A bull-god carries the daughter of Phoenix over the sea to Crete and begets Minos; a bull who rises out of the sea begets with Pasiphaë, _i.e._ the all-shining, the Minos-bull, to which in case of blight and famine boys and girls are sacrificed in the number sacred among the Semites; Androgeos succumbs to the heat of the bull of Marathon, an iron man slays his victims by pressing them to his glowing breast. These legends of the Greeks are unmistakable evidence of the origin of the rites observed in Crete from the coast of Syria, of the settlement of Phenicians in Crete. The bull-god may be the Baal Samim or the Baal Moloch of the Phenicians; Europa has already revealed herself to us as the moon-goddess of the Phenicians (p. 58); Pasiphaë is only another name for the same goddess, the lady of the nightly sky, the starry heaven. We know that on occasions of blight human sacrifices were offered to Baal Moloch, the fiery, consuming, angry sun-god, and that these sacrifices were burnt. Ister, a writer of the third century B.C., tells us quite simply; In ancient times children were sacrificed to Cronos in Crete.[122] Before the harbour of Megara lay an island of the name of Minoa; at the time of the summer heat before the corn was ripe, the Athenians offered peace-offerings at the Thargelia, "in the place of human sacrifices,"[123] that the consuming sun might not kill the harvest. The name of the island and this custom, as well as the flames of the bull of Marathon, prove that beside the worship of the Syrian goddess at Athmonon, and the worship of Melkarth at Marathon, the worship of Baal Moloch had penetrated as far as Megara and Attica. Minos, the son of the sky-god, the husband of the moon-goddess, who from time to time receives revelations from heaven, and even after his death is judge of the dead, is himself a god; his proper name is Minotaur, a name taken from the form of the bull's image and the bull's head. When Baal Melkarth had found and overcome Astarte, after he had celebrated with her the holy marriage, he went to rest according to the Phenician myth in the waters of the western sea which he had warmed. The Phenicians were of opinion that the beams of the sun when sinking there in the far west had the most vigorous operation because of their greater proximity.[124] Minos goes to Sicily; there in a hot bath he ends his life, and over his resting-place rises the temple of Astarte-Ashera, with whom he celebrated his marriage in the west, and who by this marriage is changed from the goddess of war into the goddess of love. The tombs of Minos in Crete, Sicily, and finally at Gades, of which the Greeks speak, are in the meaning of the Phenician myth merely resting-places of the god, who in the spring wakes from his slumber into new power. The Greeks made Minos, who continued to live in the under-world, a judge in the causes of the shades, and finally a judge of the souls themselves. On the southern coast of Sicily, at the mouth of