The epithet ὀλοόφρων, applied to Minos in an earlier passage of the Νεκυία, might perhaps convey the same idea as Virgil has rendered by his _durissima_ regna,[281] in the description of Rhadamanthus: and we may also compare the address of Menelaus in the Third Iliad to Jupiter, Ζεῦ πάτερ οὔτις σεῖο θεῶν ὀλοώτερος ἄλλος.[282] A reasonable construction would refer the word to the commercial character of the Phœnician people, at once cunning and daring[283]; and there is much probability in the opinion of Höck, who interprets the word as meaning ‘exactor of tribute,’ or as alluding to the exaction by Minos of a tribute from Attica[284]. On this we shall shortly have to enlarge. _Power of Crete._ As to the family and kingdom of Minos, we should gather in the first place from Homer, that Crete had under him been preeminent in power. He was king of the island (Κρήτῃ ἐπίουρος)[285], and he reigned, at the age of nine years only (ἐννέωρος βασίλευε), in Cnossus over the five nations. The island had ninety, or in the rounder numbers, an hundred cities. Two generations had passed since Minos; Idomeneus his grandson did not apparently reign, like Minos himself, over the whole of it: for if this had been the case, it is very improbable, presuming that we may judge by the analogies which the order of the army in general supplies, that Meriones would have been made his associate, which in some manner he is, in the command; and again, the feigned story of Ulysses in the Odyssey, though it introduces Idomeneus, does not represent him as king of the whole island, but rather implies that his pretended brother, Æthon, also exercised a sovereignty there[286]. But even then the Cretan contingent, although the towns named as supplying it do not extend over the whole island[287], amounted to eighty ships, and thus exceeded any other, except those of Agamemnon and of Nestor. And then, when Minos had so long been dead, it was still the marked and special distinction of the country, that it was the seat of his race. So Eumæus, describing the disguised stranger to Penelope, says[288], φησὶ δ’ Ὀδυσσῆος ξεῖνος πατρώïος εἶναι, Κρήτῃ ναιετάων, ὅθι Μίνωος γένος ἐστίν. A passage which perhaps testifies that the family of Minos had been ξεῖνοι to the predecessors of Ulysses. But perhaps there is no country in Greece which Homer so rarely mentions without a laudatory epithet. Though (περίρρυτος) sea-girt, it is not with him an island: it is Κρήτη γαῖα, Κρήτη εὐρεῖα, Κρήτη ἑκατόμπολις[289], and in the principal description, Homer exalts it more highly, I think, than any other territory, Κρήτη τις γαῖ’ ἐστὶ, μέσῳ ἐνὶ οἴνοπι πόντῳ καλὴ καὶ πίειρα, περίρρυτος· ἐν δ’ ἄνθρωποι πολλοὶ, ἀπειέσιοι, καὶ ἐννήκοντα πόληες[290].