Minos, son of Zeus, was king of Crete, and the first ruler to control the Mediterranean Sea, which he ridded of pirates. He had with him a famed craftsman, Daedalus the Athenian, who was in exile from Athens because he had murdered his nephew (and somewhat too talented apprentice), Talos. Daedalus enjoyed much favor at the court, but he managed to fall from grace by accommodating the queen, Pasiphaë, in a request.

Minos had boasted that the gods would grant him any wish; he made all the preparations for a sacrifice to Zeus’s brother Poseidon, then prayed that a bull would emerge from the sea. Miraculously, a beautiful white bull swam ashore. Minos admired it so much that he decided to keep it, and sacrificed a different one from his herd instead.

This unwise decision annoyed Poseidon, who avenged the insult by causing queen Pasiphaë (= "All-shining": she was the daughter of the sun) to fall madly in love with the white bull. Her request to Daedalus was that he should help her consummate this passion. He did so by building an ingenious hollow wooden cow, covered with hide and with a door on top through which she could lower herself inside. Together, they wheeled it into the pasture where the bull was kept; Daedalus helped her get in, and then discreetly withdrew. Pasiphaë was completely satisfied, but to everyone's horror, she then bore the Minotaur, a creature with a man's body but a bull's head.

Minos, annoyed in turn, sent to the oracle at Delphi to discover how he could hide this evidence of the shame to the royal family. The oracle answered that he ought to have Daedalus build a suitable cage; Minos thereupon had Daedalus build the Labyrinth, an enormous maze, and placed the Minotaur at the center of it. Minos also arranged to sacrifice young men and women from Athens to the flesh-eating Minotaur by shutting them into the Labyrinth, where they would wander, hopelessly lost, until the Minotaur caught and devoured them.

Though cruel, the tribute demanded by Minos from Athens was not entirely without reason. One of Minos's (fully human) sons by Pasiphaë was Androgeus, who had visited Athens to compete in the All-Athenian games, where he won every contest. King Aegeus knew that Androgeus was in contact with his enemies, the sons of Pallas, and was afraid that he might persuade his father, Minos, to intervene on their behalf. Therefore, he laid an ambush for the young man with the help of the Megareans. After a fierce battle, in which he fought very bravely, Androgeus was killed.

When Minos heard of the death of his son, he became enraged, and gathered a great fleet together to avenge the murder. Although he was the effective ruler of the Mediterranean, quite a few of the Greeks fought on the side of Athens, or stayed neutral. With all of his power, Minos was unable to defeat the Greeks until, in exasperation, he called on the aid of Zeus to avenge Androgeus. Greece was hit by famine and earthquakes, and the oracle at Delphi advised the Athenians to satisfy any demands that Minos made in return for peace. The demand was for a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens to be given every nine years, as sacrifice to the Minotaur, to which the Athenians reluctantly agreed.

Some time later, king Aegeus consulted with the oracle at Delphi on another problem: although he had been married twice, he had no children. She gave him a wineskin, and told him not to open it before he got home, or he would die one day of grief - an oracle which was difficult to interpret.

On his way back to Athens, he spent a night enjoying the hospitality of his friend, king Pittheus of Troezen. Pittheus's daughter, Aethra, was betrothed to Bellerophon who had been banished to Caria in disgrace, and she had little hope of his return. Feeling pity for her enforced virginity, and somewhat influenced by the wineskin that Aegeus had imprudently opened, Pittheus sent his friend to Aethra's bed.

Before leaving, Aegeus told her that if a son were born to her she should raise him without divulging his paternity, in case the sons of Pallas should attempt to murder the boy as a blow to the royal house of Athens. When a son was duly born, Aethra named him Theseus and she raised him as she had been instructed. To protect her son, she told him and anyone else that he had been fathered by Poseidon.

When Theseus was old enough, she took him to a large rock, to see if he could lift it. He was able to do so, and underneath it he found a sword and a pair of sandals left there for him by Aegeus. He took these items, and set off for Athens.

He decided to take the overland route, which was infested with bandits, rather than the safer sea passage, to prove himself. On the way, not too surprisingly, he met with many adventures, and had a suitable number of close calls, including Medea and Procrustes. He entered Athens a hero. Aegeus was overjoyed when he recognized the young man’s sword and sandals as his own.

However, the joy did not last. Minos's tribute came due, and as the ship approached, the seven youths and seven maidens had to prepare to leave. Theseus was so touched by the spectacle of grief that this preparation aroused that he volunteered to lead the group himself, promising the families of the others who would go with him that he would bring them all back alive. Naturally, Aegeus was not eager to allow his recently discovered son and heir to depart on so dangerous a task, but Theseus insisted, promising to hoist a white sail upon his return, rather than the usual black one, to signal his father that he was returning safely.

The ship left for Crete with Theseus and thirteen other Athenians aboard - two of the "maidens" were actually feminine-looking young men who could pass for girls when they dressed the part. Minos's daughter, Ariadne (whose name means "Very Holy"), who had accompanied her father to see the arrival of the ship, fell instantly in love with him. [In another version, Ariadne hopes for some means of escape from her father's tainted kingdom, where she is mistress of the Labyrinth. When she beholds Theseus disembarking from the boat, she falls in love with him, but also sees him as her means of escape.] She determined to help him, and enlisted the aid of Daedalus, who came up with the idea of using a ball of string to trace the way into, and back out of, the Minotaur's lair. Ariadne also explained to Theseus that at midnight the Minotaur would go to sleep for exactly one hour, and Theseus would then have an opportunity to kill the creature.

Theseus, however, was a more enterprising womanizer than even Ariadne suspected, because he also courted Ariadne's younger sister, Phaedra. So he went into the maze, slew the Minotaur at midnight, and followed Ariadne's thread out. He took Ariadne with him on the boat, but abandoned her on the island of Naxos to be with Phaedra instead. [According to another version, Dionysos comes to Theseus in a dream and claims the princess as his bride. When Theseus awakes, Athena leads him away and tells him that his destiny is in Athens, and that he must leave Ariadne behind. Theseus sadly boarded his ship and the wind carried it quickly from shore.]

Ariadne’s curse of Theseus was almost instantly fulfilled, for Theseus forgot to change his sail from black to white. As the ship pulled in to port, Aegeus, seeing the black sail, assumed the worst, and leapt from a precipice to his death in the sea that still bears his name.

Meanwhile, back in Crete, Minos finally discovered who had aided Pasiphaë in her debauchery, and for a brief time Daedalus and his son, Icarus, were imprisoned in the labyrinth. However, helped by Pasiphaë, Daedalus fashioned artificial wings out of bird feathers; the larger ones were stitched, and the smaller held in place by wax.

Before they took off, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too low, or the sea foam would wet the feathers and drag him down, nor to fly too high, or the sun would melt the wax, with much the same effect - "Follow me!" were his final words to the boy. They flew north, past Naxos, Delos, and Paros, and then Icarus got carried away with the delight of flying, and soared as high as he could go. The wax melted, and the boy tumbled into the sea and drowned close by the island of Icaria, which still bears his name.

Daedalus continued on, making his way eventually to Camicus in Sicily, where he was welcomed by king Cocalus. Meantime, Minos determined to retrieve his master craftsman, and raised a fleet to find him. He needed to discover the whereabouts of the artisan, and he did so by proclaiming a huge prize everywhere he went for anyone who could draw a linen thread through the convolutions of a triton shell. Once the fleet was in Sicily, and he heard of the prize, Daedalus could not resist winning it. He did so by fastening a gossamer thread to an ant, and entering it into the shell through a hole that he had bored in the end, meantime smearing the open end of the shell with honey so that the ant would weave its way through to the source of the scent. He then tied the linen thread to the gossamer, and drew it through in turn.

As soon as Minos knew that the prize had been claimed, he knew where Daedalus was, and he made war on the Sicilians, defeating them. While he bathed in the palace at Camicus, though, the daughters of Cocalus, with the help of Daedalus, killed him by pouring boiling water on him through a cleverly fashioned vent above the tub. He joined his brother Rhadamanthys and his old enemy Aeacus in Hades, where they were made judges of the dead. Daedalus eventually moved on, and ended his days in Sardinia.

Edith Hamilton, Mythology. (brief overview)

Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, vols 1 and 2. (encyclopedic, with commentary)

Joseph Alsop, From the Silent Earth. (on the discovery of the Minoan and Mycenean civilizations)

Mary Renault, The King Must Die; The Bull from the Sea. 2 vols. (novelistic adaptation)