NISUS

son of Pandion, brother of Aegeus of Athens, king of Megara and reputed builder of the seaport Nisaea. When Minos, in the course of his expedition of reprisal against Aegeus, besieged Megara, Scylla, Nisus' daughter, from love for the Cretan king, brought about her father's death by pulling out a golden or (according to another account) a purple hair on the top of his head, on which his life and the fate of the realm depended. Minos, however, did not reward her treachery; he fastened her to the stern of his ship, and thus drowned her in the Saronic Gulf, or, according to others, left her behind him; whereupon she cast herself into the sea, and was changed either into a fish or into a bird called Ciris.