The Minotaur is a monster half man and half bull, son of Minos , king of Crete, and of Pasiphae .
To the throne Minos he had arrived performing an act of force:he had expelled his brothers from the island who, like him, aspired to power.
He asked the god Poseidon to send him a bull from the sea, demonstrating that he had acted rightly in moving away from Crete the other suitors, promising in vow that he would then sacrifice the animal to him.
A huge white bull with perfect shapes rises from the waves.
Minos He calmed down:the god, in this way assured him that he had not acted arbitrarily by taking possession of the throne.
But the bull was so beautiful that he replaced it with another victim of lesser value.
The revenge of Poseidon for that fraud it was terrible:the offended god gave Minos and his wife Pasifae a monstrous son, a hybrid creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man, who ate human flesh; he was called Asterion , but he became famous under the name of MINOTAUR .
The king then, to hide his monstrous son, asked the famous architect Daedalus (father of Icaro ) to build a place to lock up the Minotaur , from which he could not get out.
A Labyrinth , a very intricate building, with winding passages, which returned on themselves and crossed each other in such a complicated way that those who entered it could no longer find the exit.
When the city of Athens was defeated by the Cretans, she was ordered, as a tribute, to send to Crete , every year, seven boys and seven girls to offer as a meal to the Minotaur . In one of these convoys bound for Crete , Theseus claimed to be part of it to bring down the Minotaur and thus liberate Athens from that war tribute.
Princess Arianna , daughter of Minos she, she fell in love, at first sight, with the young hero and, decided that she would help Theseus to kill the bull stepbrother.
The girl, on the advice of Daedalus , he gave to Theseus a ball of magic thread, explaining how he could enter and exit the Labyrinth ; the hero, after fixing a garment at the entrance, unrolled the thread to the place where the Minotaur was asleep.
he grabbed the monster by the hair and sacrificed it to Poseidon .
By rewinding the thread he was able to find his way out of the Labyrinth.