Jon Solo Sebastian 08/30/2024:

Coming down the aisle, weighing two hundred fifty pounds, from Ancient Greek mythology, Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, and fantasy films such as Legend, I present to you the reigning, defending, champion of the Knossos Labyrinth —Minotaur!

You’re in the center of the wrestling ring at the biggest event in the world, and you’ve just heard that introduction; the introduction for your opponent. The lights go out and the music blasts throughout the the stadium. Out from the curtains at the top of the ramp comes the Minotaur. One of the most gruesome and popular monsters from all of Greek mythology is a beast born of an unnatural union. He stands at the ramp pumping his fists to encourage the crowd to cheer louder.

The Minotaur is a large beast of a man—well, half man, half bull. His muscular body is that of a human male. His head is the head of a bull, and this is one of the most menacing looking bulls you’ve ever imagined. As he makes his way toward the ring, his eyes are locked on you. The crowd likely assumes you’re planning how to escape this nightmare; you’re not. You’re quickly recapping his background in your head hoping to come up with a weakness. Does he have any weaknesses? It doesn’t matter because you are Theseus, and you volunteered to face the Minotaur. You’re the hero of Athens, and you would never back down from this.

The Minotaur

The Minotaur was the offspring of Queen Pasiphae of the Cretans and a bull. He “was ultimately the result of Minos’ hubris, Poseidons anger, and Pasiphae’s lust.” Newly crowned king of the Cretans, Minos, received a bull from Poseidon and was meant to sacrifice the bull in order to seal his name to the throne. Minos found the snow white bull to be a thing of absolute beauty, and it appeared to be the mightiest bull he’d ever seen. He chose to sacrifice a different bull instead, and of course, that angered Poseidon. Poseidon lashed out in a gross and terrible way. He made Minos’ wife fall in love with the bull he had gifted the king. She was unable to resist the bull and eventually bore its child. Nothing is said about what happened to the bull afterwards, but they had a child, originally named Asterius, and later called Minotaur.

The beast was born, and Minos couldn’t stand the sight of it. He ordered Daedalus to build a Labyrinth to trap the Minotaur inside. Daedalus designed and built a Labyrinth so elaborate that there was no way for the beast to find its way out, and no way for anyone going inside the Labyrinth to find their way out of it either. Why didn’t he have the beast killed you ask? Well, as my introduction stated, the Minotaur was the champion, more or less. No one could defeat him, or rather, no one was willing to try. Not until Theseus volunteered for the task was the Minotaur defeated.

The story goes like this. Minos blamed the Athenians for the death of his only son, and for destroying his family line. What about the Minotaur? Couldn’t he be the next king? No? Ok, just checking. Minos bullied the people of Athens until they agreed to pay tribute—seven maidens and seven youths every nine years, or once a year depending on which source you believe. If you take into consideration what Minos was doing with the tributes, you’d have to think it would be at least once a year. They were food for the Minotaur, and I think fourteen bodies wouldn’t be enough in nine years, let alone one year for the beast to survive.

It’s hard to determine what Minos’ plan for the beast had been. Perhaps he planned to slowly weaken the beast so he could be defeated. It’s possible this entire tale of the Minotaur is fake, so it doesn’t matter how much he ate, or for how long until he was fed again. Anyway, in comes Theseus, the hero of Athens. Theseus volunteers to be one of the tributes to Minos. He vowed to slay the beast and put an end to Minos’ hold over his people. Upon arriving in Crete, Minos’ daughter Ariadne fell in love with Theseus, and she wanted to help him face the Minotaur in hopes he would marry her afterwards (he didn’t). She convinced Daedalus to tell her how to escape the Labyrinth. She passed that information over to Theseus before he entered the maze. “Upon entering the Labyrinth, Theseus tied one end of the string to the door and continued into the maze. He found the Minotaur in the furthest corner of the Labyrinth and killed him with the jabs of his fist (or in other accounts, he sneaks in the sword of Aegeus and slays the Minotaur with it).” He then follows the tied string back out of the Labyrinth to make his escape. He doesn’t marry Ariadne, he fails to raise the white flags on his ship to broadcast his victory on his way home, so his father assumes his son is dead and commits suicide. Theseus arrives home to learn of his fathers death and in turn becomes the king.

All the buildup of the Minotaur and he’s just a bored monster trapped in an inescapable maze. He gets fed, but has nothing to do. His championship was more like a paper championship because his opponents weren’t opponents at all; they were young helpless victims. The Minotaur honestly didn’t do anything wrong if you think about the big picture. This feud was between Minos and Poseidon—they were both to blame for all that took place, and maybe, just maybe, the Minotaur wouldn’t have eaten people if he had other options.