InGreek mythology, the people ofAthens were at one point compelled by KingMinos ofCrete to choose fourteen young noble citizens (seven young men and seven young women) to be offered as sacrificial victims to the half-human, half-taurine monsterMinotaur to be killed in retribution for the death of Minos' sonAndrogeos.

The victims were drawn by lots, were required to go unarmed, and would end up either being consumed by the Minotaur or getting lost and perishing in theLabyrinth, the maze-like structure where the Minotaur was kept. The offerings were to take place every one, seven or nine years and lasted untilTheseus volunteered to join the third group of the would-be victims, killed the monster, and led his companions safely out of the Labyrinth.^[1][2][3][4]

Plutarch in hisLife of Theseus cites a rationalized version of this myth, referring toPhilochorus who in his turn claimed to be following a local Cretan tradition. According to it, the young people were not actually killed but given as prizes to winners of the funeral games of Androgeos. The Labyrinth was an ordinary dungeon where they were temporarily kept. The winner who received them as a prize was Taurus, the most powerful general of Minos; he mistreated the young people, thus gaining the reputation of a monster. Plutarch further citesAristotle's non-extantThe Constitution of theBottiaeans, in which the young Athenians were reportedly said to not have been killed in Crete, but enslaved for the rest of their lives. Moreover, when, generations later, the Cretans sent an offering of their firstborn toDelphi in fulfillment of an oath, descendants of these Athenians happened to be among those sent. The whole group settled at Delphi but soon came to be unable to sustain themselves so they proceeded to move first toIapygia in Italy and then toBottiaea inThrace.^[5]

The individual names of the youths that sailed to Crete together with Theseus are very poorly preserved in extant sources. All of the recoverable information is collected inW. H. Roscher'sAusführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, which provides four alternate lists of names.^[6] These are as follows.

List 1 (based on the largely corrupt one found inServius,^[7] with variant emendations by different scholars)

List 2 (source: painting onFrançois Vase;CIG 4. 8185)

List 3 (source:black-figure painting on a vessel by Archicles and Glaucytes, fromVulci, inMunich; CIG 4. 8139)

List 4 (incomplete; source: black-figure painting on a different vase fromVulci, inLeiden; CIG 4. 7719)

Of these only Eriboea (Periboea), the daughter of Alcathous, does appear in extant literary sources^[9] and has a surviving independent mythological backstory.^[10]

It is also remarked in theLexicon that some of the names on Servius' list have been observed to correspond to names of theAtticdemes (viz. Antiochus: Antiochis; Cydas/Cydamus: Cydantidae; Melite: Melite (deme) andMelite; name of Melite's father: Tricorynthus), which makes it more or less safe to assume that they may have come from an epic poem about Theseus. The vase painters, on the other hand, could have simply made the names up, although those on Lists 2 and 4 have been found reminiscent of the epic tradition as well.^[11] The name Procritus, appearing on two of the four lists, has been compared to "Procris", although others suggested the reading "Herocritus" instead.^[12] The names Polyxenus, Celeus and Menestheus on List 1 (if restored correctly) also recall the Attic heroesPolyxenus,Celeus andMenestheus.

• Sacrificial victims of the Minotaur

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