Minotaur
 |
Depiction of Theseus slaying the Minotaur
on a vase
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One of the more unlikely conceptions of Greek mythology, the offspring of
Pasiphaë and a bull, for which she had developed a passion, gratified
through the contrivance of Poseidon. The queen placed herself in an artificial
cow made by Daedalus, and so became the mother of the monster, half-man
half-bull, a man with a bull's head. Minos,
the husband of Pasiphaë, shut him up in the Cnossian Labyrinth, and
there fed him with the seven youths and seven maidens, whom Athens was obliged
t supply at fixed periods, as a tribute, until Theseus, with the help of
Ariadne, slew the monster.
Related entry
• Theseus
and the Minotaur (Encyclopedia of Science)
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