FICTION READING - THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR - the story of Theseus and the Minotaur shows how Greek mythology used the culture of textiles in its storytelling.

THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR

Asterios had died childless, and because Minos was not of his blood, he had no automatic right to the throne. Nevertheless he declared to his rivals that the gods supported his claim, and to prove it he said that whatever he prayed for would be fulfilled. He then called on Poseidon to send him a bull from the sea, promising to sacrifice it when it appeared. The god answered his prayer. A magnificent white bull came out of the sea, and Minos won his kingdom.

Unfortunately the bull was so beautiful that Minos could not bear to kill it, so he put it with his herds for breeding and sacrificed another in its place. This broken vow angered the sea-god so much that he inflicted on Pasiphae an ungovernable passion for the bull. Nothing would satisfy her but to mate with the beast - and she had just the man staying in the place who could help her to do do.

This man was a brilliant inventor and master-craftsman Daidalos ...

When she told him of her lust for the bull, he fashioned a hollow wooden cow, realistically covered with hide, and set in a meadow. Pasiphae crouched inside the cow, waiting until the bull, completely taken in by so deft an imitation, coupled with her. The fruit of their union was named Asterios but was better known as the Minotaur ... a monster with a human body and the head and horns of a bull ...

... Minos was so appalled by his wife's deed and her monstrous offspring that he commissioned Daidalos to build a vast underground maze, so cleverly devised that anyone going in would be quite unable to find the way out again: the Labyrinth. In here the Minotaur could be shut away for ever.

Time passed. The Minotaur grew, fed on human flesh ...

... an oracle told the Athenians that to be saved they must grant Minos whatever satisfaction he demanded. he chose a regular tribute of seven youths and seven girls to be sent periodically to Crete ... as food for the Minotaur.

Two payments of tribute had been made, and the third was now due, when Theseus set off for Crete as one of the Minotaur's offerings ...

Luckily for Theseus, Minos's daughter Ariadne fell in love with him ... Daidalos, the builder of the Labyrinth, was still living in the palace, so she begged him to tell her how to Theseus could escape if he survived his encounter with the Minotaur. Daidalos gave her a clew, a large ball of thread, which would guide him back to the outside world again. Theseus tied one end of this clew firmly to the entrance, then unwound the thread as he wended his way into the innermost depths of the maze.

There he found the Minotaur, They fought, and the Minotaur died ... Theseus escaped from the Labyrinth by following his thread back to the entrance, then sailed away from Crete ... he took Ariadne with him, for he had promised her marriage in return for her invaluable help.

Yet it did not happen thus, for when they came to the island of Dia, later called Naxos, Theseus abandoned her. (March, 2009, pp.245-51).

REFERENCE

March, J. (2009 [2008] ) The Penguin book of classical myths. London: Penguin.