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Minotaur, a MythSource painting
Greek

Minotaur

The Bull of Minos · Asterion · Asterius

01Identity

Minotaur in Greek tradition

Known as Asterion or the Bull of Minos, the Minotaur was a bull-headed being confined within the Labyrinth at Knossos. Pasiphae conceived him after Minos withheld the sea-born bull promised to Poseidon, and Daidalos helped her with a wooden cow. When Theseus entered the Labyrinth among Athens’ tribute, Ariadne’s thread guided him through the maze, after which he killed the creature and led the survivors out.

Top questions

The quick answers

02Family

Minotaur’s family, at a glance

Parents above, children below, and the figure’s consorts named in between, the same family data as the fact box, laid out as a chart instead of a field list.

Cretan BullPasiphaë
Minotaur
03The names

The names Minotaur answers to

Asterion

Starry one

SourceThe Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics)

Asterius

Starry one; variant form of Asterion

SourceThe Greek Myths

Bull of Minos

The bull associated with King Minos

SourceThe Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics)

04The myths

The myths of Minotaur

2 myths, each traced to its primary text and corpus sources, with 9 reviewed modern reworks linked where the evidence supports it.

The Minotaur in the Labyrinth

Minos ordered Athens to send seven youths and seven maidens to Crete as tribute. They were chosen by lot and sent every ninth year, or, in another account, at the close of each Great Year. On reaching Crete, they were taken to the Labyrinth, a maze built by Daedalus. Its winding passages made escape impossible. The Minotaur waited within and devoured them.

The creature was the offspring of Pasiphae, Minos’s wife, and a white bull. Poseidon had sent the bull to Minos from the sea and required him to sacrifice it. Minos kept the animal instead, because he could not bear to kill it. Poseidon punished him by causing Pasiphae to desire the bull. She obtained Daedalus’s help, and a child was born to her, half bull and half human. Minos confined the creature in the Labyrinth. Some sources give it the name Asterius, or Asterion.

Minos had imposed the tribute after the death of his son Androgeus. Androgeus had been visiting King Aegeus in Athens when Aegeus sent him against a dangerous bull. The bull killed him. Minos invaded the country, captured Athens, and threatened to destroy it unless the tribute was paid. Another account says that, when the war continued without Minos capturing the city, he prayed to Zeus for vengeance. Famine and plague followed. The Athenians then asked what payment would satisfy Minos, and he demanded seven boys and seven girls as food for the Minotaur.

When the tribute was due for the third time after Theseus reached Athens, Theseus offered to go among the youths. He intended to kill the Minotaur. Ariadne, Minos’s daughter, fell in love with him and gave him a ball of thread. Theseus used it to find his way through the maze after entering it. He killed the Minotaur and led the other Athenians safely out of the Labyrinth.

The Minotaur in the Labyrinth, a MythSource painting of the scene

In the modern world

Minos

Music

This jazz-theatre album by Marthe (L'Oreille en Friche) is built around King Minos and the Cretan myth, with a track titled Labyrinth alongside the title track Minos; a retailer description frames it as retelling the Ariadne, Theseus, and Minotaur story with Ariadne centred and the Minotaur recast sympathetically.

Minotaur

Book

Asterion (the Minotaur) narrates his own boyhood in Crete under his stepfather Minos, his friendship with Theseus, and a revisionist account of what actually happened during the labyrinth confrontation.

Minotaur, the Wild Beast of Crete

Film

Crete's tribute of Athenian youths, Theseus joining the tribute group, his entry into the labyrinth, his killing of the Minotaur, and his escape using Ariadne's thread all carry over intact into this 1960 sword-and-sandal film.

Satyricon

Film

Encolpius is thrown into a labyrinth and forced to play Theseus against a gladiator dressed as the Minotaur before a crowd, then rewarded with a woman named Ariadne -- the tribute-victim-turned-champion shape of the labyrinth myth, restaged as a public spectacle.

The Claw of the Conciliator

Book

The embedded fairy tale 'The Tale of the Student and His Son' retells a hero setting out to defeat a monster and recover the people it has taken in tribute over the years, deliberately mashed up with an unrelated ironclad-ships battle.

The House of Asterion

Book

Borges retells the labyrinth myth from the Minotaur's own perspective. Tribute victims descend into his house at intervals, and the story ends with Theseus's arrival and the Minotaur's death.

The Hunger Games

Book

A ruling power selects adolescent tributes by lot and sends them into a killing ground as public spectacle, with Katniss volunteering in her sister's place. Collins has described Katniss as a futuristic Theseus, adapting the Athenian tribute's lottery-and-sacrifice structure into the Games.

The Lightning Thief

Book

Percy, a son of Poseidon echoing Theseus's own mythic parentage, is confronted by the same immortal Minotaur from the ancient story and kills it single-handed by breaking off its horn. The tribute of many youths and the Cretan labyrinth are dropped, relocated instead to a modern American hillside.

3 sources· checked 2026-08-18

  1. 1The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics)T1
  2. 2The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics)T1
  3. 3Ovid, MetamorphosesT1

    Quote

    “Minos shut the Minotaur in a labyrinth and fed it the Athenian youths sent to Crete, until Theseus entered, killed it, and escaped by following Ariadne’s thread.”

    Ovid, Metamorphoses

The Birth of the Minotaur

At a sacrifice to Poseidon, Minos prayed for a bull to rise from the sea. He promised to offer it to the god when it appeared. Poseidon sent up a magnificent, snow-white bull, and Minos gained the kingship of Crete. Instead of sacrificing the animal, he sent it to join his herds and offered another bull in its place.

Poseidon became angry. He made the bull savage and caused Pasiphae, Minos's wife and queen of Crete, to desire it. Pasiphae became consumed by her passion for the animal and sought help from Daidalos, an architect exiled from Athens for murder. Daidalos built a wooden cow on wheels, hollowed it out, covered it with the hide of a cow he had skinned, and prepared it for Pasiphae's union with the bull.

Pasiphae then mated with Poseidon's bull and conceived a monstrous child. She gave birth to Asterion, the Minotaur, who had the head of a bull and the body of a man. The name Minotaur means "Bull of Minos" in Greek. The creature was kept in Crete and was later housed in a labyrinth beneath or near Minos's palace at Knossos.

The Birth of the Minotaur, a MythSource painting of the scene

In the modern world

Circe

Book

Circe is present at Pasiphae's labour and physically helps deliver the bull-headed infant, confirming the novel retells Pasiphae's unnatural conception and the Minotaur's monstrous birth.

3 sources· checked 2026-08-18

  1. 1The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics)T1
  2. 2Ovid, MetamorphosesT1

    Quote

    “A white bull rose from the sea for Minos, but after he substituted another victim, Poseidon caused Pasiphae to mate with it through Daidalos’s device and give birth to the Minotaur.”

    Ovid, Metamorphoses

  3. 3The Greek MythsT1

The wider mythology

Works that draw on more of the mythology than any single story: full retellings of the saga, and worlds built out of the material.

Labyrinth

music

Fleshgod Apocalypse's concept album runs the Minotaur's whole story as one arc, from Poseidon's curse on Pasiphae through the Minotaur's death and Theseus's forgotten black sails. It reworks both myths together rather than retelling one.

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break

book

The Minotaur survives his ancient story and lives on five thousand years later as a fry cook in the American South. The novel reworks his mythic existence at large rather than restaging the Labyrinth, the tribute, or Theseus's arrival.

Also appears in

The myths across MythSource where Minotaur features, each on that figure’s page.

The film

The Underdrawing video on Minotaur embeds here once it publishes.