The Odyssey (xix, 178 f.) calls Minos, the son of Zeus (cf. _Il._ xiii, 450; xiv, 322; _Od._ xi, 568) who ruled in Knossos the Cretan city, "the familiar gossip of great Zeus."[21\3] Very probably the poet meant by these words much the same as was understood by them in later times: that Minos was personally acquainted with Zeus, on earth, of course, and, in fact, in the cave--not far from Knossos on the side of Mount Ida--which was revered as the "Cave of Zeus".[22\3] The island of Crete, overrun by the Greeks at an early period, still preserved in its remote seclusion much that was primeval in belief and legend. There, sometimes on Mount Ida, sometimes on Mount Dicte (in the east of the island) the holy cave was pointed out where (already in Hesiod) Zeus was said to have been born.[23\3] According to a local legend, which probably was present to the fancy of the writer of these lines of the Odyssey, the god now fully grown up still dwelt in his subterranean chamber, and was visited by individual mortals. As Minos before him, so, too, Epimenides had been allowed to hear the prophecies of the god.[24\3] The Zeus that dwelt in Ida was worshipped in a mystical cult;[25\3] every year a "throne" was "spread" for him, i.e. probably a "divine banquet" (Theoxenion) was prepared for his consumption, as for other especially Chthonic deities. The initiated then entered the cave dressed in black woollen garments, and remained within for thrice nine days.[26\3] Everything points to the existence of conceptions similar to those that we found expressed in the cult of Zeus Trophonios at Lebadeia. Zeus dwelling in bodily form in the depths of his cave can appear in person to those who enter his cave duly sanctified.