Minotaur

Pronunciation

Alternate Names

In some traditions, the Minotaur’s real name was Asterion.^[1] This name, which means “the starry one,” suggests a connection with the constellation Taurus, the bull.

Locale

The Minotaur was born into the household of Minos, the king of the powerful island of Crete. Minos imprisoned the beast in a maze called the Labyrinth, located near his palace in Knossos, where it fed off of young men and women who were sacrificed as tributes. 

Appearance and Iconography

The Minotaur was a fearful hybrid creature; according to the writer Apollodorus, it “had the face of a bull, but the rest of him was human.”^[2] In many artistic depictions, the Minotaur also had a bull’s tail and an unusually hairy body. 

Ancient sources did not always specify which half of the Minotaur was bull and which half was man. The Roman poet Ovid, for example, described the Minotaur simply as “half ox, half man.”^[3] 

Presumably, it was considered common knowledge that the creature had a bull’s head and a man’s body: this was how it was always depicted in Greek and Roman visual art.^[4]

This led to some confusion in the Middle Ages, however. During this period, Ovid’s poetry was perhaps the most familiar source for the myth, causing many European readers to imagine the creature with the head of a man and the body of a bull—the reverse of the ancient tradition.^[5]

Family Tree

Origins

The disturbing story of the Minotaur began when Poseidon, the god of the sea, sent a snow-white bull to the Cretan king Minos as a sign of his divine favor. Minos was supposed to sacrifice this bull—the Cretan Bull, as it was usually called—but the king was so taken by its perfection that he decided to add it to his royal herd instead.

Deprived of his sacrifice, Poseidon exacted a cruel revenge. He caused Minos’ wife, Pasiphae, to fall in love with the Cretan Bull. After much agonizing, Pasiphae came up with a way to satisfy her forbidden passion: she had Daedalus, a famous Athenian craftsman and architect, design a completely lifelike hollow wooden cow. She then hid inside. Soon enough, the Cretan Bull came and coupled with the wooden cow, thinking it was real. In this way, Pasiphae was able to consummate her love for the bull. The result of their union was the monstrous Minotaur, who combined the natures of its two parents.^[6]

The Labyrinth

The Minotaur rapidly grew into a fearsome, savage creature. Minos, tasked with controlling the beast, eventually decided to imprison it in a huge maze, the Labyrinth, which he had built in Knossos next to his palace. The Labyrinth was designed by the architect Daedalus—the same man who built the wooden cow that Pasiphae used to seduce the Cretan Bull. Ovid vividly describes how Daedalus laid out the Labyrinth: 

This he planned

of mazey wanderings that deceived the eyes,

and labyrinthic passages involved.

so sports the clear Maeander, in the fields

of Phrygia winding doubtful; back and forth

it meets itself, until the wandering stream

fatigued, impedes its wearied waters' flow;

from source to sea, from sea to source involved.

So Daedalus contrived innumerous paths,

and windings vague, so intricate that he,

the architect, hardly could retrace his steps.^[7]

It was here that the Minotaur was kept, hidden from the civilized world. But Minos could never entirely ignore the creature, and young men and women were regularly sent into the Labyrinth as tributes or sacrifices. The savage Minotaur, who had a taste for human flesh, would devour them once they entered the maze.

Theseus

For a long time, the Minotaur fed on young men and women from Athens. This tradition began with the violent death of Minos’ son Androgeus. Minos blamed the Athenians for Androgeus’ demise (the details of the myth vary by source), and as punishment, he demanded that the Athenians send him a regular tribute of fourteen youths: seven boys and seven girls. These would be thrown into the Labyrinth and consumed by the Minotaur. In most traditions, the Athenians were forced to send this terrible tribute once every nine years,^[8] but in some versions of the story they sent it as often as every year.^[9]

When Theseus came to Athens after discovering that his father was the Athenian king Aegeus, he vowed to put an end to this violent custom once and for all. According to the common tradition, he volunteered to sail to Crete as one of the tributes. There, he was fortunate enough to catch the eye of Ariadne, Minos’ daughter. Ariadne agreed to help Theseus kill the Minotaur if he would promise to take her with him to Athens and make her his wife. 

Following Ariadne’s instructions, Theseus entered the Labyrinth with a ball of thread, which he unwound as he traversed the twisted passages. Theseus found the Minotaur, killed it, and then followed the thread back to the exit. His mission accomplished, he escaped from Crete with Ariadne and the other Athenian tributes.^[10]