Minotaur

The tale of the Minotaur

Minos, king of Crete, asked the sea god Poseidon for a sign that he was the rightful king. Poseidon sent a magnificent white bull rising from the sea, to be sacrificed back to him. But the bull was so beautiful that Minos kept it and sacrificed an ordinary one instead.

Poseidon's revenge was cruel. He made Minos's wife, Queen Pasiphaë, fall in love with the bull. The child she bore was a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull: Asterion, the Minotaur, the "bull of Minos". As he grew, he grew wild and ate human flesh.

The Labyrinth

Minos could not kill him, so he hid him. He ordered the brilliant inventor Daedalus to build a prison no one could escape: the Labyrinth, a maze of corridors so twisted that Daedalus himself barely found his way out. The Minotaur was locked at its centre. As the game's Minotaur says, Daedalus built the maze to hold him, and forgot he had nowhere else to go.

When Minos's son was killed in Athens, Minos made war on the city and demanded a terrible tribute. Every nine years Athens had to send seven young men and seven young women to Crete, to be sent into the Labyrinth and devoured by the Minotaur.

Theseus and the thread

The third time the tribute came due, the Athenian prince Theseus volunteered to go with them, promising to kill the beast. In Crete the king's daughter Ariadne fell in love with him. She gave him a sword and a ball of thread, a trick Daedalus had taught her. Theseus tied one end of the thread at the entrance and unwound it as he went deeper into the maze.

In the dark heart of the Labyrinth he met the Minotaur and killed it in a fierce fight. Then he followed the thread back to the light, leading the young Athenians to safety, and sailed away with Ariadne. But the story did not end happily. Theseus abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos. And he forgot his promise to his father, King Aegeus, to change his black sails to white if he lived. Seeing the black sails, Aegeus threw himself into the sea, which has been called the Aegean ever since.

Minotaur in Battle of Myths

The Minotaur is a cost 2 Greek guardian and warrior. His ability, Bull Rush, gores his target for heavy damage and stuns it, then hardens his hide with armor and resist. With every Greek hero he shares Glory: whenever an enemy falls, the Greeks grow stronger and heal.

Did you know?

• The great palace of Knossos on Crete, with its maze of rooms and its frescoes of young people leaping over bulls, may have inspired the legend.
• Daedalus later escaped from Crete with his son Icarus on wings of feathers and wax.