The Minotaur

The Monster in the Labyrinth

The Minotaur was a creature with a human body and the head of a bull who lived inside the famous Labyrinth on Crete. His story begins with King Minos. Minos asked Poseidon to send a sign proving he should rule, and a magnificent bull appeared from the sea. Minos was supposed to sacrifice the animal but decided to keep it instead. Poseidon punished him by causing Queen Pasiphaë to desire the bull. With help from the inventor Daedalus, she eventually gave birth to the Minotaur. Ancient writers sometimes called him Asterion or Asterius. He had no choice at all about his strange beginning.

Minos wanted the creature hidden, so Daedalus built the Labyrinth, an enormous structure designed to be almost impossible to escape. After a conflict between Crete and Athens, the Athenians were forced to send young people as tribute. Ancient stories disagree about exactly how many were sent and how often, but the terrible idea stays the same: they entered the Labyrinth and faced the Minotaur. Eventually the Athenian hero Theseus volunteered to go. Minos’s daughter Ariadne decided to help him. She gave Theseus a ball of thread, which he tied at the entrance and unwound as he travelled deeper into the maze.

Theseus found the Minotaur at the centre and killed him. Ancient art shows the hero using different methods, including a sword, club or his bare hands. The thread then became just as important as the fight because it allowed Theseus to find the exit. The Labyrinth may remind people of the enormous palace discovered at Knossos, and Bronze Age Cretan art certainly shows an important fascination with bulls. However, archaeology cannot prove there was a real Minotaur or one historical maze behind the myth. I find the creature interesting because he is both monster and prisoner. The young Athenians are innocent victims, but the Minotaur is also locked away because of mistakes made before he was born. The monster at the centre of the maze may be the person with the least control over how he got there.

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