Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Androgeus, son of Minos and Pasiphaë, came to Athens and won every contest in the Panathenaic (or local) games. Aegeus, fearing the Cretan’s strength and popularity—or at the instigation of rivals—sent him against the bull of Marathon; Androgeus died (alternate: he was ambushed on the road to Thebes after the games). Minos, sacrificing on Paros when he heard, cursed the islands and warred on Athens until the city submitted. The settlement imposed a periodic tribute of seven youths and seven maidens for the Minotaur in the Labyrinth—the debt Theseus later sailed to end. Some local strands blame the Megarians or name the assassin; the handbook core keeps Aegeus’s responsibility and Minos’s siege. Catalogue Androgeus’s death and the tribute’s origin apart from Theseus’s Cretan victory.