Theseus And Minotaur Research Paper

On an island called Crete there was a giant minotaur who would eat any human he came across. King Minos was asked by the people of his island to kill the minotaur but he decided to capture it so he could punish his enemies by letting them face the minotaur. He ordered Daedalus who was a skilled craftsman to build a labyrinth that would be impossible to escape. Daedalus completed the labyrinth and lured the minotaur inside with a giant piece of meat. The king figured he had no use for Daedalus after the labyrinth was complete so he threw Daedalus into the labyrinth with his son Icarus. He believed that Daedalus and Icarus would both be eaten by the minotaur. However, they escaped because Daedalus knew his way around the labyrinth since he built

The Minotaur was a part man, part bull monster, and Polyphemus was a giant cyclopes. This paper will discuss how they are alike and different.

The Minotaur, meaning Minos bull, was “a monster of dire appearance, having the body of a powerful man and the head of a bull” (Seltman 98). Against his newfound father’s request, Theseus leaves Athens in hopes of returning victorious against the bull-headed beast. In a heroic fashion, Theseus leaps over the next step in Campbell’s hero journey and never refuses his call to adventure. The next step to any hero’s journey is an encounter with a super natural aid, but Theseus’ story takes a moral mentor to gather resources needed for the rest of his journey (Robertson 269). Theseus encounters his unlikely mentor upon arriving to Crete; Minos daughter, Ariadne, instructs Theseus to take a ball of linen with him into the labyrinth in order to trace back his steps after defeating the Minotaur (Martin 129). Crossing the threshold, Theseus ties one end of his ball of linen to the front door and journeys into the unconquerable maze and towards the beast (129). Theseus passes through his first trial of navigating the labyrinth inwards with ease straight into danger. Walking

Because Minos was ungrateful to the gods, Poseidon, the god of the sea, punished the king by making his wife fall in love with a bull. “At the request of the queen, Daedalus built a lifelike model of a cow in which she could conceal herself and spend time with her beloved bull” ("Daedalus." UXL Encyclopedia of World Mythology.). As a result, the queen gave birth to the Minotaur, a monstrous creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull. King Minos ordered Daedalus to design a prison for the Minotaur, so Daedalus built one of the most famous structures of Greek mythology, the Labyrinth. “The labyrinth was so skillfully designed that no one could escape from the maze” ("Daedalus." Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia (2014)). King Minos forced the city of Athens to annually send 7 boys and 7 girls as tributes to Crete, so they could be given to the Minotaur as food. The king’s daughter, Ariadne, fell in love with one of these doomed tributes, named Theseus. In order to help them, Daedalus gave Theseus a ball of string so that he could tie the string to the entrance of the maze, kill the Minotaur, and follow the string back out. King Minos knew that Daedalus was behind the scheme, so he imprisoned both Daedalus and his son, Icarus, in the Labyrinth. Daedalus was too clever for the king, however, and he fashioned two pairs of wings out of feathers and wax for him and his son to fly out of

The monsters names are The Minotaur and the Polyphemus. The Minotaur is a Greek Monsters that lives in a maze called the Labyrinth. He is part man, part bull and the King of the Athenaeus had gave it sacrifices of 7 boys and 7 girls. He got defeated by Theseus the king's son he defeated him by using a wool of string which was given to him by the king's daughter. He made it through the maze and back out without getting eaten. The Cyclops name is Polyphemus he lives on an island where he lives in a cave and were he tends his sheep. But one day after walking his sheep he found “The Odysseus” and his men in his cave eating his food. He locked them in and ate them they escaped Polyphemus by stabbing his eye and Odysseus men escaped by hiding under

Minos is a demigod who is the son of zeus god of god of the sky and thunder, king of

Pasiphae: She is the wife of Minos, and mother of Androgeus. Poseidon cause her to fall in love with the Cretan bull, to which end up with her giving birth to the Minotaur.

Theseus, the leader of Athens, is going down a road and he sees four women crying on their knees. He asks them why they are crying and they say that their husbands were killed at the siege of Thebes and Creon, ruler of Thebes, would not let their husband’s remains be recovered from the field (912-951). He heard this and was so emotionally moved that he decided to march on Thebes and take back their bodies. He lead his army to Thebes and captured Thebes. After the battle he saw two men from Thebes who were barely alive named Arcite and Palamon. Theseus took them to his tent and had them healed but they were confined to a prison in Athens after Theseus withdrew from Thebes. While in the tower Palamon was pacing around his cell and he saw Emelye

When Minos learned Asterion’s true origin, he locked him in the catacombs under the castle. Asterion’s true origin was that he is half human, half bull and a real monster. Labyrinth was the castle he was locked in. The Monster is Revealed

Once again, Poseidon gave King Minos a white bull to be sacrificed to him. This time, it was King Minos’ wife who dearly admired the bull, and convinced the old king not to sacrifice it. This time, Poseidon grew very mad at the king and his wife, but did something else in retaliation, Poseidon made the once amazing bull go mad, and the bull ravaged the island. The people of Crete could not stop this beast, even though they were extremely good bull-fighters. In the end, Hercules, a son of Zeus, came and slayed the bull as one of his deeds. After this, Poseidon made Queen Pasiphaë give birth to the horrible monster (D'Aulaire

There is evidence of the Minoans existence in some of history’s writings, one of the most famous being Plato’s Law 4.706 stating, “When Minos, once upon a time, reduced the people of Attica to gracious payment of tribute, he was very powerful by sea, whereas they possessed no warships at this time, such as they have nor was the country so rich in timber that they could easily supply themselves with a naval force” ( ). Not only does this lead to belief of their existence, but that the Minoan’s were a peaceful, non-violent civilization whose only concentration was in supplying goods and services to nearby lands such as Egypt, Syria and Greece. So what could possibly have happened to such civil people?

In this story, Acrisius, the king of Argos is told by an oracle that his grandson will be the death of him. Because of this, he casts his daughter out to sea. When Zeus sees this, sympathy overcomes him and he has a child with Acrisius’ daughter Danae. This child would be known as Perseus. Perseus then goes on to slay Medusa, and ends up killing Acrisius, fulfilling the oracle’s prediction (Lang 1-6).

Daedalus was an Athenian artisan. One day his nephew Talos invented a special saw and since Daedalus was jealous, he threw him off Acropolis. When Athena saw him falling, he was made a partridge instead. Daedalus then left the island and headed to Crete. In Crete he showed King Minos the saw and he made a wooden cow costume for the queen, Pasiphae. After Daedalus built the Labyrinth to keep the Minotaur in, King Minos put Daedalus and his son Icarus in it. Icarus then suggested for his father to make wings for them so they can escape and soar away. They then flew out together and were noticed by different people. While Daedalus closed his eyes, Icarus was curious about the sun and, ignoring his father’s directions. After the sun evaporates

Thales and Heraclitus, two Pre-Socratic philosophers, proposed two notable, but very different, belief systems to explain the world around them. Thales, the first Western philosopher, introduced a non-mythological way of viewing the world. Prior to Thales, the Greeks believed their gods controlled all natural forces. However, Thales philosophized that everything originated from some fundamental substance. He reasoned that this substance must be water. He based his belief on the idea that this fundamental substance needed to be both flexible and appear in different forms. Although, Thales' s water theory proved incorrect, his belief that the world could be explained in a simpler, non-divine manner opened the door for metaphysics and science.

Once upon a time in ancient Greece, there lived two brothers, Prometheus and Epimetheus. These two brothers were among the kind of humans who often upsets or even angered the Gods due to the reckless behaviors. Prometheus was the more reckless and cunning of the two since he stole the fire from Hephaestus in the Isle of Lemnos. Zeus, the King of Gods, was so furious, and he wanted to punish the two brothers. He came up with a plan to give them a beautiful woman named Pandora to lure them.