All these names, however, although supposed to have been originally purely mythological, were probably later assumed by or given to mortals who were specially expert in the particular branch of art which the name taken suggested. These individuals, to complicate matters, no doubt, became entangled with the early mythological stories, and finally lost their identity completely, or to such an extent as to make it quite impossible to separate the fact from the fiction in their respective cases. An illustration of such a confusion is to be found in respect to the architects, Rhœcus and Theodorus, who had to do with the building of the temple of Hera at Samos, for the worship of which goddess Samos was celebrated, and who, in association with Smilis, were the architects of the labyrinth at Lemnos. The writers who have mentioned these artists are quite numerous, and have so differed in respect to their dates, and confounded the accounts of their careers and achievements, that it is difficult to sift anything like a satisfactory story from the confusion created. The most probable deduction that has been made, however, is that Rhœcus flourished about 640 B.C., and was a son of Phileas of Samos; that Theodorus, the architect, was his son, and that another Theodorus, a statuary, sometimes mistaken for the architect, was a nephew of the architect Theodorus, the son of Telecles, also a gifted sculptor, and a grandson of Rhœcus. The temple of Hera, alluded to as the work of the father and son, was three hundred and forty-four feet long by one hundred and sixty feet wide, and, according to the “Antiquities of Ionia,” a decastyle, dipteral structure, or possessed of a double row of columns composed of ten columns in each row. Pausanias thinks that the temple was of very great antiquity, a fact apparent to him from the statue of Hera which it contained, which was made by Smilis, of wood, as were the early statues of Greece. The Lemnian labyrinth, according to Pliny, contained fifty columns and innumerable statues, and had very remarkable massive gates, so delicately poised that a child might open or shut them. Modern travellers have had difficulty in finding any trace of this labyrinth, although there is little doubt that it once existed. It is not to be classed with the more visionary labyrinth in which the Minotaur was caged. It is claimed for both Rhœcus and Theodorus that they were the first to invent the art of casting statues in bronze or iron, but as this art was known before their time by the Phœnicians, it is likely that they were responsible for nothing more than having introduced it into Greece. This is probably true also of other early mythical characters of Greece, to whom is attributed certain inventions in the arts which have been found since to have existed much earlier than their time in Egypt or elsewhere.