Minos- Greek DemigodDemigod"King of Crete"

Son of Zeus and Europa

Zeus took the form of a white bull and mingled with the herds of Europa's father in Phoenicia. When Europa climbed upon the bull's back, he carried her across the sea to Crete and lay with her beneath a plane tree at Gortyn. Theophrastus recorded that the tree remained evergreen in memory. Europa bore three sons, of whom Minos became ruler of the island.

Europa married Asterius, king of Crete, who adopted her sons as his heirs. When Asterius died, Minos claimed the throne, but his brothers disputed his right. To prove divine favor, Minos prayed to Poseidon to send a bull from the sea, vowing to sacrifice whatever the god sent. A magnificent white bull rose from the waves, and his rivals yielded.

The Lawgiver

Every nine years Minos descended into the cave on Mount Ida, where Zeus had been born, and there conversed with his divine father. He emerged carrying laws that he said came from Zeus himself.

Under these laws, Crete flourished. Minos built a navy and swept the seas clear of pirates. Thucydides cited him as the first ruler to command the seas.

Poseidon's Vengeance

Minos's downfall began with broken faith. The bull Poseidon had sent was meant to be sacrificed, but Minos coveted the animal and substituted a lesser bull for the offering. Poseidon cursed Pasiphae, Minos's queen and daughter of Helios, with desire for the white bull. Driven by this compulsion, Pasiphae commissioned Daedalus, the Athenian craftsman at the Cretan court, to build a hollow wooden cow covered in hide. Concealed within it, she coupled with the bull and conceived. The offspring was the Minotaur: half man and half bull, with an appetite for human flesh. Minos imprisoned it in the Labyrinth, an edifice of inescapable complexity that Daedalus built beneath the palace at Knossos.

The Death of Androgeus

Minos's son Androgeus, a gifted athlete, traveled to Athens and won every contest at the Panathenaic games. Apollodorus reports that King Aegeus, fearful of the young prince, sent him against the Marathonian Bull, which killed him. Minos held Athens responsible.

He brought his fleet against the city, and Athens could not withstand Cretan sea power. Athens sued for peace, and Minos imposed the tribute: every nine years, the city must send seven young men and seven young women to be fed to the Minotaur in the Labyrinth.

Theseus and the Labyrinth

The tribute continued until Theseus, prince of Athens, volunteered among the sacrificial victims to kill the Minotaur. When he arrived in Crete, Minos mocked his claim to divine birth. He threw a ring into the sea and challenged Theseus to retrieve it. Theseus dove into the waves and was received by the Nereids in Poseidon's palace, returning with the ring and a golden crown from Amphitrite.

Ariadne, Minos's own daughter, fell in love with the Athenian hero and gave him a ball of thread to retrace his steps through the Labyrinth. Theseus entered the maze, killed the Minotaur, and escaped by following the thread. He fled Crete with Ariadne and the Athenian youths, though he later abandoned Ariadne on Naxos.

Minos lost the Minotaur and his daughter to the same Athenian hero, and with them the tribute that had enforced Cretan supremacy over Athens. When he discovered that Daedalus had aided the escape, he imprisoned the craftsman in the Labyrinth. Daedalus fled on wings of wax and feathers, and his son Icarus, flying too close to the sun, fell into the sea.

The Pursuit of Daedalus

Minos sailed the Mediterranean searching for Daedalus, carrying a test only the inventor could solve: a spiral seashell through which a thread must be passed.

Daedalus had taken refuge with King Cocalus of Camicus in Sicily. When Minos presented the shell, Cocalus passed it secretly to Daedalus, who tied a thread to an ant and let it walk through the shell's spiral passages. Cocalus returned the threaded shell. Minos knew.

Cocalus offered hospitality instead of surrender. He invited Minos to bathe, and while the Cretan king relaxed, Cocalus's daughters poured boiling water upon him. Minos died in a bath in Sicily, killed through craft by the craftsman he had pursued across the sea. Diodorus Siculus records that the Sicilians buried him with honors and built a tomb above which they later erected a temple to Aphrodite.

Judge of the Dead

Homer describes Minos in the underworld holding a golden scepter and rendering judgments upon the shades. Virgil follows Homer in the Aeneid, placing Minos at the sorting of souls at the entrance to the deeper realms.

In Plato's Gorgias, Minos sits alongside his brother Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, forming a tribunal that judges every soul arriving in Hades. Rhadamanthus judges the dead of Asia, Aeacus those of Europe, and Minos serves as final arbiter when they disagree.