Minos

Half-Siblings: Perseus, Heracles, Helen, and Dionysus

**Minos** was the first King of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa.

## Overview

Every nine years, he made King Aegeus pick seven young boys and seven young girls to be sent to Daedalus's creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten by the Minotaur.

After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in the underworld. He is one of the three judges of the dead alongside Aeacus and Rhadamanthus although Minos is the more well known of the judges as well as being one of the more coldly cruel.

## History

### Daedelus's Labyrinth

Minos justified his accession as king and prayed to Poseidon for a sign. Poseidon sent a giant white bull out of the sea. Minos was committed to sacrificing the bull to Poseidon, but then decided to substitute a different bull. In rage, Poseidon cursed Pasiphaë, Minos' wife, with a mad passion for the bull. Daedalus built her a wooden cow, which she hid inside. The bull mated with the wooden cow and Pasiphaë was impregnated by the bull, giving birth to a horrible monster, again named Asterius, the Minotaur, half man half bull.

Daedalus then built a complicated "chamber that with its tangled windings perplexed the outward way" called the Labyrinth, and Minos put the Minotaur in it. To make sure no one would ever know the secret of who the Minotaur was and how to get out of the Labyrinth (Daedalus knew both of these things), Minos imprisoned Daedalus and his son, Icarus, along with the monster. Daedalus and Icarus flew away on wings Daedalus invented, but Icarus' wings melted because he flew too close to the Sun. Icarus fell in the sea and drowned.

### Death

Minos' son Androgeus won every game in a contest hosted by Aegeas of Athens. Alternatively, the other contestants were jealous of Androgeus and killed him. Minos was angry and declared war on Athens. He offered the Athenians peace if they sent Minos seven young men and seven virgin maidens to feed the Minotaur every year (which corresponded directly to the Minoans' meticulous records of lunar alignments - a full moon falls on the equinoxes once every eight years). This continued until Theseus killed the Minotaur with the help of Ariadne, Minos' lovestruck daughter.

Minos searched for Daedalus by traveling from city to city asking a riddle; he presented a spiral seashell and asked for it to be strung all the way through. When he reached Camicus, Sicily, King Cocalus, knowing Daedalus would be able to solve the riddle, fetched the old man. He tied the string to an ant, which walked through the seashell, stringing it all the way through. Minos then knew Daedalus was in the court of King Cocalus and demanded he be handed over. Cocalus managed to convince him to take a bath first; then Cocalus' daughters and Daedalus, with Minos trapped in the bath, scalded him to death with boiling water.

### Judge of the Dead

After his descent into Hell, Minos was appointed by the powers of the Inferno to be the Judge of the Damned. Minos became a high-ranked official and grew a snake-like tail. He sits at the entrance to the second circle in the Inferno, which is the beginning of Hell proper. There, he judges the sins of each soul and assigns it to its rightful punishment by indicating the circle to which it must descend. He does this by circling his tail around his own body the appropriate number of times.