though the wind reduced its words to drift glyphs.
That happiness would hollow your glory
was what he dreaded. Don’t you remember?
He told you, “Your present is too perfect.”
Our peaceful pleasures have repelled justice.
Now let our actions earn the respect
of future scribes. Let’s fill our ships
with warriors instead of wheat bags
and liberate your lost homeland!
Though their king keeps piling up his people’s hatred,
if we don’t invade, he’ll endure on his throne.
I guess we can sit inside it together
with room to spare when we rule his kingdom,
but for the moment, we must separate.
Asterion, you’ll stay in Egypt
and govern our people while I go to war.
As everyone knows, Knossos lacks walls
and if we besieged it, would soon surrender.
But the Cretans might win if we cross his armada:
their naval experience surpasses mine.
So we can’t enter the Kairatos
but will land on the southern side of the island
and march through the mountains. Minos will run
when he sees our army descending toward him,
but vanity will retard his flight:
he’ll only ditch his litter at the last moment,
then fall with an arrow in the folds of his nape,
a spear boring his back, or both.
Let him crawl to the sea: Poseidon won’t save him.
The war proceeded the way she said,
and Cretan culture became like Egypt’s,
and the queen was needed in Knossos for years,
and Asterion, stuck on her throne
up at The White Walls, wasn’t able
to express his innate passion for numbers:
administrative duties submerged all leisure.
So mathematics remained a set
of methods for guiding mattocks and plumb lines
and never achieved enough abstraction
to measure stars or permit engineers
like Daedalus to do real damage.
The world was spared “Western” horrors.
And Cretan painters depicted things
different from what you will have read:
Poseidon floats his salty beard
where Kairatos finishes falling north,
and beholds an ingrate with orange hair
hunted by a woman wearing antlers;
Asterion doesn’t die in a labyrinth
but enjoys decades of Egyptian peace
as dolphins caper with the crocodiles.