According to the Greek legend described in the passage, the Aegean Sea was the harshest sea in ancient times
used to be given tributes to make the gods happy
was where Theseus killed the monster
was named after the King of Athens
used to resemble a winding labyrinth
It is clear from the passage that when Theseus first arrived in Athens, the people were sad because his father had been killed by treachery
he had failed to kill the monster
they were preparing to send fourteen people to be eaten by a monster
the king had just committed suicide believing that his son had been killed
Ariadne, the beautiful daughter of the king, would be given to the monster
According to the passage, Theseus's final burying place provided a safe place for those living in poverty
was in the Aegean Sea
was in a distant land
was in a labyrinth on the island of Skyros
is situated on the spot where the battle of Marathon was fought
187 FIRDAWSI (9357-1026?) The greatest poet of Persia - now Iran - was Abu al-Qasem Mansur, who wrote under the name Firdawsi. He wrote the country's national epic, Book of Kings, in its final form. Of the man himself, little is known. The most reliable source of information is an account by a 12th-century poet, Nezami-ye 'Aruzi, who visited Firdawsi's native village of Tus and collected stories about him. Firdawsi was born about 935, the son of a wealthy landowner. It was to earn money for his daughter's dowry that he began the 35-year task of composing the Book of Kings, or Shah-nameh as it is called in Persian. The work, nearly 60,000 couplets long, was based on a prose work of the same name, itself a translation of a history of the kings of Persia from the most ancient times down to the reign of Khosrow II in the 7th century. When the poem was completed in 1010, Firdawsi presented it to Mahmud, the sultan of Ghanza, in the hope of being well paid for it. In this the poet was disappointed: he considered his reward so paltry that he gave it away. This angered Mahmud, and Firdawsi fled to Herat, then to Mazanderan. Some years later, Mahmud tried to make amends to the poet by sending him a valuable amount of indigo. Unfortunately the shipment arrived at Tus on the same day that Firdawsi's body was being taken to the cemetery for burial. His daughter refused the award. The Book of Kings has remained one of the most popular works in the Persian language. Modern Iranians understand it easily because the language in which it was written bears a relationship to modern Persian - a relationship similar to that between Shakespearean English and contemporary English.
