by Graeme Davis
Into the Labyrinth
That night, Ariadne came to Theseus in secret. She promised that she would help Theseus to kill the Minotaur and escape the Labyrinth if he would marry her and take her back to Athens. Theseus readily agreed.
The next morning, the soldiers of Crete came and took Theseus to the entrance to the Labyrinth. With nothing but his clothes, the young hero was shoved through the opening and sealed inside. The only light came from a few small windows high above. However, a few minutes later, Ariadne’s face appeared at one of the windows. Through the small opening, she dropped Theseus’ sword and a ball of twine. Then she wished him good luck and was gone.
Ariadne and Theseus with his ball of twine at the entrance to the Labyrinth by Jean-Baptiste Regnault. (The Art Gallery Collection / Alamy)
Theseus picked up the ball of twine and tied one end to the entrance to the Labyrinth. Then he took his sword and set off down the twisting passages, trailing the twine behind him. For several hours, Theseus crept through the dark, winding maze. A horrible animal stench filled the air, and broken bones lay scattered across the ground. At times, he heard distant, scraping sounds, like hoofs or horns on rock.
This Roman mosaic from Austria shows Theseus slaying the Minotaur. His black-sailed ship can be seen at the top. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Eventually, Theseus reached the center of the Labyrinth, a large gloomy chamber supported by short columns and filled with the torn and broken bodies of the dead. The mixed stink of death and manure nearly caused the hero to retch, but he was just able to keep his stomach under control. Then he saw the Minotaur. The hideous beast sat amongst a pile of bodies, tearing semi-rotten flesh from a long bone.
As Theseus stepped into the chamber, it turned to glare at him with one of its small, dark eyes. Then it leaned back its gore-covered head and let out a loud, echoing snort. Theseus gripped his sword tightly as the monster pushed its vast bulk up onto its thick, bull legs. It turned to face him, lowering its long, curved horns so they pointed directly at him. The Minotaur scraped one hoofed foot against the rocky ground, and then it charged.
Theseus waited until the last moment and then leapt to one side, swinging his sword as the beast swept past. The blade clanged off the Minotaur’s horn, the sound echoing all around the chamber. The beast skidded to a halt, turned, and charged again. Again, Theseus stepped aside, driving his sword down at the monster’s side. Although the stroke was accurate, the point could not penetrate the monster’s thick hide.
For a moment the two opponents stopped, both panting from their exertions. Then, with a mighty bellow, the Minotaur charged again. This time, just as the deadly horns bore down on Theseus, he leapt up and over the Minotaur, grabbing one of the horns with his free hand. As Theseus landed, he yanked the Minotaur backwards by its horn, pulling up its head and exposing its throat. Theseus took his father’s sword and slashed it across the monster’s throat. The Minotaur gave a gurgling cry, then slumped to the ground, dead.
DAEDALUS AND ICARUS
Daedalus was an inventor and artificer of legendary skill. His name means “cunning worker” in ancient Greek.
It is unclear how Daedalus came to be employed by Minos. Some sources state that he created a wide dancing-ground for Minos’ daughter Ariadne, which may or may not be the Labyrinth itself.
In order to keep the layout of the Labyrinth secret, Minos locked Daedalus in a tower along with his son and apprentice Icarus. Daedalus contrived to escape by fabricating two pairs of feathered wings. Icarus was killed when he ignored his father’s advice and flew too close to the sun, melting the wax that held the feathers onto his wings. Daedalus flew on, eventually reaching Sicily where he took refuge with King Cocalus of Kamikos. Daedalus built a temple to Apollo in thanks for his successful escape, leaving his wings there as an offering.
Minos searched for Daedalus, traveling from city to city in disguise. At each city, he challenged those he met to run a string all the way through a spiral seashell. When Minos reached Sicily, Daedalus gave himself away by succeeding at the task; he tied a string to an ant, which he lured through the spirals of the shell by placing a drop of honey at the far end.
Minos demanded that Cocalus hand Daedalus over, but Cocalus persuaded him to take a bath first. Cocalus’ daughters (or in some versions, Daedalus himself) killed Minos in the bath by pouring boiling water over him.
The Athenians claimed that Daedalus was a native of their city, and this is reflected in a tale from his later life. Having escaped Minos and returned to Athens, Daedalus took his sister’s son Perdix as an apprentice to replace the fallen Icarus. As Perdix began to surpass him in skill and cunning, the jealous Daedalus caused the boy to fall to his death from the Acropolis, then left Athens to escape the rage of the boy’s grieving mother.
The Escape from Crete
In the middle of the night, while Theseus was slowly making his way back out of the Labyrinth, the two young men that Theseus had hidden amongst the maidens cast off their disguises. They surprised their guards, killed them, and then set all of the rest of the tribute free.
They made their way quietly to the entrance of the Labyrinth, where they met Ariadne and her sister Phaedra, who had also decided to run away with the Athenians. Ariadne opened the door of the great maze, and a few minutes later, guided by the twine he had laid as he went in, Theseus appeared, covered in the gore and blood of the Minotaur.
Together, the small group stole its way down to the harbor and boarded the ship that had brought them to Crete. Before they cast off, Theseus went out and stove in the hulls of the Cretan warships to prevent any pursuit. Then the ship, carrying Theseus, Ariadne, Phaedra, and all of the tribute, slipped away into the night.
The Return to Athens
A few days after escaping Crete, Theseus’ ship stopped at the island of Naxos. While sleeping onshore, Theseus had a dream that the god Dionysus appeared and demanded that he leave Ariadne behind so that the god could marry her. When Theseus awoke, he saw a dark fleet bearing down upon the island. Convinced that the fleet belonged to Dionysus, Theseus ordered everyone back aboard the ship, and cast off. Setting all sails, they escaped the dark fleet, but it wasn’t until the next morning that anyone realized that Ariadne had been left behind. Convinced that the whole affair had been arranged by Dionysus, Theseus sailed on. As it turned out, Dionysus did marry Ariadne, and she would eventually bear him many children, but not before she cursed Theseus for abandoning her.
The Cretan princess Ariadne fell in love with Theseus and gave him a ball of twine to help him find his way out of the Labyrinth.
Theseus drags the dead Minotaur from the Labyrinth as the goddess Athena looks on. Greek “Aison” cup, c. 430 BC. National Archeological Museum of Spain, Madrid. (Photograph by Marie-Lan Nguyen)
Ariadne’s curse would not take long to take effect. As Theseus sailed home, he was still troubled by the dark fleet and breaking his promise to marry Ariadne. So lost was he in these gloomy thoughts that he forgot all about the white sails that his father had given to him to announce his success. As the ship came within sight of Athens, it still carried the black sails. Theseus’ father, Aegeus, went up to the top of the Acropolis to see the ship coming in. When he saw the black sails, his heart broke, for he believed his son to be dead. Lost in despair, Aegeus cast himself off the Acropolis and plunged to his death.
Although Theseus arrived back in Athens having defeated the Minotaur and rescued the tribute, it proved a somber homecoming. Still, as the king’s son, Theseus was soon afterwards crowned king.
MINOS, THE LABYRINTH, AND THE MINOTAUR – THE HISTORY
The Minotaur was a monstrous creature that was half bull and half human. It is generally depicted as a muscular human with the horned head of a bull; a few more modern depictions also give it bovine legs, similar to the goat legs of a satyr. Theseus’ victory against the Minotaur remains his greatest and best-known accomplishment.
King Minos
King Minos
of Crete was the son of Zeus and the Phoenician princess Europa, who gave her name to the continent of Europe. He appears in various other legends, and seems to have ruled for a very long time. Plutarch and a few other ancient writers explain this by suggesting that Crete had a succession of rulers named Minos. Some modern scholars believe that “Minos” is derived from the Cretan word for “king,” mi-nu or mwi-nu, making it a title rather than a personal name.
Athenian legends, including the story of Theseus, depict Minos as a cruel tyrant, but his character is very different in tales from Crete and elsewhere. Non-Athenian sources depict Minos as a great and wise ruler, trained in law and statecraft by Zeus himself, who was made one of the three judges of the Underworld after his death.
There is some evidence that Minos was the title given to a king-consort who ruled alongside an earth-goddess (perhaps embodied by a priestess-queen) and was sacrificed and replaced like the year-kings of the Eleusinian Mysteries. “Minos” may originally have meant “war-chief” rather than “king,” and is intriguingly similar to the names of mythical founder-kings from several other early cultures: Menes from Egypt, Mizraim of Egypt in the Book of Genesis, Meon from Phrygia and Lydia, Baal Meon from Canaan, and even Mannus from Germany and Manu from India.
It is said that Minos ruled at Knossos for periods of nine years, at the end of which he went into a cave sacred to Zeus in order to consult with him on Crete’s laws and rulership. This sounds very like a mythologized account of a king-consort who was sacrificed at the end of his appointed term.
If this interpretation of Minos’ nature is correct, then the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur could be seen as an allegory for a process by which Athens threw off Minoan-Mycenaean cultural domination in the late Bronze Age and began to assert its own culture and religion. In this case, the earlier parts of Theseus’ story can be seen as reflecting Athens’ early rise to power in mainland Greece, and the next chapter will present additional evidence that the myth may be an allegory for a war between Athens and Crete.
The Cretan Bull
The bull seems to have been an important symbol in Minoan civilization. Images of bulls are commonplace in Minoan contexts: the black steatite rhyton drinking vessel and the famous bull-leaping fresco found at Knossos are just two examples.
The Marathonian Bull is said to have come originally from Crete. According to some myths it was the same bull whose form Zeus took when he seduced the princess Europa. According to others, it was the unnatural father of the Minotaur, making it the same bull that Poseidon sent in answer to Minos’ prayer. Hercules brought the bull to Greece as his Seventh Labor, but it ran wild on the Plain of Marathon, spreading fear and destruction until it was finally captured by Theseus.
BULL-GODS
The bull as a symbol of strength and fertility was fairly widespread throughout the ancient Near East.
In the Canaanite pantheon, the gods Ba’al and El were both associated with the bull, and the Golden Calf in the Book of Exodus may have been an idol of one or both. The Sumerian god Marduk is sometimes called “the bull of Utu” (the sun-god). In Egypt, the sacred Apis bull was associated first with Ptah, a creator-god, and later with Osiris; sacred bulls were kept in the temple at Memphis, and mummified after their deaths.
Bull symbolism goes back into the prehistory of the region. At the prehistoric city of Katal Huyuk in Anatolia, the horned skulls of bulls were set into walls and pillars and covered in plaster to give them a lifelike appearance; one chamber, known as the Bull Shrine, featured multiple skulls of various sizes as well as wall-paintings of bulls.
It has been suggested that the bull-gods of the ancient Near East were all descended from a single, long-forgotten fertility cult that was overcome and absorbed by the various regional polytheistic religions at some time in the Neolithic period. If that is the case, the Minotaur might be interpreted as a remnant of just such a religion that existed on Crete in prehistoric times.
Ancient Greek eye-cup depicting the Minotaur from c. 515 BC. (Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy)
Two Greek coins from Crete, 300–270 BC. The reverse sides bear an image of the Labyrinth. (Tilemahos Efthimiadis)
Given the importance of the bull as a Minoan symbol (and as a symbol of wealth in many early societies), and the fact that much of Minoan Crete’s wealth came from maritime trade with Egypt, Greece, and the Middle East, it is possible to see the bull from the sea as a metaphor for Crete’s prosperity, and its association with Poseidon as a Greek adaptation of some earlier religious association with a Minoan sea-god.
It may also be significant that in the Greek religion Poseidon was the god of earthquakes as well as of the sea. The Minoan palaces of Crete show signs of several natural disasters, including the devastating eruption of Thera around 1600 BC. Little is known of the Minoan religion, partly due to the Greek habit of equating the gods of other cultures with the “true” gods of their own religion when writing about them, but the divine title “Earthshaker” appears to refer to a bull-god. It is likely that Greek writers are referring to this Minoan deity when they talk about Poseidon and bulls in a Cretan context; in purely Greek myths Poseidon is associated with horses rather than cattle.
Given the comparative dearth of written records from the Minoans themselves, it is only possible to speculate on the significance of the Cretan bull. It might be a symbol of kingship, or of the strength of Minoan culture. It might represent a deity to whom the Minoans believed they owed their prosperity, or one they felt obliged to propitiate with rituals and sacrifices in order to avert earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Whatever the details may have been, though, it seems certain that the image of the Minotaur is somehow linked to Minoan bull symbolism, and that the Minotaur is more than simply another monster born from a divine curse.
The Labyrinth
In the Theseus myth the Labyrinth was a vast and complex maze, constructed by Daedalus on Minos’ orders with the specific purpose of housing the Minotaur. It was so complex that even its own creator was barely able to find his way out once he had finished it, and its name has since become a synonym for a large and elaborate maze. However, some sources explain the Labyrinth differently.
The House of the Axe
The double axe, called labrys in Greek, was a potent symbol in the Minoan civilization. Symbolic double axes in bronze and gold have been found in Minoan, Greek, and Thracian contexts dating from the Middle Bronze Age onward, and similar symbols have been found carved into the walls of several Minoan palaces and at earlier urban settlements including Katal Huyuk (also spelled Çatal Hüyük) in Anatolia. Even outside Crete, these images are sometimes accompanied by bull imagery.
A Linear B inscription tablet found in the palace of Knossos bears a dedication that can be interpreted as referring to “the Lady of the Labyrinth” or “the mistress of the double axe.” In either case this person seems to be a goddess of the palace. Based on her mythological role as guardian of the Labyrinth, some scholars have suggested that Ariadne was a priestess – or even a mortal personification – of this deity, and that the double axe was her symbol.
Archeological excavations by Sir Arthur Evans in the early 20th century uncovered the palace at Knossos. Compared to Greek cities of the time it was a very large and complex structure, and it is easy to believe the theory that the mythical labyrinth arose from the impression that this palace made on early Greek visitors with its many rooms and passages.
Double-axe symbols decorate this clay vessel from eastern Crete. Archeological Museum, Heraklion. (Wolfgang Sauber)
Ariadne’s Dancing-Ground
Another theory suggests that the Labyrinth was not the palace itself, but a dancing-ground in the form of a maze that stood somewhere outside it. Ritual dances were held there to honor the goddess of the double axe. Once again, Ariadne might have been a priestess of the double-axe cult, an embodiment of its goddess, or both. Some classicists, including the British author Robert Graves, have suggested that the name “Ariadn
e” may be a priestly title derived from Adnon, a Cretan-Greek word that according to the fifth-century scholar Hesychius of Alexandria meant “absolutely pure.”
Like the Minotaur’s Labyrinth, the creation of this dancing-ground is credited to Daedalus. Combining the two stories, the image of the Minotaur at the center of the Labyrinth could be seen as part of a fertility ritual in which one or more celebrants representing the goddess danced into the maze to achieve union with a male divine figure represented by the bull-headed man. However, there is insufficient documentary evidence at this time to support any speculations about Minoan religious rituals.
MINOS THE JUDGE
Although the myth of Theseus continued to be retold in Roman and later times, Minos’ role as an Underworld judge assumed greater prominence than his links with Crete and the Minotaur. By contrast with his Cretan image as a wise and just ruler, the Minos of the Underworld is a stern and intimidating judge who decides the fate of each deceased soul.
In Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas encounters Minos when he descends into the Underworld to meet his father’s shade and receive a prophetic vision of the future glory of Rome. Minos is seen only briefly, sitting beside a great urn filled with colored balls which he uses to assign souls to heavenly Elysium or hellish Tartarus.
