Thus in the Platonic or pseudo-Platonic dialogue, _Minos_, Socrates points out that to no other hero does Homer give the same praise as to Minos, as not only a _son_, but a pupil of _Zeus_ (_Od_. xix. 178-180). Says Socrates, "Minos every ninth year conversed with Zeus, and went to be instructed by his wisdom,"--"this is marvellous praise." It is thus that Socrates understands the Homeric world. Μίνως ἐννέωρος βασίλευε Διὸς μεγάλου ὀαριστής: "Minos was king, who every nine years conversed with Zeus." "Every nine years Minos went to the cave of Zeus to be instructed," adds Socrates; but of the cave of Zeus, Homer says nothing. The companion of Socrates then asks how Minos got such a bad name as "an uneducated ruffian"? "Because he made war on us of Athens," answered Socrates; "and we are strong in poets, especially in that delight of the populace, tragic poetry, which is very ancient with us; and on the stage we avenged ourselves on Minos." In truth, while Homer presented Minos as a son and pupil of Zeus, as no god himself, but a mortal man, whose sceptred spirit administered justice to the souls in Hades, it was impossible for educated Athenians not to recognise that their own wild tales (how wild few knew), were partisan fabrications. Not only Homer, but Hesiod took the favourable view of Minos, as against the hostile Attic legends; "and these two are more worthy of belief than all the tragic poets together," says Socrates (_Minos_, 318 d). The Athenians heaped not only Minos, but his wife and his brother Rhadamanthus, under a pile of ordure. Helbig, who emphatically insists on the gulf between Attic and Homeric accounts of Minos, may be consulted for the abominable anti-Minoan stories.[4] In Homer, Cretan Idomeneus (_Iliad_, xiii. 450) gives his genealogy as-- Zeus | Minos | Deucalion (Not he of the Deluge) | Idomeneus.