Labyrinth- Greek LocationLocation · Landmark

Daedalus and the Prison

King Minos needed a prison from which nothing could escape. He commissioned Daedalus, the Athenian craftsman exiled to Crete, to build it. What Daedalus raised beneath Knossos defied understanding: passages wound back on themselves, dead ends opening into corridors already walked. Ovid says Daedalus confused the usual marks of direction and led the eye astray through the winding of alternate paths. The structure was so disorienting that Daedalus himself could scarcely find the exit.

The Minotaur

The Labyrinth was built for a single prisoner. Minos had prayed to Poseidon for a bull from the sea, promising to sacrifice it. Poseidon sent a white bull from the waves. But Minos kept the divine bull for his herds and offered another in its place. Poseidon's vengeance struck through Pasiphae, Minos's queen, whom the god cursed with desire for the bull.

Pasiphae went to Daedalus. The craftsman built a hollow wooden cow on wheels, covered it in real cowhide, and wheeled it into the pasture where the bull grazed. Pasiphae concealed herself inside. From this union she bore Asterion, the Minotaur: the body of a man, the head of a bull. The creature ate human flesh. On the advice of oracles, Minos shut it in the Labyrinth rather than destroy it. Those who entered the maze wandered in darkness until the Minotaur found them.

The Athenian Tribute

Minos's son Androgeus traveled to Athens and won every contest at the games. He died in Attica. Apollodorus says the Marathonian bull killed him; Plutarch says the Athenians murdered him out of jealousy. Either way, Minos besieged Athens and demanded a price: seven young men and seven young women, sent every nine years to be fed to the Minotaur.

The lottery fell on families at random, and the city mourned each departure as a funeral. When the third tribute came due, Theseus, son of King Aegeus, volunteered. He told his father he would kill the Minotaur or die in the Labyrinth. Aegeus made him promise to change the ship's black sails to white if he returned alive, so that the king could read the outcome from the cliffs before the ship reached port.

Ariadne's Thread

When the Athenian captives arrived at Knossos, Ariadne saw Theseus and fell in love. She went to Daedalus and learned the secret of the maze. She gave Theseus a ball of thread and told him to tie one end at the entrance and unspool it as he walked.

Theseus entered the Labyrinth. The passage split and split again. Some corridors opened into wider chambers; others narrowed until the walls pressed close. The thread was everything. Without it, even a few turns would erase all sense of direction.

At the center he found the Minotaur. In Apollodorus's account, Theseus beat the creature to death with his fists. He killed it and followed the thread back through every winding passage to the entrance.

He led the surviving Athenians out. They boarded the ship that night and sailed from Crete with Ariadne, who had given up her father and her homeland for a man she had known for a day.

The Craftsman's Escape

Minos discovered that Daedalus had given Ariadne the secret of the maze. He locked the craftsman and his son Icarus inside it. He guarded every port and road. Even if Daedalus escaped the Labyrinth, he could not leave Crete.

Daedalus found another way. He gathered feathers dropped by birds and bound them with wax, shortest to longest, into the shape of wings. He made a pair for himself and a pair for Icarus. Before they launched, he warned his son: fly too low and the sea spray will soak the feathers; fly too high and the sun will melt the wax.

They rose from the Labyrinth into open sky. Below them, Crete shrank to a shape on the water. Ovid says fishermen on the coast looked up and took them for gods. Icarus climbed higher. The wax softened, the feathers came apart, and he fell into the sea. The water closed over him. Daedalus circled, calling his son's name, and saw nothing but feathers on the waves. He flew on alone to Sicily, where King Cocalus gave him refuge. The sea where Icarus drowned was afterward called the Icarian Sea.

The Crane Dance

After escaping Crete, Theseus stopped at the island of Delos, sacred to Apollo. Plutarch says the young Athenians performed a dance there called the geranos, the crane dance. The dancers wove in and out, narrow turns followed by wide. The pattern was the Labyrinth itself: confusion, then escape.

The dance was still performed on Delos centuries later. Homer, on the Shield of Achilles, describes a dancing-floor at Knossos where young men and women held each other by the wrist and whirled in lines, "like that which Daedalus once made for lovely-haired Ariadne." The spiraling design of the maze appeared on Cretan coins for centuries. The craftsman, the princess, and the Labyrinth survived in stone and in the feet of dancers long after the walls had fallen.