Greek PantheonRealm
Crete
The great island kingdom of King Minos, home to the Labyrinth where the Minotaur dwelt, and birthplace of Zeus.
About Crete
Minos, the maze, and a birth-cave
Crete in myth is Minos's thalassocracy: the Labyrinth, the Minotaur, Pasiphae's bull, and Daedalus's flight. Homer calls Minos a judge of the dead and Zeus's son. Hesiod and later poets put Zeus's infancy in a Cretan cave, hidden from Cronus. The palace at Knossos is archaeology; the Labyrinth as a built maze is a Greek story laid over Minoan ruins. No Linear B tablet names the Minotaur. Theseus's tribute of youths is Athenian charter myth.
On the map
Crete among other places of the Greek Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Homer, Odyssey 19
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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