Table of Contents
According to Greek myth, on the island of Crete ruled King Minos, who was renowned for his justice and wisdom. The sea-god Poseidon sent Minos a magnificent bull as a sign of his right to rule. However, Minos failed to sacrifice the bull as he had promised.
As divine retribution, Poseidon caused Minos’s wife, Pasiphaë, to fall in love with the bull. From their unnatural union came the Minotaur — a monstrous creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull.
Minos, unwilling to kill the beast, had the artisan Daedalus construct a vast labyrinth in which the Minotaur was confined.
Every nine years, Athens was compelled to send seven young men and seven young women as tribute to the Minotaur to be devoured. This onerous tribute was demanded by Minos.
Then the Athenian prince Theseus volunteered to go to Crete. With the help of Minos’s daughter, Ariadne, who gave him a ball of thread enabling him to find his way out of the labyrinth, Theseus entered, found the Minotaur, killed it, and escaped.
Significance of the Myth
- The story symbolises the clash between the power of Crete (and its mythic bull-cult) and Athens, and has been interpreted as a mythic memory of Cretan dominance and Athenian liberation.
- Also, the figure of Minos and the labyrinth connects to Crete’s Minoan civilisation and its palace-complex at Knossos, which archaeologists have linked with labyrinthine architecture.
- The myth highlights themes of hubris (King Minos’s refusal to obey the gods), punishment, monstrous hybridity (the Minotaur), and heroism (Theseus).