Minos

Minos Europe
Greek legend is ambivalent about Minos, the Cretan king who appears both as a just law-giver and as a cruel oppressor. As Minos seems to have been a title rather than a personal name, the ancient Greeks remembered the great days of what we term Minoan civilization by this nameless king. At his fabulous palace of Knossos, Minos employed Daedalus, whom the Greeks revered as the archetypal craftsman. His works were thought to be tinged with divinity. So lifelike were his statues that they had to be chained down in order to prevent them from running away. The more practical assistance Daedalus rendered Minos' queen, cursed Pasiphae, brought about the craftsman's downfall, however, because the decoy cow she used to deceive Poseidon's bull caused her to conceive the dreaded Minotaur. Minos pursued the fugitive Daedalus to Sicily with a great fleet, but the king died there at Kamikos. Apparently the daughters of the local ruler were unwilling to lose...

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