60 Fun Facts About Minotaur

The Minotaur is classically shown with the body of a man and the head of which animal?

Ovid's vaguer 'part man and part bull' led some medieval artists to reverse it, putting a man's head on a bull's body.

The Minotaur was held on which island?

The Labyrinth was said to stand near the royal palace at Knossos.

What was the Minotaur's own name in Crete?

It means 'star', and he shared it with the king who had raised Minos as a foster-son.

What does the name 'Minotaur' literally mean?

It compounds the king's name with tauros, the Greek word for bull.

Who was the Minotaur's mother?

In some tellings she was also a sorceress who cursed her unfaithful husband to ejaculate scorpions and serpents.

Which god sent Minos the snow-white bull that started the whole affair?

Minos had prayed for the bull as a sign that he, not his brothers, should rule Crete.

What did Minos do that so offended the god who sent the bull?

He assumed a substitute animal would be accepted; the god disagreed.

Which goddess helped the sea god punish Minos by making his queen fall in love with the bull?

In Bacchylides' version she sent the curse herself, because the queen had neglected her worship.

What did Daedalus build so the queen could approach the bull?

It was covered in real hide, convincing enough to fool the animal.

Why, according to the myth, did the Minotaur eat humans?

Its mother nursed it as an infant, but it grew huge and ferocious.

Whose advice led Minos to lock the Minotaur away in the Labyrinth?

In Apollodorus's account he shut the creature up 'in compliance with certain oracles'.

How many Athenian youths were sent to the Minotaur at each tribute in the usual telling?

Sources disagree on the timing: every year, every seven years or every nine.

The tribute was Athens' punishment for the death of which son of Minos?

In one version the Athenians killed him out of jealousy after he swept the Panathenaic Games.

On which of the tribute voyages did Theseus volunteer to go?

According to Isocrates, he said he would rather die than rule a city that paid a tribute of children's lives.

What colour sail did Theseus promise to hoist on the way home if he had succeeded?

The ship left Athens carrying the sombre black sail of the tribute.

What did King Aegeus do when he saw the black sail returning?

He was watching from Cape Sounion; the sea he died in was named after him.

Which sea is named after Theseus's father?

The Aegean is the arm of the Mediterranean between Greece and Turkey.

Where did Theseus abandon Ariadne on the voyage home?

The god Dionysus found her sleeping there and married her.

Dionysus set Ariadne's wedding diadem in the sky as which constellation?

The 'Northern Crown' is a small arc of stars near Boötes.

Besides Ariadne, which younger sister of hers left Crete with Theseus and later became his wife?

Her disastrous passion for her stepson Hippolytus is the subject of Euripides and Racine.

Daedalus's Labyrinth escape instructions, passed on via Ariadne, told Theseus to go which way?

He tied the thread to the doorpost and found the monster asleep at the heart of the maze.

What was preserved for centuries in an Athenian harbour and became a famous puzzle about identity?

Old planks were replaced as they rotted, prompting the question of whether it was still the same ship.

Which two people did Minos imprison in the Labyrinth after Ariadne eloped?

They escaped by air, and the son flew too close to the sun.

Daedalus's wings were held together with what?

He warned his son that the sun would melt it and that sea spray would soak the feathers.

Minos hunted for the fugitive Daedalus by asking every city to solve which riddle?

Daedalus solved it by tying the string to an ant lured through the shell by a drop of honey, which gave him away.

What role did King Minos take in the underworld after his death, according to myth?

Michelangelo painted him in the Sistine Chapel Last Judgment with a serpent's tail and donkey ears.

Minos was the son of Zeus and which princess, whom Zeus carried off in the form of a bull?

The family's bull associations thus began a generation before the Minotaur.

Which hero captured the Cretan Bull, father of the Minotaur, as one of his labours?

It was the seventh labour; Theseus eventually caught the same animal in Attica years later.

Which archaeologist excavated the Palace of Minos at Knossos from 1900 and coined the term 'Minoan'?

His concrete reconstructions of the palace are still controversial.

Evans suggested 'labyrinth' meant 'house of the double axe', from which Lydian word?

The double-axe motif appears in the palace ruins, but the theory lost ground once Linear B was deciphered.

A famous fresco at Knossos shows young men and women doing what with a bull?

Some scholars think the sport helped inspire the story of youths sent to the Minotaur.

The 'Classical' labyrinth design that appears on Cretan coins from about 430 BC has what feature?

It is odd, since every version of the story makes clear the Minotaur was trapped in a branching maze.

The most famous medieval church labyrinth, laid into the floor around 1200, is in which French cathedral?

Modern churches on both sides of the Atlantic have revived labyrinth walking as a form of meditation.

Coins from Knossos show the Minotaur surrounded by small balls, thought to represent what?

The design fits his Cretan name, which means 'star'.

Dante and Virgil meet the Minotaur, guarding the circle of the violent, in which canto of the Inferno?

Virgil taunts him with a reminder that Theseus, 'the Duke of Athens', killed him with his sister's help.

Which Argentine writer told the Minotaur's story from the monster's own point of view?

Cortázar wrote a play, Los reyes, in which Ariadne loves her brother the Minotaur rather than Theseus.

Which artist made the 1935 etching Minotauromachy and the Vollard Suite Minotaur prints?

The Minotaur became his alter ego through the 1930s, mixed with images of Spanish bullfighting.

What is Mary Renault's 1958 novel retelling the Theseus myth in light of the Knossos digs?

Its sequel, about the hero's later career, is The Bull from the Sea.

C. S. Lewis put a whole race of Minotaurs on the White Witch's side in which series?

The idea of Minotaurs as a species, rather than one unique monster, is largely a 20th-century fantasy invention.

Which British actor played 'Theo' in the 2006 horror film Minotaur?

It went straight to DVD from Lions Gate.

In the 2011 film Immortals, the Minotaur is depicted as what?

He is the tallest and most dangerous of King Hyperion's warriors.

In which 2018 game is the Minotaur a legendary boss in a quest line full of nods to Theseus and Ariadne?

The game's Greece also lets you fight Medusa, the Cyclops and the Sphinx.

Which composer's 1912 opera Ariadne auf Naxos deals with the princess after Theseus left her?

Hofmannsthal's libretto collides an opera seria with a commedia dell'arte troupe on the same stage.

Ovid wrote that the Labyrinth was so cunningly made that who could barely escape from it?

The architect later did get out of Crete, but only by air.

In Homer's Iliad, Daedalus is said to have built what for Ariadne at Knossos?

Homer mentions it while describing the shield of Achilles and never uses the word labyrinth.

After escaping Tiryns, the Cretan Bull rampaged near which town, whose name it took?

Theseus later captured it and dragged it back to Athens for sacrifice.

Which sorceress, living with King Aegeus, sent the newly arrived Theseus after a rampaging bull?

When that failed she tried poison, and Aegeus knocked the cup away after recognising his son's sword.

What was the Labyrinth-imitating dance Plutarch says Theseus performed at Delos called?

He wrote that islanders were still performing it in his own day.

According to one version reported by Plutarch, how did Ariadne die after Theseus abandoned her?

Dionysus then brought her and his mother Semele up from Hades to Olympus, where they were made gods.

The Minotaur is a recurring character in the Camp Half-Blood books of which author?

The Labyrinth itself, relocated beneath the United States, is the setting of the fourth Percy Jackson novel.

In Wrath of the Titans (2012), the Minotaur guards a labyrinth leading to where?

The film was a Spanish-American co-production directed by Jonathan Liebesman.

The Minotaur's mother was a daughter of which god?

That made the monster a grandchild of the Sun, and his Cretan name meant 'star'.

According to a scholium on Pindar, how did Theseus kill the Minotaur, rather than with a sword?

Vase paintings show him variously using a sword, a club or his bare hands.

Which Latin poet's vague account led medieval artists to reverse the Minotaur's anatomy?

The man-above, bull-below version survived into Steele Savage's illustrations for Edith Hamilton's Mythology in 1942.

Which bandit on Theseus's road to Athens forced travellers to fit one of two beds by stretching or cutting them?

Theseus turned the method on him, lopping off his legs and head; 'Procrustean' still describes forcing something to fit.

What ate the travellers the robber Sciron kicked off his cliff near Megara?

He made victims kneel to wash his feet first; Theseus shoved him off the same cliff to the same fate.

Theseus's best friend Pirithous was king of which people?

Pirithous rustled Theseus's cattle to test him, and the two admired each other so much they swore friendship on the spot.

Who freed Theseus after he became fixed to a rock in the underworld?

Heracles was there for his twelfth labour; Pirithous, who had wanted to abduct Persephone, was left behind forever.

On which island did King Lycomedes throw Theseus off a cliff?

In 475 BC Cimon of Athens conquered the island and brought home bones identified as the hero's remains.

Which Athenian general retrieved what were identified as Theseus's bones in 475 BC?

Acting on an oracle, he found a coffin of a great corpse with a bronze spearhead beside it.