ABSTRACT
A judge of the dead. Rhadamanthys was either a son of Zeus and Europa and a brother of Minos and Sarpedon or else a son of Phaestus, son of Talos (the bronze man of Crete). According to one account Rhadamanthys ruled Crete before Minos, and gave the island an excellent code of laws, which the Spartans were subsequently believed to have copied. However, when the three brothers quarrelled over a handsome youth, Miletus, Minos drove out Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon; and Rhadamanthys now went to rule the southern Aegean Islands, of which the inhabitants had already made him their king out of respect for his laws.
