I do not know the evidence upon which this conjectural interpretation rests, but the statement of it, though it boasts so many supporters among mythological critics, carries no appearance of probability to my mind. Priam fights against the Amazons as well as the Grecian heroes.
To understand the adventures of Thêseus in Krête, it will be necessary to touch briefly upon Minôs and the Krêtan heroic genealogy.
Minôs and Rhadamanthus, according to Homer, are sons of Zeus, by Europê,[522] daughter of the widely-celebrated Phœnix, born in Krête. Minôs is the father of Deukaliôn, whose son Idomeneus, in conjunction with Mêrionês, conducts the Krêtan troops to the host of Agamemnôn before Troy. Minôs is ruler of Knossus, and familiar companion of the great Zeus. He is spoken of as holding guardianship in Krête—not necessarily meaning the whole of the island: he is farther decorated with a golden sceptre, and constituted judge over the dead in the under-world to settle their disputes, in which function Odysseus finds him—this however by a passage of comparatively late interpolation into the Odyssey. He also had a daughter named Ariadnê, for whom the artist Dædalus fabricated in the town of Knossus the representation of a complicated dance, and who was ultimately carried off by Thêseus: she died in the island of Dia, deserted by Thêseus and betrayed by Dionysos to the fatal wrath of Artemis. Rhadamanthus seems to approach to Minôs both in judicial functions and posthumous dignity. He is conveyed expressly to Eubœa, by the semi-divine sea-carriers the Phæacians, to inspect the gigantic corpse of the earth-born Tityus—the longest voyage they ever undertook. He is moreover after death promoted to an abode of undisturbed bliss in the Elysian plain at the extremity of the earth.[523]
[522] Europê was worshipped with very peculiar solemnity in the island of Krête (see Dictys Cretensis, De Bello Trojano, i. c. 2).
The venerable plane-tree, under which Zeus and Europê had reposed, was still shown, hard by a fountain at Gortyn in Krête, in the time of Theophrastus: it was said to be the only plane-tree in the neighborhood which never cast its leaves (Theophrast. Hist. Plant. i. 9).
[523] Homer, Iliad, xiii. 249, 450; xiv. 321. Odyss. xi. 322-568; xix. 179; iv. 564-vii. 321.