The Legend Of The Minotaur Explained

In 1995, back when the WWE still went by the WWF, the wrestling conglomerate unveiled their take on the Minotaur myth: "Mantaur," a human-animal hybrid who wore an unwieldy, shaggy bull head that looked like a badly botched attempt at taxidermy. Any kid who witnessed that bovine debacle as their introduction to the legend of the Minotaur would have understandably wondered how this walking pile of cow pies didn't simply get laughed to death and promptly forgotten by the ancient Greeks.

But there's a lot more to the Minotaur than just bad wrestling.

The term "Minotaur" is derived from the name Minos combined with the Greek word for "bull," which is "taurus." According to Greek myth, Minos was the King of Crete - and his wife, Queen Pasiphae, had a fling with a magic bull, resulting in a child with a bull head and a human body. And thus, the Minotaur!

We know what you're thinking: whaaaaaaat?!

Well, here's the backstory. Minos, who was the son of Zeus and a human woman named Europa, was raised by the King of Crete. When the old king died, Minos vied for the vacant throne, and to prove he was worthy, he prayed to the sea god, Poseidon. Poseidon responded by creating a bull from the sea, not to be confused with a manatee, which is a "sea cow," or the Mantaur, which is stupid.

Now, the deal was that Minos was supposed to then sacrifice the magic sea bull to Poseidon. But Minos reneged and kept the bull as a pet. In response, Poseidon thought since he made a magic bull, why not use magic to make Minos's wife make a magic baby with that bull? We'll skip over the details, but suffice it to say that by the time things were done, she had given birth to the Minotaur.

The Minotaur grew and grew, until he could only keep growing by eating people. This was bad.

So his step-dad Minos devised a plan to keep the lid on things by building an elaborate cattle ranch for one. Minos enslaved the builder Daedalus and his son Icarus and forced them to devise and construct the fabled Labyrinth, where they could hide the Minotaur away from the general public so the wrong people wouldn't get eaten. It was kind of like Maze Runner.

Icarus and Daedalus then fled Crete with the aid of wax wings. Icarus flew too close to the sun, though, and his blunder dawned on him far too late to avert disaster. The wings melted, and he fell into the sea and drowned. However, Daedalus escaped and would eventually get his own revenge. More on that later!

Meanwhile, there's that whole "don't eat the wrong people" thing. See, Minos figured there were some right people to eat - namely, Athenians. After one of Minos's human children died due to Athenian shenanigans, Athens was forced to atone for that death by sending a stream of virgins to Crete for the Minotaur to eat.

This sounds like a pretty crappy deal, right? Well, eventually the prince of Athens, Theseus, decided to offer himself up in place of those poor virgins. When he arrived on Crete, though, Minos's daughter Ariadne fell in love with him, so she devised a plan to help him win.

Ariadne consulted Daedalus - you remember, the guy who had built the Labyrinth and who now wanted revenge for the death of his son Icarus. Daedalus had the simple suggestion of using a ball of string to trace his path in the Labyrinth to keep from getting lost. Theseus followed this advice, found his way through the Labyrinth to where the Minotaur waited, and then killed him.

And thus, Theseus returned home to a hero's welcome! Or…well, he could have, except he forgot to use the pre-arranged signal to show the Athenians he hadn't been eaten and was in fact returning alive. So when Theseus's boat sailed into the harbor without showing the signal, the king assumed his son had been eaten by the Minotaur and in a fit of anguish threw himself off a cliff to his death. OOPS!

It was the biggest fail this side of… Mantaur. And now you finally know where Mantaur got it from.

#Minotaur #Mythology

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