Bestiary |
Minotaur
Mínótauros is one of the most famous monsters of Greek mythology. Despite the fact that he didn't live very long, he didn't drive more than thirty people out of the world and didn't even guard the treasures. But so it goes. He became entangled in the stories of two great men of the Mediterranean, Zeus' son Minos and Poseidon's descendant Theseus.
That name, Mínótauros, of course, means Minos' bull, and Mínós, the ruler in Crete, is certainly a more interesting character, whose curriculum vitae and curriculum post mortem will be revealed some other time since his afterlife career in the realm of Hades makes him an adept for membership in our collection. But to the point.
The monster inhabiting the Labyrinth was half man and half bull, and for a simple reason:
Well weigh'd Pasiphae, when she prefer'd
A bull to thee, more brutish than the herd.
is reproached in Ovid's Metamorphoses by a certain Scylla, who is not the monstrous Scylla you can read about here. For Mínós's wife, Pasiphaë did indeed went off the rails with the white bull which the king refused to sacrifice to Poseidon. She solved her lust with the help of the famous engineer Daedalus. He made a wooden cow, covered it with real leather, attached wheels, and dragged the model out to pasture. Pasifaé climbed in, and the bull, grazing nearby, soon did as his instinct commanded.
The result of this union was a man with a bull's head. His real name, as may be seen from the title, was Asterios or Asterion. This name appears several times in the Mínós myth, and while the "bull of Mínós" Mínótauros is a later designation from the time when the affair became public and Asterión was already disposing of victims in the Labyrinth, the "Celestial" or "Star" Asterios represents the bull in its original mythic function, i.e. as the animal of the Moon Goddess.
Daedalus, living in Cretan exile at the time, entered the story a second time when he built the fabled Labyrinth at the request of a cheated husband. Mínós locked Pasiphaë and Asterius in it, while the sacred bull-father went mad in the meantime. He became dangerous, attacking people. Hérákles took him away from Crete and released him on the Argean plain, but things were not much better on the mainland. By the time Theseus destroyed him, the bull had killed hundreds of people, including Minos's son Androgeus.
Which doesn't quite add up.
Androgéos was apparently murdered in Athens at the behest of an ardent fan of the local athletes, King Aigeus of Athens, or the home team wouldn't have won. And this unsportsmanlike behavior upset Minos. He wielded enormous naval power at the time, so it was no problem for him to force his former allies in the Seven against Thebes to make regular sacrifices.
Every nine years the seven Athenian boys and girls would be thrown to Minotaur (suddenly the king found the monster convenient). There is also a variant of nine young men and women after seven years and a version that acknowledges this sacrifice annually, but the former is both more familiar and more mythologically comprehensible.
The ship with the black sail set sail twice before the third draw saw the entry of Theseus, the great hero of Greek myth, now forgotten in the shadow of Heracles and Perseus. Also, two young men, disguised as ladies to make the squad stronger, but there was no need for that.
Thanks to the treachery of Minos' daughter Ariadne and her now-famous ball, Theseus penetrated the center of the Labyrinth and killed Minotaur. With what, there was already controversy at the time. Whether it was the sword, Théseus' fabled club, or just his bare hands, in any case, Asterion left the story, the hero climbed out safely and thumbed the nose at the king.
He took the amorous Ariadne with him, just in case, to forget her - like Iásón Médeia - on the island of Naxos. Though it is said that the god Dionysos claimed her.
The Cretan version of this semi-historical legend does not include Minotaur; according to it, Theseus clashed with the Minos general Tauros, even with the secret permission of the king, because Tauros made Minos cuckold. The Labyrinth was said to be a well-guarded prison. There is a Cyprus story too, and it is downright political.
But if the more realistic versions were to take hold, we would lose one rather interesting monster and therefore this Bestiary entry.
Plate painted by Lydos. Struggle between Theseus and the Minotaur presumably in the presence of Ariadne, 550--540 BC, Yair-haklai, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
18.12. 2024 (13.6.2004)
