Theseus asked to be sent as a sacrificial tribute to King Minos

Posted in Ancient History, Historical articles, History, Legend, Myth on Monday, 9 December 2013

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This edited article about Crete first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 483 published on 17 April 1971.

Theseus kills the Minotaur, picture, image, illustration

Theseus kills the Minotaur by Canova

History often lies hidden beneath layers of legend, and archaeologists have now discovered that many ancient tales are based on fact. The story of Theseus and the Minotaur hid the most dramatic secret of them all.

Deep beneath the palace of Knossos, where ruled mighty Minos king of Crete, lay a great maze called the Labyrinth. It was so huge, so complex that anyone who entered it at once became utterly lost. But no one ever starved to death in the Labyrinth – none survived long enough for that – for this maze was the home of a fearsome monster, half-man, half-bull, called the Minotaur.

Poseidon, God of the earthquakes and oceans, sent this monster to punish King Minos for his greed, and the only food it would eat was human flesh. So, every year, seven youths and seven maidens were dragged from Athens to be hurled one by one into the Labyrinth and there devoured by the Minotaur.

Athens was forced to send these victims as a tribute to Minos, who was the most powerful ruler in all Greece. Then one year Theseus, son of the King of Athens, determined to end this horrible sacrifice.

“Send me to Crete, O my father,” he insisted. After much argument, his father sadly agreed. The black-sailed ships sailed away with their cargo – but Theseus went cheerfully.

Once in Knossos, he soon won the love of Ariadne, daughter of King Minos, and it was she who ran to old Daedalus, the builder of the Labyrinth.

“Daedalus, All Wise,” wept Ariadne. “How can I save young Theseus from the Minotaur?”

Old Daedalus thought a while, then replied, “He must unwind a ball of string as he goes into the maze. If the Gods allow him to escape the Minotaur, he will then be able to follow this string back to the entrance.” Truly, Daedalus was cunning and wise!

On the terrible day that Theseus was to be thrown into the Labyrinth, Ariadne gave him a sword which he hid beneath his shirt. Into the maze of twisting passages Theseus walked boldly, until he found the Minotaur. Long they fought and hard, but Theseus slew the Minotaur with Ariadne’s sharp sword and, gathering up the string, walked back to the gate where the fair princess awaited him.

This is part of the legend of Theseus. But is it only a legend? For hundreds of years, people thought it merely a tale with no truth in it. Long ago, St. Paul heard it and warned his friend Titus that “the Cretans are always liars.”

But in 1870, the great German archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, excavated ancient Troy and astonished the world by finding the actual city described by Homer. A new and undreamed of civilisation was soon revealed by the German’s patient digging. It was the age when those old legends were fact, a time so distant that even the Romans hardly believed it had existed.

Only a few years later, Arthur Evans, one-time journalist turned archaeologist, thrust his spade into an olive grove in central Crete. On this spot, the peasants said, Knossos, palace of King Minos, had once stood.

Within hours, Evans and his workmen discovered walls and passages, pottery and painting. It was Knossos all right, and Evans had stumbled on the very heart of this strange new civilisation.

It was unlike anything ever found before and was fantastically ancient. The enormous labyrinth-like ruins spread for acres and acres. There were wall-paintings showing warriors and animals – huge ferocious bulls. These bulls kept on turning up, on pottery and gold cups and even as beautifully carved animals’ heads. Bulls were clearly sacred to the ancient Minoans who built Knossos – the reason was soon obvious!

One day the workmen were terrified by an earthquake as they dug into Knossos. Evans suddenly remembered another old legend which said that Crete rested on the horns of a huge bull beneath the sea. This monstrous creature sometimes tossed its head in anger and made the entire island shake.

These rambling ruins were surely the Labyrinth of legend. Here too were the mighty bulls from which the mythical Minotaur had sprung. But what about Theseus? Perhaps the Cretan Minoans really had once demanded slaves from Athens, they might have wanted them for the dangerous game of bull-leaping that they painted on the walls of Knossos. Did the Athenians eventually defeat their Cretan oppressors? Was Theseus the warrior-hero who slew the Cretan tyrant Minos, and was this king Minos the real Minotaur of history?

A few centuries after the destruction of Knossos the whole life-loving, artistic Minoan civilisation of Crete and Greece collapsed in ruins before a wave of barbarian invaders known as the Dorians. These primitive tribesmen must have been amazed, perhaps even frightened by the vast ruins they found on Crete.

They probably invented the Labyrinth, the great maze, to explain these acres of devastation. The tyrant Minos, whose memory haunted that ruined palace, may over the years have grown a bull’s head in the imagination of the local superstitious peasants. Those eerie ruins were, after all, filled with crumbling pictures of bulls and gods and long-dead heroes.

Another great question mark hangs over the catastrophic destruction of Knossos. What terror wiped out that vast palace-city when it was still wealthy and powerful? Deep layers of ash show that there was a great fire. There also seems to have been a terrible earthquake. One thing is certain – the last moments of Knossos must have seemed like the end of the world!

An answer may soon be found on the mysterious little island of Thera, 75 miles north of Crete. There is a volcano which was once much larger than it is today. Then, long ago, a shattering explosion blew the whole middle of the island sky-high.

Leading archaeologists are now excavating a city on Thera, buried deep beneath many feet of volcanic ash. Perfectly preserved houses and brightly coloured paintings just like those at Knossos have already been found. Did the eruption that wiped out Thera cause the earthquake that devastated Knossos? While some archaeologists dig, others now study the ancient legends for a clue to the mystery.

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