Androgeos

Also Known As: also Androgeus; called Eurygyes at Athens; son of Minos of Crete and Pasiphae, daughter of Helios
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: He is the Cretan prince who beat every competitor at the Athenian games and whose killing in Attica set the Minotaur tribute in motion.
Role in Mythos: Androgeos is the cause behind the war of Minos against Athens and the tribute of seven youths and seven maidens that Theseus later ended.
Relation to Humans: The Athenians who were blamed for his death paid for it with their children, a plague and a war. They also gave him an altar at Phalerum and an athletic contest beside his tomb in the Kerameikos.

Down at Phalerum, the old harbour of Athens, there was an altar that the locals called simply the altar of the Hero. Pausanias, walking the coast in the second century AD, was told whose it really was. Those who paid special attention to the antiquities of their country, he wrote, knew that it belonged to Androgeos, son of Minos. It is a strange honour for Athens to have paid. The city had spent a generation sending its children to Crete because of this young man.

He came from the grandest family in the Aegean. Apollodorus names his father as Minos, lawgiver of Crete, and his mother as Pasiphae, daughter of the Sun, and lists his brothers Catreus, Deucalion and Glaucus and his sisters Acalle, Xenodice, Ariadne and Phaedra. Diodorus of Sicily gives the same parents and adds that Minos had other, natural children besides. Of Androgeos as a boy nobody says a word. His story begins when he steps off a ship in Attica.

He came for the Panathenaic festival, in the reign of Aegeus, and he won. Apollodorus says he vanquished all comers; Diodorus says he defeated all the contestants in the games. The stadium dust settled, the crowd roared for a foreigner, and the king’s son from overseas stood with the prizes of Athena’s own festival in his arms. Diodorus adds the detail that turned the victory sour. Androgeos became a close friend of the sons of Pallas, the king’s nephews and his rivals for the throne.

What happened next depends on who is telling it, and the tellers do not agree. In one version given by Apollodorus, Aegeus sent the young champion against the bull of Marathon, and the bull killed him. Pausanias traces that animal back to Crete: it was the bull Heracles had brought to the Peloponnese, which broke loose on the Argive plain, ran through the Isthmus and into Attica, and killed everyone it met at Marathon, Androgeos among them. In Apollodorus’s second version, Androgeos set out for Thebes to compete in the games held in honour of Laius and was ambushed on the road by the rivals he had shamed. Diodorus makes it an assassination. Aegeus, afraid that Minos would back the sons of Pallas and take his kingdom, had the young man murdered by locals near Oenoe in Attica while he was travelling to a festival at Thebes. Servius, the Latin commentator on Virgil, blamed a conspiracy of Athenians and Megarians. Hyginus reverses the order entirely and has Androgeos killed in the fighting after Minos was already at war with Athens. Every version ends the same way. A foreign prince was dead on Attic ground, and his father did not believe the Athenians were innocent.

The news reached Minos on the island of Paros, where he was sacrificing to the Graces. Apollodorus describes the moment with great economy. The king pulled the garland from his head and stopped the flute player, then went on and completed the sacrifice in silence. The Parians remembered it. Down to Apollodorus’s own day, they sacrificed to the Graces with no flutes and no garlands.

Then Minos went to war. He was master of the sea, and he took Megara, where King Nisus fell through the betrayal of his own daughter Scylla. Athens held out, so Minos prayed to Zeus for revenge, and Athens was struck by famine and plague. Plutarch adds that its rivers dried up. The Athenians first tried an old oracle and slaughtered the daughters of Hyacinth on the grave of Geraestus the Cyclops; Apollodorus names the four girls as Antheis, Aegleis, Lytaea and Orthaea. It did nothing. Diodorus has the gods direct the Greeks to Aeacus, son of Zeus, whose prayers broke the drought everywhere except in Attica. At last the oracle told Athens to give Minos whatever satisfaction he asked. He asked for seven youths and seven maidens, sent without weapons, to feed the Minotaur. Plutarch and Diodorus make the payment every nine years. Virgil, describing the doors Daedalus carved for Apollo’s temple at Cumae, shows the scene as the Romans imagined it: first the death of Androgeos, then the Athenians paying seven bodies of their sons each year, and the urn standing ready with the lots already drawn. Catullus opens his story of Ariadne with the same debt, Athens forced by a cruel plague to pay for the killing of Androgeos.

The Cretans told it differently, according to the Athenian historian Philochorus, whom Plutarch quotes. The Labyrinth was a prison and nothing worse. Minos held funeral games in honour of his dead son and gave the Athenian youths as prizes to the winners, and the first victor was his general, a harsh man named Taurus. In this telling a champion who died because he won too many games was mourned with more games. The tribute ran until Theseus sailed with it and killed the Minotaur.

Athens, meanwhile, made its peace with the dead man. Hesychius, the lexicographer, cites a writer named Melesagoras for the claim that Androgeos was also called Eurygyes, and that a contest was held in his honour near his tomb in the Kerameikos, the potters’ quarter of Athens. Hesychius also quotes a single broken line of Hesiod: “And Eurygyes, while yet a lad in holy Athens.” Nineteenth-century handbooks call the festival the Androgeonia and describe it as annual. Between the tomb in the Kerameikos and the altar of the Hero at Phalerum, the city that was blamed for his death kept him as one of its own heroes.

There is even a version in which he did not stay dead. The Roman poet Propertius, listing famous cures, says the god of Epidaurus, which is to say Asclepius, restored the dead Androgeos to his father’s hearth with Cretan herbs. He gives it one couplet and no story, and no Greek source tells it at all.

Androgeos left sons. When Heracles sailed for the belt of the Amazon queen, Apollodorus says, he put in at Paros, where the sons of Minos lived, and after they killed two of his crew he besieged them until they offered him any two men he chose in exchange. He chose Alcaeus and Sthenelus, the sons of Androgeos, and took them with him. On the way home he conquered the Thracians of Thasos and gave the island to the two brothers to live in.

He had no powers beyond his legs and his arm. What made him dangerous was that he won in public, in someone else’s city, and made friends there with the wrong people. His strengths were speed, strength and a famous father; his weaknesses were exactly the same things seen from the Athenian side. Nobody in the myth ever says what Androgeos wanted. Every source is interested only in what his death cost, and the bill ran to fourteen children at a time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Androgeos in Greek mythology?

Androgeos was a son of King Minos of Crete and Pasiphae, the daughter of Helios. He won every contest at the Panathenaic games in Athens and was then killed in Attica, and his death led Minos to make war on Athens and demand the tribute of youths and maidens for the Minotaur.

How did Androgeos die?

The ancient sources give several versions of the death of Androgeos. Apollodorus says King Aegeus sent him against the bull of Marathon, or that jealous rivals ambushed him on the road to games at Thebes, while Diodorus says Aegeus had him murdered near Oenoe for fear he would back the sons of Pallas. Pausanias blames the bull, and Hyginus says Androgeos was killed in battle between Minos and the Athenians.

What did Minos do when he learned Androgeos was dead?

Minos was sacrificing to the Graces on Paros when the news came, and he threw off his garland and stopped the flute music but finished the rite. He then made war on Athens, captured Megara, and prayed to Zeus, who struck Athens with famine and plague. The Athenians ended it by agreeing to send seven youths and seven maidens to Crete for the Minotaur.

Was Androgeos worshipped in Athens?

Yes, Androgeos received hero cult in Athens. Pausanias records an altar at Phalerum called the altar of the Hero that belonged to Androgeos, and Hesychius records that under the name Eurygyes he was honoured with an athletic contest near his tomb in the Kerameikos.

Did Androgeos come back to life?

One Roman poet says so. Propertius writes that the god of Epidaurus, Asclepius, restored the dead Androgeos to his father’s home with Cretan herbs, but he mentions it in a single couplet and no Greek source tells the story.