King Minos

The Minotaur

King Minos

• He and his two brothers were raised by Asterion, king of Crete
• When Asterion died, he chose Minos to succeed him, but a fight broke out between the brothers.
• Some sources say that Asterion banished them.
• Minos prayed to Poseidon to send him an offering as a sign of his kingship.
• When Poseidon answered, Minos kept the bull for himself and sacrificed a less beautiful one
• As punishment, Poseidon made Pasiphaë fall in love with the bull
• Pasiphaë and the bull bore the Minotaur.

Theseus and the Labyrinth

• King Minos ordered Daedalus to construct a palace to hide the Minotaur, and Daedalus built Labyrinth.
• Minos imprisoned him for knowing the secrets
• When his son Androgeos was murdered by the jealous contestants after he won the games in Athens, King Minos went to war.
• Athens and Crete made a treaty, that every nine years, 7 young men and maidens must be sent into the labyrinth.
• Theseus volunteered, and with the aid of Ariadne, he destroyed the minotaur.

King Minos

• It is not certain if Minos was his real name, or a Cretan word for "king".
• Ruled three generations before the Trojan war
• Reigned from the palace for nine years
• Zeus advised him on the legislation of the island
• Most ancient man known to build a navy
• Son of Zeus and Phoenician princess Euphora
• He had two brothers: Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon.

Minos besieges Megara

The Wives of Minos

Sources

• By his wife Pasiphaë, daughter of sun god Helios, he had 7 children, including Ariadne, Androgeus, and Phaedra.
• By the nymph Paria, he had four sons named Eurymedon, Nephalion, Chryses, Philoaus
• By Dexithea, one of the Telchines, he had a son called Euxanthius.

• King Nisus of Megara, protected his city by keeping a lock of red hair hidden in his own white hair.
• King Minos besieged Megara, but could not overtake it, because the lock of red hair was still in place.
• Scylla, the daughter of Nisus, fell in love with Minos, and to prove her love for him she cut the lock of red hair from her fathers head, which killed Nisus, and the city of Magara fell.
• When Minos found out that Scylla had been responsible for her father's death, he killed her.
• She was reincarnated as a seabird, to be pursued by her father Nisus, who had been turned into a sea eagle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minos#Minos_in_art

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/m/minos.html

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/Minos.html

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/watts-the-minotaur-n01634

http://www.bestofalltopics.com/scylla-of-greek-mythology/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Judgment_(Michelangelo)

http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/work.xq?workid=but812&java=no

http://www.etaletaculture.fr/mythologie/dedale-et-icare-quand-le-pere-deconne-cest-le-fiston-qui-trinque/

The Death of Minos

After Death

• Minos went to cities asking a riddle to find Daedalus.
• He would ask if the spiral sea shell could be strung through.
• Minos found him at Camicus, Sicily, in King Cocalus's court.
• Minos demanded Daedalus be handed back, but King Cocalus made him bathe first.
• The Kings daughters, with the help of Daedalus, scalded Minos to death with boiling water.

• Minos became a judge of the death in the underworld along side Aeacus, king in the island of Aegina, and Radamanthus,his brother.
• Rhadamanthus judged the souls of Asians, Aeacus judged Europeans and Minos had the deciding vote.