Record #102
Minotaur
A bull-human monster imprisoned within the labyrinth and fed on human sacrifice.
Original Text
The idea of a house built so that people could become lost in it is perhaps more unusual than that of a man with a bull’s head, but both ideas go well together and the image of the labyrinth fits with the image of the Minotaur. It is equally fitting that in the centre of a monstrous house there be a monstrous inhabitant.
The Minotaur, half bull and half man, was born of the furious passion of Pasiphae, Queen of Crete, for a white bull that Neptune brought out of the sea. Daedalus, who invented the artifice that carried the Queen’s unnatural desires to gratification, built the labyrinth destined to confine and keep hidden her monstrous son. The Minotaur fed on human flesh and for its nourishment the King of Crete imposed on the city of Athens a yearly tribute of seven young men and seven maidens. Theseus resolved to deliver his country from this burden when it fell to his lot to be sacrificed to the Minotaur’s hunger. Ariadne, the King’s daughter, gave him a thread so that he could trace his way out of the windings of the labyrinth’s corridors; the hero killed the Minotaur and was able to escape from the maze.
Ovid in a line that is meant to be clever speaks of the Semibovemquevirum,semivirumquebovem (‘the man half bull, the bull half man’). Dante, who was familiar with the writings of the ancients but not with their coins or monu- ments, imagined the Minotaur with a man’s head and a bull’s body (Inferno, XII, I-3O).
The worship of the bull and of the two-headed axe (whose name was labrysand may have been at the root of the word labyrinth) was typical of pre-Hellenic religions, which held sacred bullfights. Human forms with bull heads figured, to judge by wall paintings, in the demonology of Crete. Most likely the Greek fable of the Minotaur is a late and clumsy version of far older myths, the shadow of other dreams still more full of horror.
The Minotaur, half bull and half man, was born of the furious passion of Pasiphae, Queen of Crete, for a white bull that Neptune brought out of the sea. Daedalus, who invented the artifice that carried the Queen’s unnatural desires to gratification, built the labyrinth destined to confine and keep hidden her monstrous son. The Minotaur fed on human flesh and for its nourishment the King of Crete imposed on the city of Athens a yearly tribute of seven young men and seven maidens. Theseus resolved to deliver his country from this burden when it fell to his lot to be sacrificed to the Minotaur’s hunger. Ariadne, the King’s daughter, gave him a thread so that he could trace his way out of the windings of the labyrinth’s corridors; the hero killed the Minotaur and was able to escape from the maze.
Ovid in a line that is meant to be clever speaks of the Semibovemquevirum,semivirumquebovem (‘the man half bull, the bull half man’). Dante, who was familiar with the writings of the ancients but not with their coins or monu- ments, imagined the Minotaur with a man’s head and a bull’s body (Inferno, XII, I-3O).
The worship of the bull and of the two-headed axe (whose name was labrysand may have been at the root of the word labyrinth) was typical of pre-Hellenic religions, which held sacred bullfights. Human forms with bull heads figured, to judge by wall paintings, in the demonology of Crete. Most likely the Greek fable of the Minotaur is a late and clumsy version of far older myths, the shadow of other dreams still more full of horror.