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The Minotaur

(Minotauros, “the bull of Minos”)

When Minos claimed the Cretan throne, he prayed to Poseidon to send him a sign as proof of his right to reign. At once, a dazzling snow-white bull (the Cretan Bull) emerged from the sea. Though Minos had promised to sacrifice this bull to Poseidon, he found it so beautiful that he sent it to join his herd and sacrificed another bull instead.

Poseidon, enraged, made Minos’ wife, Pasiphae, fall in love with the wondrous, white bull. She confessed her unnatural passion to Daedalus, the master craftsman, who made a hollow wooden cow with wheels concealed in its hooves. Pasiphae climbed inside it wanting to mate with the great white beast. Daedalus wheeled it to the meadow where the bull was grazing. The bull mounted the wooden cow, and Pasiphae gave birth to a horrible monster, the Minotaur, a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man. Pasiphaë nursed him, but he grew fierce and wild, devouring men for sustenance.

Horrified and ashamed, Minos consulted the Oracle at Delphi about how he might hide his terrible secret. The Oracle told him to have Daedalus construct a gigantic labyrinth, at the center of which he could conceal the Minotaur.