The Minotaur’s Diary
People say believe half of what you see, son, and none of what you hear.
Marvin Gaye, based upon a quote from Edgar Alan Poe.
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Estimated time: a little over 4 minutes, which is not bad. Greek myths get thorny, tangled, and take time. Read the Iliad and the Odyssey, and you will see what I mean.
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Introduction
The Greeks may have been the earliest culture to discover that wisdom came clothed in stories, not lists and rules.
On October 25, 2023, I wrote about the famous case of Daedalus, the most famous inventor of the Bronze Age, and the mysterious death of his son, Icarus.
The story of Daedalus and Icarus is one of the most enduring in history.
At one level, it is about the consequences of hubris, a common theme in Greek mythology and one certainly relevant on today's world stage. [1]
Each myth has many layers, players, and tentacles, all weaving a tapestry into lessons in wise living.
Our story is not just about Daedalus and Icarus; its tentacles also reach a related story about “the” Minotaur.
Background
To refresh your memory, around 1,300 BCE, King Minos of Crete imprisoned Daedalus and his son, Icarus.
Why is a long story.
I left off with Daedalus’ inventing wax wings so he and his boy could fly away and escape their incarceration.
Daedalus made it.
Failing to follow his father’s wise advice to stick to the middle way (grasshopper), Icarus crashed and died unnecessarily.
For decades, legend held that Icarus flew too close to the sun, and his wings melted.
Recent scientific evidence suggests that his wings may have frozen; melting makes no sense.
But dead is dead.
The curious reader wonders why King Minos imprisoned such a brilliant man as Daedalus in the first place, not to mention poor Icarus, guilty of little more than repressed hubris.
What Does One Do With a Minotaur?
To answer that question, I have to give you a truncated version of the story of a half-bull-half-man creature.
The story of the conception of the Minotaur is too much.
Please take my word for it: a Minotaur came into existence.
He was not only an eyesore; he was a cannibal.
Minotaurs do not make good pets.
How to supply him with fresh human flesh created a few challenges.
Rather than killing the beast or putting him in a traveling freak show and charging a few drachmas for an exclusive look, King Minos decided it would be best to build an inescapable labyrinth and imprison him there.
Bronze-Age Crete was like modern-day Texas; they imprisoned people for almost anything.
Even isolated in a labyrinth, the Minotaur still brunched on humans – with a little help from his friends.
I suppose that was preferable to letting him run the streets of Knossos.
The Cretans were traders.
Hungry Minotaur = not good for the local economy.
Only Daedalus knew how to get in and out of the labyrinth.
Daedalus had second thoughts about the whole set-up.
He conspired with one of those typical Greek hero types (Theseus [2]) to go in, kill the Minotaur, and (the tricky part) find his way out.
Theseus, with the help of a femme fatale who went by the name of Princess Ariadne, did just that.
But you cannot trust a Greek bearing myths.
Is that really the way it came down?
The Minotaur’s Perspective
What was it like for the Minotaur to have a face that caused gag reflexes, cataracts, and inflammatory bowel syndrome?
Could he help it if he had cannibal DNA?
Theseus killed a Minotaur for acting like a Minotaur.
Is that justice?
Could it be that rather than being the abusive monster that history has made it out to be, the Minotaur was, in fact, a victim?
Going in search of answers, I flew to Crete.
What I discovered was chilling.
Setting the stage, let’s get into the “way back machine” and visit King Minos and the Island of Crete in the Bronze Age.
King Minos
Hang with me here.
This can be confusing because there were two men known as King Minos.
King Minos (the elder) was in the lucky sperm club.
His father was Zeus.
For God’s sake (literally), in 2000 BC, it didn’t get any luckier than that.
Europa, a Phoenician princess from Tyre (as in Lebanon), was Zeus’ “consort.”
Someone named the continent of Europe after Europa: obviously, a woman whose prestige exceeded any mere mortal debutante.
Crete
King Minos the Elder had a son named Minos (the “King Minos” of our story) and some more rich kids.
After King Minos the Elder died, there was a battle for succession.
Our King Minos prevailed. [3]
On Crete, some still complain about a “rigged election.”
Nonetheless, our Minos became King of Crete.
In those days, Crete was a money machine.
Crete’s badass navy protected Aegean trade routes.
Crete was wealthier than a Saudi oil field.
If golf had been invented, they would have started their own league.
Crete’s Caves
Around this time, ancient Minoans carved caves in the sandstone cliffs on the south coast of Crete at Matala.
History has yet to reveal precisely when or why.
Hermits probably used them first.
Later, the Cretans isolated their lepers by housing them there.
One of history's great unsolved mysteries: what happened to the lepers?
But who wants to go in search of dead lepers?
Later, after the lepers left and went wherever lepers go, Romans stashed burial crypts in them.
In the 1950s, living in the caves became a perverse rite of passage for the Beat Generation.
In the 1960s, the cliffs of Matala became a stop along the “hippie trail.” [4]
The caves then housed stoners, artists, and day trippers instead of hermits, lepers, beatniks, and dead Romans.
Joni Mitchell stayed in a Crete cave in the late ‘60s and gave an interview to Rolling Stone about it in 1971.
If you believe this story is apocryphal, listen to the words of Joni’s song, Carey:
Maybe I'll go to Amsterdam
Or maybe I'll go to Rome
And rent me a grand piano
And put some flowers 'round my room
But let's not talk about fare-thee-wells now
The night is a starry dome
And they're playin' that scratchy rock and roll
Beneath the Matala Moon
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When I arrived in Crete, I explored the caves, looking for information about the Minotaur and anything marketable Joni left behind.
Joni was long gone by then, leaving Carey for some guy known locally as “Coyote.”
I found no remains of lepers, dead Romans, or song lyrics.
I did find three calcified roaches, a beaten-up copy of Howl by Allen Ginsburg, and an ancient document hidden behind a cave wall.
It took some doing, but I deciphered the title to be “The Minotaur’s Diary.”
Stick around, and I will reveal its surprising contents.
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P.S. If you believe I am the only person silly enough to write a story about a Minotaur, I refer you to The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Professor Steven Sherrill.
P.P.S. If you are unfamiliar with mythology, a good place to start is Life Lessons from the Great Myths on The Great Courses, taught by Dr. J. Rufus Fears.
[1] For anyone who believes that Greek mythology is just a collection of fatuous little stories, that view is superficial. There is wisdom in mythology and little that is fatuous unless you consider tragedy, murder, and moral lessons fatuous.
[2] The story of Theseus is a book in itself.
[3] Astute readers will see the similarities between King Minos and King Solomon of early Israel.
[4] https://www.matala.nl/