the Thargelia, after the priest, on the sixth day of Thargelion, had crowned the poop.(1047)