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[3] For Minos was always abused and reviled in the Attic theaters, and it did not avail him either that Hesiod1 called him ‘most royal,’ or that Homer2 styled him ‘a confidant of Zeus,’ but the tragic poets prevailed, and from platform and stage showered obloquy down upon him, as a man of cruelty and violence. And yet they say that Minos was a king and lawgiver, and that Rhadamanthus was a judge under him, and a guardian of the principles of justice defined by him.

1 Plat. Minos 320d; Hes. Catalogues (Loeb edition), frag. 74.

2 Hom. Od. 19.179

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