At the heart of a Cretan labyrinth lived a Cretan Minotaur, a monster half man, half bull. Imprisoned there by his father-in-law Minos, legendary king of Crete, it fed on human flesh sent by the city of Athens. Every nine years, Minos ordered Athens to send fourteen young people to be sacrificed. This grim ritual continued until the Athenian hero Theseus volunteered, entered the labyrinth, and killed this much-feared beast. The story of the Minotaur has fascinated for thousands of years and inspired a multitude of works of art: pottery, poetry, plays, paintings, operas, films, and video games. Although the myth can be appreciated as a tale, archaeologists now know that the legend has deep roots in events that actually took place during the Bronze Age. The man with the head of a bull in the labyrinth of Minos has several traits found in Cretan culture and the ancient Minoan civilization. Bulls and labyrinth motifs appear throughout Minoan culture, which flourished in Crete from about 3000 BC to about 1100 BC. By the middle of the second millennium BC, mainland Greece replaced Crete as the dominant power in the region. Classical authors have told the story of the Minotaur many times. The accounts vary, but there are common traits among them. Bulls, in various forms, play a crucial role in the story. In the most common version of the myth, Zeus falls in love with Europa, a Phoenician princess. To seduce her, he takes the form of a gentle white bull and takes her to the island of Crete. As a result of their romance, she gave birth several months later to a son, Minos, who became king of Crete. To establish the legitimacy of his reign, Minos asked Poseidon, the god of the sea, to send him a bull that he promised to sacrifice in his honor. Poseidon duly sent a magnificent white bull that emerged from the waves. But at the time of the sacrifice, Minos, fascinated by the beauty of the animal, decided to spare its life. Angered by this insult, Poseidon inspired Minos's wife, Pasiphae, with a wild desire for the bull. Pasiphae asked the Athenian inventor Daedalus to design a disguise so that she could approach the beast. He created a hollow cow of life size, and Pasiphae could enter it to appear as a real cow to this magnificent bull. The result of their union: a hybrid child, half man and half bull, named Asterion. Better known as the Minotaur, he was raised by his mother during his early years, but grew quickly and became fierce. On the advice of the oracle, he was imprisoned by Minos in a complex labyrinth designed by the same Daedalus. Meanwhile, in Athens, a young prince, Theseus, was old enough to go on an adventure. A few years earlier, the Athenians had killed one of Minos's sons, Androgeus. In retaliation, Minos had besieged Athens and, victorious, had demanded, as a tribute, the sending every nine years of seven young Athenian boys and seven young Athenian girls to serve as food for the Minotaur. Theseus volunteered in the hope of defeating the Minotaur. When the Athenians arrived on the island of Crete, Ariadne, daughter of King Minos, fell for Theseus. Before entering the labyrinth, and against the promise of marrying her, she gave him a ball of thread (an idea from Daedalus himself) so that he could find his way back. Ariadne remained outside, holding one end of the thread, while Theseus walked into the labyrinth, the thread unraveling as he went. When he found the Minotaur, he fought it to death, freeing the other young Athenians. Everyone followed the thread left in a safe place. Finally free, Theseus left for Athens, taking Ariadne with him. But Theseus abandoned the princess on the island of Naxos before resuming his journey to Athens with his sister, Phaedra, whom he married. Aegeus, Theseus's father, was waiting for his son's return from a promontory. Before Theseus's departure, the two men had established a code: if Theseus was victorious, the sails of the ship would be white; if not, they would be black. But Theseus forgot to change them and, seeing them black, Aegeus jumped into the sea, which, from then on, bears his name. This story, as it has been transmitted over the centuries, evolved slowly, transforming again and again over the centuries. The legend of the Minotaur has circulated in the Greek world since ancient times, but it appears more often in the earliest visual artworks than in literary works. Although there are clear references to Theseus, Minos, and Ariadne in the Iliad (written around the 8th century BC), Homer never names the Minotaur. A fragment from the poet Sappho of Lesbos reveals that the story of the tribute that Minos demanded from the Athenians was already being told at the beginning of the 6th century BC. The Greek historian Herodotus, from the 5th century BC, mentions Minos, but not his monstrous son-in-law. The stories of Theseus, the hero of Athens, were popular, but writers tended to focus on other achievements of Theseus, including his descent to the underworld or his adventures with the Amazons. The Minotaur is largely absent from popular stories around the figure of Theseus during this period. Present on pottery, metalwork, and other decorative arts, the figure of the Minotaur was, by contrast, a very popular subject for other artists of this era. An amphora from Tinos, in the Cyclades, dated around 670-660 BC, is the support of the earliest known representation of the battle that opposed the Minotaur and Theseus. Unearthed at Olympia, bronze shield straps dated to the middle of the 7th century BC also show this legendary battle. Another amphora from the Cyclades islands, dated to the middle of the 7th century BC, even reverses the popular representation of the Minotaur and shows it with a bull's body and a man's head. It depicts another detail that would become central to the story: one of the young people accompanying Theseus holds a ball of thread, the object that allowed the Athenian hero to escape the labyrinth after killing the beast. Almost every representation of the monster shows it fighting with Theseus. References to the Minotaur begin to appear later in Greek literature, such as in the play The Cretans by Euripides from the 5th century BC. Only a few fragments of this play remain: the story reveals Pasiphae's experience and her conflict with Minos at the time of the Minotaur's birth. Another story telling the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur comes from the Bibliotheca, a massive compilation of myths and Greek stories. For centuries, scholars dated the work to the 2nd century BC, but new research places its creation much later, in the 1st or 2nd century AD. Attributed to an unknown author whom scholars call Pseudo-Apollodorus, the Bibliotheca covers the myths of creation, the rise of the gods, and the mortal heroes and heroines. The entire story of Minos, Pasiphae, Daedalus, Theseus, and the Minotaur is told with great detail, providing a solid foundation for the stories that followed. Many stories around the Minotaur can also be found in Roman sources. One of the most detailed is from the work Parallel Lives by Plutarch (2nd century AD), which dedicates an entire chapter to Theseus. Plutarch compares Theseus, founder of Athens, to Romulus, founder of Rome. The Metamorphoses, an epic poem written by Ovid in 8 AD, is another popular account of the Minotaur legend, with many details on Minos's conquests across Greece before the construction of the labyrinth. For the Greeks of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, Theseus was celebrated as a national hero of Athens. Understanding the place the Minotaur occupied in their imagination requires a deeper knowledge of the distant past of Crete. Crete became a commercial power in the Mediterranean around 3000 BC. By the middle of the second millennium BC, it was at the center of a vast commercial network with Egypt, Syria, the islands of the Aegean Sea, and mainland Greece. The Minoans established colonies throughout the Mediterranean along their trade routes, and they brought their culture with them. The language, arts, and textiles of ancient Crete were widely disseminated and well received. The colonies on Greek islands reveal that the colonies were often set up in a Minoan style. Mycenae, located about 120 kilometers west of Athens, not only enthusiastically adopted Cretan ceramics, but also the Minoan language. After 1450 BC, the dominance of Crete began to decline, as the Mycenaean Greeks began to dominate the Eastern Mediterranean. Their written language, known to scholars as Linear B, was adapted from the Minoan language and is now known as an ancient form of Greek. From 1900 to 1903, the British archaeologist Arthur Evans, thinking that Mycenaean Greece was strongly influenced by Crete, excavated the island and uncovered a royal palace on the site of Knossos and many artifacts featuring bulls. He designated the ancient Cretan culture as "Minoan" in reference to the great mythical king Minos, son of Zeus and father-in-law of the Minotaur. The name Minos does not seem to be a mythical invention. When the tablets found at Knossos were deciphered, scholars were able to read the word "Minos." According to historians, Minos was not the name of a single king, but the title given to kings in general or rather to princes who were consorts of powerful queens. Historians now consider that Minoan power and culture reached their peak around 1600 BC. Decorated with frescoes funded by the trade of luxury goods, magnificent structures from this period, dedicated to religious and administrative activities, were uncovered by Evans during his excavation of Knossos. The buildings were covered with vibrant artistic forms that reflected a cultural respect for bulls: frescoes and figurines dated from 1700 to 1400 BC show characters jumping over bulls. This rite may have been practiced during sacred ceremonies and sacrifices to the gods. Symbols of fertility in many religions, bulls were ritually killed using a double-edged axe or labrys, an emblem of royal power. The Minotaur's prison, the labyrinth, also finds deep roots in Minoan material culture, but theories differ regarding its origin. As no archaeological remains of a labyrinth have ever been found in Crete, some researchers have suggested that the term could be synonymous with the palace itself. The concept of a labyrinth could come from a vast complex of rooms. One of the proposed etymological meanings for the name labyrinth is derived from labrys, this axe by which animal sacrifice was observed. Another theory is that the conception of the mythical labyrinth was born from a structure that was not at all a labyrinth, but a dance floor. Homer describes in the Iliad a place dedicated to dancing where the aristocratic youth of Crete gathered, designed by Daedalus - again, him. Perhaps the mosaic of this dance hall evolved over the stories to become the sinister labyrinth. For the Greeks of the 6th and 5th centuries BC, Crete was linked to the distant memory of an ancient power, once respected, admired, and feared. A power finally defeated, as reflected in the myth of the Minotaur subdued by Theseus. During the classical era, Theseus was a local hero, a prince who had brought glory to Athens through his many adventures. Theseus was adopted by the Athenians as a symbol of the city. At the same time, the main rival of Athens was Persia. The defeat of the Persian navy at Salamis in 480 BC inaugurated a period of military and commercial expansion for Athens. During this period, representations of Theseus and the Minotaur on pottery significantly increased. Some scholars think that artists used the Minotaur as a symbol: Crete was the enemy of the ancient world - Persia was the enemy of the modern world. Theseus represented the glory of Athens as he subdued the monster to free his city from Cretan domination.