The Minotaur (episode)

***Miscellaneous Myths: The Minotaur*** is the fifty-eighth episode of the *Miscellaneous Myths* series by Red, and it's a recount of the Greek myth of the Minotaur, a half-human, half-bull beast that King Minos of Crete used to dispose off his enemies. The Minotaur was eventually slain by Theseus, who also took King Minos' daughter Ariadne with him.

## Summary

Greek Mythology is full of imaginatively-created monsters; humans with various animal features or two animals mashed together, often without a single explanation as to why those creatures look like that or how they came to be. The Minotaur, however, a half-human, half-bull creature is pretty straightforward.

The myth of the Minotaur takes place in Crete, which once was home to the Minoan civilization, a non-Greek culture which flourished in the 3000s BC to 1100 BC (before Mycenaean Greece).While their language (written in Linear A) remains undeciphered and we have limited insight to what their culture was, a large amount of bull iconography has been discovered in Crete, but no Minotaur iconography; the Minotaur is a Greek, not a Minoan story, but it might have arose as a way to vilify Minoans, perhaps due to piracy.

The story starts with Minos, the son of Zeus and Europa. In order to win kingship over Crete, he asks help from Poseidon, who gifts him a splendid, white bull, with the understanding that Minos will eventually sacrifice the bull to Poseidon later. The bull impresses the people of Crete, who take it as a divine sign, and Minos easily becomes king. But he doesn't sacrifice the bull, as promised, deeming it too beautiful to kill; Minos sacrifices a regular, plain bull in his place.

That enrages Poseidon, who, with Aphrodite's help, takes his revenge by making Minos' wife Pasiphae fall in love with the bull. Pasiphae however, looks nothing like a cow so the bull isn't interested much. She asks for help from Daedalus, an ingenious inventor. Daedalus, rather bemused, creates a fake (but highly-realistic) hollow cow inside of which Pasiphae hides in order to seduce the sacred bull. This results in the birth of a half-bull, half-human baby.

The Minotaur is a beast that only feasts on humans; Minos consults the Oracle of Delphi, who tells Minos that the Minotaur needs some space of his own. Minos then commissions Daedalus to build an inescapable labyrinth in where he'll imprison the Minotaur. To make sure nobody else ever learns of how the labyrinth works exactly, Minos imprisons Daedalus and his son Icarus on a tower, but that's a story for another time.

While the Minotaur's imprisonment fixes the problem of him eating unsuspecting people, he still needs to be fed somehow. So, for reasons, King Minos forces Athens to send to him fourteen young Athenians every few years to be fed to the Minotaur. This goes well for the first few years, but it soon catches the attention of Theseus, Athens' founding hero. Ariadne takes a look at Theseus, and falls heads over hills in love with him. To help him out, she gives him a a ball of thread (a clew, from which 'clue' derives) so he won't lose his way in the labyrinth. With her guidance, Theseus finds and kills the Minotaur, ending his life.

However the tale doesn't end there. Minos is furious, so Theseus, Ariadne and the other Athenians escape from Crete in the ship that brought them there. But for some reason (which was later ret-conned in some god ordering him to) Theseus abandoned Ariadne in Naxos while she was sleeping, and left without her. That's when Dionysus himself shows up, and takes her with him, making her his immortal wife on Olympus, while Theseus' later life was a lot less rosy.

## Credits

In the credits, Red sings *I'm All Out of Love* by Air Supply, and says that Athens often re-wrote myths to make Theseus look better, like having Dionysus order Theseus to abandon Ariadne so he could marry her instead.

## Characters appearing

Minos

Poseidon

Aphrodite

Pasiphae

Daedalus

Icarus

Theseus

Ariadne

Athena

Dionysus

## Notes

1. ↑ There are two versions of the original of this tribute. In one version, Minos' son, Androgeos, was killed by some Athenians during some athletic competition, or, in another, the Cretan Bull is captured by Heracles and brought to Athens to be properly sacrificed, but ended up breaking from captivity and charging into an athletic field, where Androgeos was running and ended up being trampled. Whichever reason, Minos declared war on Athens, but came to an agreement with Aegeas, king of Athens, to send fourteen virgins to Athens every four years to be eaten by the Minotaur, as penance for Androgeos' death.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 The idea of Theseus not ending up with Ariadne due to reasons beyond his power isn't however some sort of ret-con in order to make him look better; in the oldest surviving source we have, *the Odyssey*, it's said that Theseus took Ariadne to Athens and married her there, only for Artemis to kill her on Dionysus' witness. Versions where Theseus abandoned her all came afterwards.