In the _Odyssey_, xi. 321-325, Minos is named as father of Ariadne, whose tale is alluded to in a puzzling way: the other heroines of the passage are Attic, Phaedra (wife of Theseus) and Procris. In xi. 568571, Minos, "splendid son of Zeus," is seen administering justice to the dead. In a false tale of Odysseus he calls himself a Cretan of the stock of Minos. In xix. 178, Minos is father of Deucalion, and in some way is "the nine years old," or is "at periods of nine years," the companion (_ὀαριστής_) of Zeus. There is in Homer nothing about the Attic fables of bulls, the Minotaur, or Minoan cruelty. Homeric tradition accepts and glories in the just king Minos: Athenian tradition, in which Attica suffers grievous things at the hands of Crete, heaps hatred and contumely on him, fixing on him the world-wide _Märchen_ of the evil being whose fair daughter befriends the adventurous hero; and adding the _Märchen_ of the black-sailed ship which should have borne white sails of good tidings to Aegeus. It is not merely the Attic myths of Theseus of Crete, and of the character of Minos, that differ from the Homeric. Attic legends are quite un-Homeric in character.[5] Two Attic characteristics may be noted. "The story of the sacrifice of a maiden" (or of several maidens at once) "appears and reappears in Attic tradition.... We have it in Iphigeneia...."[6] But we have it not in Homer. Again, among the royal family of Athens, in Attic tradition, it was chronic to be metamorphosed into birds. The stories were meant, originally, to account for the colours and habits of birds; such tales are numberless in the legends of Australian and other savages, who have a whole mythology of primal fowls, which is restated in the _parabasis_ of _The Birds_ of Aristophanes. Homer tells but one such bird myth. In _Odyssey_, xix. 518, Penelope speaks of the daughter of Pandareus, the brown bright nightingale, lamenting "Itylus, whom she slew with the sword unwittingly; Itylus, son of Zethus the prince." "The story has, _as would be expected in a Homeric myth, nothing whatever to do with Athens_."[7] The Attic story, much more horrible, is that of Philomela, Procne, and Tereus: it is as bad as _Titus Andronicus_. The Ionians transferred the scene to Miletus, Colophon, and Ephesus.[8] Homer wholly abstains from Attic myths, except for the mention of their heroines in a dubious passage of the eleventh book of the _Odyssey_.