THESEUS
This was to build and equip, not far from his palace (if he approved
the plan and would provide the means to carry it out) a labyrinth like
the one which I had admired in Egypt, on the shore of lake Moeris;
mine would however be different in plan. At that very moment, Minos
was in an awkward position. His queen had whelped a monster; not
knowing how best to look after it, but judging it prudent to isolate it
and keep it well away from the public gaze, he asked me to devise a
building and a set of communicating gardens which, without precisely
imprisoning the monster, would at least contain him, and make it im–
possible for him to get loose. I lavished all my scholarship, all my best
thoughts on the task.
"But, believing that no prison can withstand a really obstinate
intention to escape, and that there is no barrier, no ditch which daring
and resolution will not overcome, I thought that the best way of con–
taining a prisoner in the labyrinth was to make it of such a kind, not
that he couldn't get out (try to grasp my meaning here) but that he
wouldn't want to get out. I therefore assembled in this one place the
means to satisfy every kind of appetite. The Minotaur's tastes were
neither many nor various; but we had to plim for everybody, who–
soever it might be, who would enter the labyrinth. Another, and indeed
the prime, necessity was to fine down the visitor's will-power to the point
of extinction. To this end I made up some electuaries, and had them
mixed with the wines which were served. But that was not enough;
I found a better way. I had noticed that certain plants, when thrown
into the fire, gave off, as they burned, semi-narcotic vapors. These
seemed admirably suited to my purpose, and indeed they played exactly
the part for which I needed them. Accordingly I had them fed to the
stoves, which are kept alight night and day. The heavy gases thus dis–
tributed do not only act .upon the will, and put it to sleep; they induce
a delicious intoxication, rich in flattering delusions, and provoke the
mind, filled as this is with volptuous mirages, to a certain pointless
activity: 'pointless,' I say, because it has merely an imaginary outcome,
in visions and speculations without order, logic or substance. The effect
of these gases is not the same for all of those who breathe them; each
is led on by the complexities implicit in his own mind to lose himself,
if I may so put it, in a labyrinth of his own devising. For my son Icarus,
the complexities were metaphysical. For me, they take the form of
enormous edifices, palatial buildings heaped upon themselves with an
elaboration of corridors and staircases .... in which (as with my son's
speculations) everything leads to a blank wall, a mysterious
KEEP
ouT.
But the most surprising thing about these perfumes is that, when one
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