{ "id": "minotaur", "type": "entity", "name": "Minotaur", "summary": "Asterius, \"called the Minotaur\", the bull-headed son of Pasiphae and the bull Poseidon sent to Minos; shut by Minos in the Labyrinth of Daedalus and fed on Athenian youths and maidens until Theseus killed him with his fists and found the way out by Ariadne's clue. Not to be confused with the Cretan bull of Heracles's labour.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "greek", "creatures", "crete", "labyrinth", "monsters" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "killed_by", "target": "theseus" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "poseidon" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "dionysus" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "heracles" }, { "rel": "attested_in", "target": "bibliotheca" }, { "rel": "attested_in", "target": "metamorphoses" } ], "questions": [ "Who were the parents of the Minotaur?", "What was the real name of the Minotaur?", "Why did Minos build the Labyrinth?", "Why did Athens send youths to the Minotaur?", "How did Theseus kill the Minotaur?", "Is the Minotaur the same as the Cretan bull?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "Apollodorus: Minos prayed to Poseidon for a bull from the sea, promising to sacrifice it, \"but he sent the bull to the herds and sacrificed another\"; Poseidon \"made the animal savage, and contrived that Pasiphae should conceive a passion for it\". Daedalus built a hollow wooden cow; \"she gave birth to Asterius, who was called the Minotaur. He had the face of a bull, but the rest of him was human; and Minos, in compliance with certain oracles, shut him up and guarded him in the Labyrinth\" (Apollod. 3.1.3–4).", "sources": [ "apollodorus-library" ], "confidence": 0.95 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "The tribute: after Androgeus son of Minos was killed in Attica, Minos made war and prayed to Zeus; famine and plague drove the Athenians to the oracle, and \"Minos ordered them to send seven youths and the same number of damsels without weapons to be fodder for the Minotaur\", \"every year\" to the Labyrinth \"in which he who entered could not find his way out\" (Apollod. 3.15.7–8). Ovid has victims \"sent three seasons, nine years each\" (Met. 8.152), a different interval.", "sources": [ "apollodorus-library", "ovid-metamorphoses" ], "confidence": 0.92 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "Theseus went with the third tribute; Ariadne, on his oath to marry her, got Daedalus to disclose the way out and \"gave Theseus a clue when he went in; Theseus fastened it to the door, and, drawing it after him, entered in. And having found the Minotaur in the last part of the labyrinth, he killed him by smiting him with his fists\" (Apollod. E. 1.7–9). Ovid: \"Theseus, son of Aegeus, slew him and retraced his way, finding the path by Ariadne's thread\" (Met. 8.152).", "sources": [ "apollodorus-epitome", "ovid-metamorphoses" ], "confidence": 0.94 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "Ovid calls him \"the infamous reproach of Crete\", \"the double-natured shame\", hidden by Minos in a prison of \"mazey wanderings that deceived the eyes\", built by Daedalus and compared to the winding Maeander, so intricate \"that he, the architect, hardly could retrace his steps\" (Met. 8.152).", "sources": [ "ovid-metamorphoses" ], "confidence": 0.93 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "Pausanias doubted him: on the Acropolis he saw \"the fight which legend says Theseus fought with the so-called Bull of Minos, whether this was a man or a beast of the nature he is said to have been in the accepted story. For even in our time women have given birth to far more extraordinary monsters than this\" (Paus. 1.24.1). On the throne at Amyclae the Bull of Minos is \"bound, and being led along alive by Theseus\" (Paus. 3.18.11), and Troezen said Theseus founded a temple \"when he returned from Crete after overcoming Asterion the son of Minos\" (Paus. 2.31.1).", "sources": [ "pausanias-description" ], "confidence": 0.92 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "He is not the Cretan bull. The bull that sired him was later caught by Heracles as his seventh labour (Apollod. 2.5.7) and, loosed in the Argolid, \"crossed from Crete to the Peloponnesus\" and reached Marathon, where Theseus killed it (Paus. 1.27.9–10; Apollod. E. 1.5–6). The Minotaur never left the Labyrinth.", "sources": [ "apollodorus-library", "pausanias-description", "apollodorus-epitome" ], "confidence": 0.92 } ], "takeaways": [ "His name was Asterius (or Asterion); \"Minotaur\" is a title Apollodorus and Pausanias both gloss.", "Homer and Hesiod, in the texts read here, never mention him; the story is Apollodorus's and Ovid's.", "Apollodorus's tribute is yearly, Ovid's every nine years; Apollodorus's weapon is Theseus's fists.", "The Cretan bull (Heracles, Marathon) and the Minotaur (Labyrinth) are father and son, and different labours." ], "faqs": [ { "q": "Who were the parents of the Minotaur?", "claim": "c1" }, { "q": "What was the real name of the Minotaur?", "claim": "c1" }, { "q": "Why did Athens send youths to the Minotaur?", "claim": "c2" }, { "q": "How did Theseus kill the Minotaur?", "claim": "c3" }, { "q": "Is the Minotaur the same as the Cretan bull?", "claim": "c6" } ], "evidence_tier": "primary", "evidence": { "level": "theoretical", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": false, "winning_edge": "States which ancient text says what about the Minotaur, including Pausanias's scepticism and the tribute interval on which Apollodorus and Ovid disagree, and keeps the Cretan bull apart from its son.", "confidence": 0.92, "last_verified": "2026-09-03", "media": [], "x": { "myth": { "pantheon": "greek", "kind": "creature", "domains": [ "the Labyrinth", "the Athenian tribute" ], "symbols": [ "bull's head", "labyrinth", "clue of thread" ], "wikidata": "Q129866" } }, "canonical_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/minotaur", "api_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/api/k/minotaur.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "Minotaur", "description": "Asterius, \"called the Minotaur\", the bull-headed son of Pasiphae and the bull Poseidon sent to Minos; shut by Minos in the Labyrinth of Daedalus and fed on Athenian youths and maidens until Theseus killed him with his fists and found the way out by Ariadne's clue. Not to be confused with the Cretan bull of Heracles's labour.", "url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/minotaur", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-09-03", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Apollodorus, The Library (Bibliotheca) — tr. Sir James George Frazer (Loeb, 1921), Perseus TEI edition", "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0548/tlg001/tlg0548.tlg001.perseus-eng2.xml" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Apollodorus, Epitome — tr. Sir James George Frazer (Loeb, 1921), Perseus TEI edition", "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0548/tlg002/tlg0548.tlg002.perseus-eng2.xml" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Pausanias, Description of Greece — tr. W. H. S. Jones (Loeb, 1918–1935), Perseus TEI edition", "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0525/tlg001/tlg0525.tlg001.perseus-eng2.xml" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Ovid, Metamorphoses — tr. Brookes More (1922), Perseus TEI edition", "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit/blob/master/data/phi0959/phi006/phi0959.phi006.perseus-eng3.xml" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "Minotaur" } }