In the Homeric poems Europa, the daughter of Phoenix, bears Minos to Zeus. The abode of Minos is the "great city" of Cnossus in Crete; he receives each nine years the revelations of his father Zeus; for his daughter Ariadne Dædalus adorns a dancing place at Cnossus. After his death Minos carries in the under world the golden sceptre, and by his decisions puts an end to the contentions of the shades.[114] His descendants rule in Crete.[115] Later accounts tell us that Zeus in the form of a bull carried off Europa from Phoenicia, and bore her over the sea to Crete. The wife of her son Minos, Pasiphaë, then united with a bull which rose out of the sea, and brought forth the Minotaur, _i.e._ the Minos-bull, a man with a bull's head.[116] The son of Minos, Androgeos (earth-man) or Eurygyes (Broadland), was destroyed in Attica by the bull of Marathon, who consumed him in his flames.[117] To avenge the death of Androgeos Minos seized Megara, and blight and famine compelled the Athenians to send, in obedience to the command of Minos, seven boys and seven girls every ninth year to Crete, who were then sacrificed to the Minotaur.[118] Others narrate that Hephæstus had given Minos a man of brass, who wandered round the island and kept off foreign vessels, and clasped to his glowing breast all who were disobedient to Minos.[119] When Dædalus retired before the wrath of Minos from Crete to Sicily, Minos equipped his ships to bring him back; but he there found, according to Herodotus, a violent death.[120] The king of the Sicanians, so Diodorus tells us, gave him a friendly welcome, and caused a warm bath to be prepared, and then craftily suffocated him in it. The Cretans buried their king in a double grave; they laid the bones in a secret place, and built upon them a temple to Aphrodite, and as they could not return to Crete because the Cretans had burned their ships, they founded the city Minoa in Sicily; but the tomb of Minos was shown in Crete also.[121]