King Minos
The Tyrant King Who Built the Labyrinth
⚡ Quick Facts
Son of Zeus and Europa
Zeus, disguised as a magnificent white bull, carried the Phoenician princess Europa across the sea to Crete. From their union came three sons: Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon. Minos would grow to become the most powerful king in the Aegean, building a naval empire that dominated the Mediterranean.
When Minos competed with his brothers for the throne of Crete, he prayed to Poseidon to send a bull from the sea as a sign of divine favor, promising to sacrifice it afterward. Poseidon sent a magnificent white bull — but Minos found the creature so beautiful that he kept it and sacrificed an inferior animal instead.
The Curse and the Minotaur
Poseidon's punishment was creative and terrible: he caused Minos' wife Pasiphaë to fall madly in love with the bull. She enlisted Daedalus to build a hollow wooden cow in which she could mate with the animal. The result was the Minotaur — a creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull.
Horrified but unable to kill the creature (it was partly divine), Minos had Daedalus construct the Labyrinth beneath his palace at Knossos to contain it. After his son Androgeus was killed in Athens, Minos demanded a tribute of seven young men and seven young women sent to Crete every nine years to feed the Minotaur — until Theseus volunteered and slew the beast.
Judge of the Dead
Despite his tyranny in life, Minos was considered so just that after death he was appointed one of three judges in the Underworld, alongside his brother Rhadamanthys and Aeacus. Together they evaluated the souls of the dead and assigned them to their final destinations: the Elysian Fields for the virtuous, or Tartarus for the wicked.