Mythology Book

77

Theseus defeats the Minotaur in a

scene on a kylix (drinking cup) from

ca.420 bce. Decorated with Theseus’s

heroic deeds, the cup is signed by the

Greek vase painter Aison.

See also: The many affairs of Zeus 42–47 ■ Apollo and the Oracle of Delphi 58–59 ■ Daedalus and Icarus 76–77 ■

Mithras slays the bull 118–19 ■ The epic of Gilgamesh 190–97

ANCIENT GREECE

She begged Daedalus to help her

lover in his quest. To ensure that

Theseus would find his way out

of the maze, Daedalus gave her

a ball of wool for him to attach at

the entrance to the maze and then

unwind as he went deeper in.

After an epic struggle, he killed the

bull and followed Ariadne’s thread

back to safety.

Hasty exit

With Ariadne at his side, Theseus

set sail for Athens, but Athena

intervened, ordering him to leave

Ariadne on the island of Naxos. In

his distress at abandoning his

lover, Theseus forgot to change the

sail to white. Waiting on a cliff top,

Aegeus saw the black-sailed ship

return and in his grief—believing

his son to be dead—hurled himself

into the sea below. The sea has

been the “Aegean” ever since. ■

The bull

None held the bull in higher

regard than the people who

inhabited Crete for several

centuries during the 2nd

millennium bce. In a sense, King

Minos, the mythical first king

of Crete, was a half-bull like the

Minotaur: his father, Zeus, had

taken the form of a bull to rape

his mother, Europa.

The bull cult was at the

center of Minoan culture: art

depicting bulls abounds in the

palace complex of Knossos,

including one in which athletes

This Minoan rhyton (a carved

libation vessel in the shape of an

animal’s head) from ca.1500 bce was

found in a palace in Knossos.

leap over a bull. Excavated in

the early 20th century by British

archaeologist Arthur Evans, the

palace is the most elaborate of

several such complexes on the

island of Crete. Evans called the

culture “Minoan” on account of

the culture’s obsession with the

bull, and due to the mazelike

architecture of the excavated

royal palace, which Evans

referred to as the Labyrinth.

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