Minos

Family: Crete · Role: king · First appears: Apollodorus, Library 2.4

🌐 Also appears in: The Odyssey (as Minos) · The Metamorphoses of Ovid (as Minos) · Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (as Minos) · The Divine Comedy (as Minos)

Minos was born at Crete to Zeus and Europa alongside Sarpedon and Rhadamanthys, and was brought up by Asterius (prince of the Cretans). When he and his brothers grew up, they quarrelled over Miletus, with whom Sarpedon was more friendly; Minos went to war and prevailed, while the others fled. Some accounts instead give Atymnius as the object of their rivalry. Minos later married Pasiphae, though another account names Crete as his wife, and by Pasiphae fathered Catreus, Deucalion, Glaucus, Androgeus, Acalle, Xenodice, Ariadne, and Phaedra. By Dexithea he had Euxanthius, and Androgeus’s sons were Alcaeus and Sthenelus.

As king, Minos passed laws and sought Poseidon’s aid, after which “Poseidon did send him up a fine bull, and Minos obtained the kingdom”. He failed to sacrifice that bull, and Poseidon made it savage and caused Pasiphae to desire it; she gave birth to Asterius (Minotaur), whom Minos shut in and guarded in Daedalus’s Labyrinth. He ordered Athens to send seven youths and seven unarmed damsels each year as fodder for the Minotaur. When Glaucus disappeared, Minos searched for him and consulted diviners, then confined Polyidus until he taught Glaucus divination.

Minos attacked Athens and captured Megara, ruled by Nisus, after Scylla fell in love with him and pulled out Nisus’s fatal purple hair. Once he had made himself master of Megara, he tied Scylla by the feet to his ship’s stern and drowned her. He also prayed to Zeus for vengeance on the Athenians, employed Naucrate, and pursued Daedalus. Procris received from him a dog brought from Crete, and Minos later fell in love with her and tried to seduce her. At Camicus in Sicily, Minos discovered that Daedalus was concealed with Cocalus and died after a bath, according to one account through the actions of Cocalus’s daughters and, according to another, after being drenched with boiling water.