Minotaur- Greek CreatureCreature · Monster"The Bull of Minos"

The White Bull

Minos contested the throne of Crete with his brothers Sarpedon and Rhadamanthys and prayed to Poseidon for a sign of divine favor. Poseidon sent a white bull from the sea, a creature of such beauty that Minos could not bring himself to slaughter it. He kept the bull for his herds and sacrificed an ordinary animal in its place.

Poseidon's punishment fell not on Minos but on his wife. He caused Pasiphaë, queen of Crete and daughter of the sun god Helios, to desire the white bull beyond all reason. She went to Daedalus, the Athenian craftsman whom Minos had brought to Crete, and begged him for help. Daedalus built a hollow wooden cow, covered it with a real cow's hide, and set it in the pasture where the bull grazed. Pasiphaë hid inside. The bull mounted the false cow. From this union Pasiphaë conceived a child with a man's body and a bull's head. His proper name was Asterion. Men called him the Minotaur.

Poseidon's bull broke free from Minos's herds and ravaged Crete before crossing to the mainland, where it terrorized the plain of Marathon.

The Labyrinth

The creature grew savage and fed on human flesh. Minos could not kill his wife's child, but neither could he let it roam free. He commanded Daedalus to build a prison from which escape was impossible: the Labyrinth, a maze of blind corridors and deceptive turns beneath the palace of Knossos. In the Metamorphoses, Ovid compares its twisting paths to the river Maeander in Phrygia, which doubles back on itself so often it meets its own current. So disorienting was the design that Daedalus himself could barely retrace his steps.

The Minotaur was confined at the center. It had no companion. It prowled through perpetual darkness, through passages that opened onto identical passages.

The Tribute of Athens

Minos's son Androgeus traveled to Athens and won every event at the Panathenaic Games. Apollodorus says King Aegeus sent him against the Marathonian Bull, the same beast Poseidon had sent from the sea, and Androgeus was killed. Plutarch records that Aegeus had him ambushed on the road to Thebes. Either way, Minos brought his fleet against Athens. War and famine devastated Attica until the Athenians surrendered.

The terms: every nine years, seven young men and seven young women, chosen by lot, were sent to Crete and released into the Labyrinth. The parents mourned them as already dead. They wandered the passages until the Minotaur found them. Two cycles of tribute had been paid when Theseus came.

The Thread and the Slaying

Theseus, prince of Athens, volunteered to join the third tribute. His father Aegeus made him promise to change the ship's black sails to white on the return if he survived, so that Aegeus could know his fate before the ship reached harbor. Theseus sailed to Crete, and there Ariadne, daughter of Minos and half-sister to the Minotaur, fell in love with him. She went to Daedalus, who had built the Labyrinth, and learned its secret: a ball of thread. Tie one end at the entrance, unwind it as you advance, and however deep the maze goes, the thread leads back.

Ariadne gave Theseus the thread. He entered the Labyrinth and descended, unwinding the line behind him. He found the Minotaur at the center. Apollodorus says Theseus killed it with his bare hands. In Plutarch, Ariadne had given him a sword. The creature died in the darkness of its prison, the only place it had ever lived.

Following the thread, Theseus led the surviving Athenian youths out. They escaped Crete with Ariadne, and the tribute ended.

The Return

On the island of Naxos, Theseus left Ariadne behind. Dionysus claimed her as his bride. Theseus sailed on toward Athens and forgot to change the sails from black to white. King Aegeus, watching from the cliffs of Cape Sounion as the ship appeared on the horizon, saw the dark sails and believed his son was dead. He threw himself into the sea, which was named the Aegean after him.

Plutarch noted that Cretan sources denied the Labyrinth was a prison at all, calling it merely a jail, and that the "Minotaur" was a cruel general named Taurus whom Theseus defeated in single combat.