Minos
Archeologist Sir Arthur Evans used King Minos as the namesake for the Minoan civilization of Crete.
[1] Minos appears in Greek literature as the king of Knossos as early as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
[7] However, he was the heartless exactor of the tribute of Athenian youths to feed to the Minotaur, in revenge for the death of his son Androgeus during a riot (see Theseus).
To reconcile the contradictory aspects of his character, as well as to explain how Minos governed Crete over a period spanning so many generations, two kings by the name of Minos were assumed by later poets and rationalizing mythologists, such as Diodorus Siculus[9] and Plutarch - "putting aside the mythological element", as he claims - in his life of Theseus.
This was the 'good' king Minos, and he was held in such esteem by the Olympian gods that, after he died, he was made one of the three "Judges of the Dead",[11] alongside his brother Rhadamanthys and half-brother Aeacus.
"Minos II"—the "bad" king Minos—is the son of this Lycastus, and was a far more colorful character than his father and grandfather.
By his wife, Pasiphaë (or some say Crete), and daughter of the Sun (Helios), and mother of the Minotaur, he fathered Ariadne, Androgeus, Deucalion, Phaedra, Glaucus, Catreus, Acacallis, and Xenodice.
By a nymph, Pareia, he had four sons, Eurymedon, Nephalion, Chryses, and Philolaus, whom Heracles killed in revenge for the murder of the latter's two companions.
Asterion, king of Crete, adopted the three sons of Zeus and Europa: Minos, Sarpedon, and Rhadamanthus.
According to the Odyssey (Book XIX l. 203, as interpreted by Plato in Laws 624), Minos consulted with Zeus every nine years.
Minos then asked Athens to send seven boys and seven girls to Crete every nine years to be sacrificed to the Minotaur (the offspring from the zoophilic encounter of Minos' wife Pasiphaë with the Cretan Bull that the king refused to surrender to Poseidon) which he had placed within a labyrinth he commanded his architect Daedalus to build.
Polyidus of Argos observed the similarity to the ripening of the fruit of the mulberry plant, and Minos sent him to find Glaucus.
Daedalus then built a complicated "chamber that with its tangled windings perplexed the outward way"[23] called the Labyrinth, and Minos put the Minotaur in it.
[24] His daughter, Scylla, fell in love with Minos and proved it by cutting the crimson hair off her father's head.
When he reached Camicus, Sicily, King Cocalus, knowing Daedalus would be able to solve the riddle, fetched the old man.
[26] On Cretan coins, Minos is represented as bearded, wearing a diadem, curly-haired, haughty, and dignified, like the traditional portraits of his reputed father, Zeus.
He frequently occurs on painted vases and sarcophagus bas-reliefs, with Aeacus and Rhadamanthus as underworld judges and in connection with the Minotaur and Theseus.
In Michelangelo's famous fresco, The Last Judgment (located in the Sistine Chapel), Minos appears as a judge of the underworld, surrounded by a crowd of devils.
With his tail coiled around him and two donkey ears (symbol of stupidity), Minos judges the damned as they are brought down to hell (see Inferno, Second Circle).
