Minos

Minos is the king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa, who shuts the Minotaur in the Labyrinth and after death becomes a judge of the dead. Greek memory split over him: the just lawgiver who ruled the seas, or the tyrant who fed young Athenians to a monster.

Raised in Crete with his brother Rhadamanthus, he claims the throne as a gift of the gods and asks Poseidon for a sign, a bull from the sea that he promises to sacrifice. He keeps the animal, the Cretan Bull, and kills another in its place. In revenge Poseidon makes Minos' wife Pasiphae, daughter of Helios, desire the bull; Daedalus builds her a hollow wooden cow, and she gives birth to the Minotaur, which Minos hides in the Labyrinth that Daedalus designs (Apollodorus). Homer calls him the confidant of Zeus, and Thucydides names him the first ruler to master the sea with a navy.

When his son Androgeus is killed in Attica, Minos makes war on Athens. To end the famine and plague that follow, the Athenians agree to send seven youths and seven maidens to the Minotaur, yearly in Virgil, every nine years in Ovid and Plutarch. The tribute ends when Theseus kills the beast with the help of Minos' daughter Ariadne. Daedalus, who had aided both Pasiphae and Theseus, flies from Crete with his son Icarus, and Minos hunts him to Sicily. At Camicus, the court of King Cocalus, the king's daughters kill Minos in his bath, scalding him with boiling water in some versions (Apollodorus); Herodotus also records his violent end there.

After death he judges the dead. Odysseus sees him in the underworld holding a golden sceptre; Plato gives him the final word over Rhadamanthus and Aeacus; Dante sets him at the entrance to the second circle of Hell, coiling his tail to show each soul how far down it must go. Plutarch noted that Athenian tragedy made him a villain, while Hesiod called him the most kingly of kings. The archaeologist Arthur Evans, who excavated Knossos from 1900, popularised the name Minoan for Bronze Age Crete.