But You Screw One Goat!: Difference between revisions

* The story of the Cretean Minotaur. ''Short version'': Minos was a king who was competing with his brothers over who should rule Crete, so he prays to Poseidon to favor him. Poseidon accepts, sending him a ''beautiful'' white bull as a sign of his favor, ''on the condition'' Minos sacrifices it to him once he becomes king. But the bull is so beautiful, Minos can't make himself kill it, and sacrifices an ordinary bull. Naturally, Poseidon is ''really'' pissed, and curses Minos' wife Pasiphaë, making her fall in love with the bull. Minos still doesn't get the hint, and orders the master engineer Daedalus to craft a lifelike wooden cow that Pasiphaë can hide inside and, well, you get the idea here. (Ironically, that means the ''bull'' is more sensible than the humans here.) This only worsens the situation, as the bull becomes a feral, violent beast (becoming a nuisance until Hercules comes to deal with it as per one of his Labors) and Pasiphaë gives birth to the Minotaur, a beast that ''only'' eats human flesh, leading to the more-well-known part of the story with the Labyrinth and Theseus.