Minotaur

The Minotaur was a creature in Greek mythology. Half-man and half-bull, it was the offspring of Pasipha, the wife of King Minos of Crete, and a bull.[1] Poseidon had given a bull to Minos to sacrifice to the god, but it was so beautiful, the king could not sacrifice it and kept it instead. As punishment, Poseidon made the queen, Pasipha, fall in love with the bull and their offspring was the minotaur. At first the minotaur wreaked havoc throughout Crete, but eventually Minos caught it and imprisoned it in the labyrinth, a maze designed by the architect Daedalus that was so complex that no one could escape from it. For food, the minotaur was given fourteen Athenians every year who were put in the maze and hunted by the minotaur. After a time, however, the Athenian hero Theseus came to Crete to be fed to the Minotaur. Instead he was helped by Minos's daughter, Ariadne, who supplied him with a ball of thread which he used to find his way out of the labyrinth, having killed the Minotaur with his bare hands.

## Notes[edit]

1. ↑ http://www.pantheon.org/articles/m/minotaur.html