Pro tip character designers
if you're struggling to come up with a monster design Try just mashing random animals together Satisfaction guaranteed
Works every time! Ancient Greece was certainly a big fan of the concept as basically every monster in the mythos is either regular person or animal with a non-standard number of limbs, heads, or eyes Or two or more animals mashed together
it's usually not even explained why they're like that. Why's the offspring of Poseidon and medusa a horse with wings?
Who knows! Why do Typhon and Echidna,
two mostly humanoid, somewhat snakey monsters produce several multi-headed dogs
and one perfect combo of goat, snake, and lioness? Primordial genetics is funky like that. And Jeez, the Minotaur?
What unholy union could have made a half bull, half dude? Well... Actually... That one is pretty straightforward.
But you're not gonna like it Now contextually the Minotaur is a kinda mysterious figure Because the Minoan civilisation he's derived from is pretty unknown in a lot of ways It was a powerful bronze-age civilization that flourished on the island of Crete
from 3000 BCE to about 1100 BCE And it's not 100% what caused it to fall apart
but it *super* fell apart So hard we didn't even know it existed until 1900 We have tonnes of their relics and architecture and stuff and also a lot of their writing But unfortunately we can't understand any of it Yup it's all in linear A and mysterious hieroglyphs and we can't read any of them So we kinda have no idea what they were up to But because of their extensive trade network
plenty of civilizations we can understand were influenced by them And we have lots of myths and stories and maybe even some gods
that seem to have been derived from the largely unknown Minoan religion Now basically everything about that is pure speculation But if there's one thing we can say with confidence
it's that bulls show up a lot, not minotaurs though While bull-headed humans show up in Greek art about Crete
minoan art itself only ever shows regular bulls The Minotaur is a specifically Greek story about the ancient Minoans Referencing their widespread bull symbolism by peppering in
bulls and bull accessories at regular intervals It also frames the mythologized Minoan civilization
in a generally antagonistic role Possibly because of all the forced oceanic trade,
also known as piracy So basically it's biased filtered and offset from the source
by several centuries But we have nothing else to go on
because we can't read their language Let this be a PSA
Don't let languages die, kids You're gonna really annoy scholars in like 3000 years So Anyway
The tale of the Minotaur begins with king Minos of Crete The son of Zeus and Europa
So we're already off to a roaring start in the "functional relationships" department In order to prove that he's a bad enough dude to rule Crete
instead of his brothers Rhadamanthys or Sarpedon Minos calls in a favour from Poseidon
who sends him a beautiful snow-white bull With the understanding that Minos is gonna
sacrifice the bull to him afterwards as thanks Everyone is super impressed with this steak in the making
and Minos becomes king But he's just so impressed with this bull that he refuses to sacrifice it And swaps it out for a way lamer, super less hot bull Poseidon is enraged by this slight so he slips Aphrodite a twenty
to get her to make Minos' wife Pasiphaë fall in love with the bull What could go wrong? But unlike Pasiphaë, the Cretan bull has very high standards First of all, being a quadruped is a must
Second of all, you must also be a cow Fortunately(?) from a certain point of view Acclaimed architect, inventor, and future part time aeronaut Daedalus
happens to be on Crete at the time So Pasiphaë commissions him to make a hollow, wooden cow suit
for... recreational purposes Daedalus consummate professional that he is
takes the commission with zero outwards judging -and I'm just gonna skip over this part, because c'mon, we get it Oh hey where'd that thing come from? So the Minotaur, as the child-abomination of a truly Beastly relationship
doesn't really have a place in the natural order of things Which unfortunately means he can't really eat anything besides people, tragic Rather than, I dunno killing him, or letting him starve or something
Minos consults the Oracle at Delphi Who tells him to build that sucker a lavish basement apartment
and then throw away the key Daedalus scores another commission when Minos asks him to build an
absolutely massive labyrinth for the Minotaur Then, to make sure nobody learns how the labyrinth works Minos locks Daedalus up in a tower with Icarus, 5 tonnes of supplies,
and every tool ever made That oughta hold them But that's a story for uh,
4 years ago apparently So anyway
With the Minotaur functionally imprisoned in a
really big impossibly complicated maze That fixes the potential rampage problem,
but still leaves the whole food issue kind of up in the air But what's the point of being a king if you can't be kind of a dick about it? The exact justifications vary from telling to telling, but
long story short Minos demands a human sacrifice Of 14 young Athenians every few years to keep the Minotaur fed This goes smoothly for the first couple of sacrifices but
on the third go round this whole Minotaur human sacrifice situation Draws the attention of a spunky young hero aiming to prove himself! Specifically Theseus, Athens' founder hero and
official best boy Which really reflects more poorly on Athens than anything else Anywho Theseus brings a big cool boat and plenty of gumption but
not much in the way of a plan So it's lucky for him that Minos' daughter Ariadne takes
one look at this new cute boy and goes full head over heels for him Possibly because she doesn't get out much Now Ariadne is very familiar with the labyrinth,
in fact in one early citation of this story mentioned in the Iliad It suggested the original version of Daedalus' labyrinth was
built specifically for Ariadne as a dancing path,
with no Minotaur involved Mythologically Ariadne go way back,
maybe even further back than the Minotaur And some people theorize Ariadne as originally some kind of
Cretan goddess known as "The Mistress of the Labyrinth" Which is dope as all hell, but not what we're here for Ariadne helps Theseus out by giving him a ball of thread
called a clew that'll let him retrace his path out of the labyrinth And Theseus makes his way down with her guidance,
eventually finding the Minotaur and engaging it in Totally Rad Combat Until he manages to decapitate it,
You're welcome Minos! And so ends the tale of the Minotaur Surprisingly, well I think it's surprising anyway Minos doesn't seem to happy to have his monster problem fixed and
Theseus and Ariadne book it out Crete along with the other Athenians But for whatever reason, later ret-conned as divine intervention but
originally just kind of a huge dick move Theseus totally ditches Ariadne and leaves her alone on the shores of
Naxos whilst she sleeps Fortunately when she wakes up her grief and betrayal is mitigated somewhat by
the fact that Dionysus himself shows up to help her out And also maybe propose or something
'cos he thinks she's really cute And they end up getting married and
living very happy immortal lives together up on Olympus While in contrast Theseus' love life goes...
Not well, what with all the kidnapping and personally pissing of hades and such Yeesh, javelin dodged Moral of the story?
Probably uh... Keep your promises, be true to your responsibilities and uhh..
Oh yeah! STOP BONING ANIMALS Jeez guys (Red sings "I'm all out of love", by Air Supply)
