In Greek mythology, the Minotaur (also called Asterion or Asterius) was a creature with the head and tail of a bull and the body of a man, born to Queen Pasiphaë of Crete and the Cretan Bull. King Minos confined him in the Labyrinth built by Daedalus at Knossos and fed him on Athenian youths and maidens sent as tribute, until the Athenian hero Theseus slew him with the aid of Ariadne's thread. Classical art almost always shows a man's body with a bull's head; some medieval and later images reverse that hybrid.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Minotaur" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Birth and imprisonment
After Minos kept Poseidon's white bull instead of sacrificing it, the god (sometimes with Aphrodite) caused Pasiphaë to lust for the animal. Daedalus fashioned a hollow wooden cow; Pasiphaë hid inside and conceived Asterius, the Minotaur—half human, half bull, and a grandchild of Helios. Pasiphaë nursed him, but he grew ferocious and, having no natural diet, fed on human flesh.
On Delphic advice Minos ordered Daedalus to build an elaborate maze-like prison, the Labyrinth, near the palace at Knossos, and shut the Minotaur inside.
II.Appearance
In Classical Greek art the Minotaur is a man with the head and often the tail of a bull. Ovid's Latin account does not specify which half is which; medieval and some Renaissance depictions reverse the hybrid (man's head and torso on a bull's body), a type that survives in later illustration. Dante's Inferno places the beast among the violent; commentators debate which hybrid Dante envisioned.
III.Theseus and the Athenian tribute
After the death of Minos's son Androgeus in Attica, Athens was forced to send seven young men and seven maidens—every year, every seven years, or every nine years, according to the source—into the Labyrinth as food for the Minotaur. When the third tribute approached, Theseus volunteered to go.
In Crete, Minos's daughter Ariadne fell in love with Theseus and gave him a ball of thread (and often a sword) so he could retrace his path. Theseus killed the Minotaur—by sword, club, or bare hands in different tellings—led the Athenians out, and sailed away with Ariadne. The return voyage's forgotten white-sail signal caused King Aegeus to leap to his death, giving the Aegean Sea its name in Latin tradition.
IV.Interpretations and reception
Knossian coins link labyrinth patterns with a bull's head or a star, and some modern scholars have read Asterios as a luminous Cretan deity rather than only a monster. The palace's complex plan once suggested an archaeological origin for the Labyrinth myth; that equation is now generally discounted. Borges's "The House of Asterion" retells the story from the creature's point of view; Picasso and many others returned to the figure in modern art.