In addition to the slaves there were likewise free labourers who worked for hire, and were called Thetes.[39] These sometimes seem to have been placed on the extremities of estates, as the guardians of boundaries, a post which Eurymachos offers with good wages to Odysseus.[40] And it is the condition of one of these hinds that Achilles prefers in Hades to the empire of the shades.[41] The gods also in their sojourn upon earth sometimes submitted to the hardships of this condition. Thus Phœbos Apollo kept the flocks of Admetos, king of Thessaly,[42] and the belief in this humble condition of the gods on earth is objected by Lucian and Dionysius of Halicarnassus,[43] as blameworthy to the Greeks. Herodotus, too, relates that the three sons of Temenos—Gavanes, Aëropos, and Perdiccas—fled from Argos into Illyria and thence into Upper Macedonia to the city of Lebæa, where they served the king for hire, the first tending the royal stud, the second the cattle, and the third the sheep and goats.[44] ----- Footnote 39: Odyss. δ. 644. Cf. Clavier, Hist. des Prem. Temps de la Grèce. ii. 315. Suid. v. θῆτες. 1322, who says their hire was called θητώνιον. Footnote 40: Odyss. ρ. 356. Footnote 41: Odyss. λ. 488. Footnote 42: Iliad. υ. 434, seq. Footnote 43: Antiq. Rom. ii. 19. Footnote 44: Herod. viii. 137. ----- From the history of Minos, which, whether true or fabulous, still illustrates the manners of the times, we learn, that the tribute exacted by a victorious enemy sometimes consisted of slaves. Thus the Cretan king, having made a successful descent on the Attic coast, was propitiated (as by our own ancestors were the Danes and other Northern savages) by an annual offering of fourteen youths and virgins, who, being conveyed to Crete, were there said to be destroyed by a monster born of Pasiphaë, daughter of the sun.[45] Theseus, the great hero of the Ionic race, delivered his country from this obnoxious tax, and on his return to Athens was received by the people with unbounded gratitude; sacrifices and processions were instituted in his honour, and the memory of his noble achievement was religiously preserved as long as paganism endured.[46] ----- Footnote 45: Isocrat. Helen. Encom. § 14. Footnote 46: Mitf. Hist. of Greece, i. 70. -----