35 King Minos Facts: Timeline, Family, Characteristics, And More

The birth of Minos was related to the famous story of the abduction of Europa where his mother Europa was abandoned by his biological father Zeus in Athens, and in the meantime, she was accepted by the king of Crete.

Asterian had three children Radhamanthys, Sarpedon, and Minos. This incident was also related to the tale of how Minos defeated his two siblings and conquered the throne.

There were various renowned anecdotes that were related to Minos, which evolved from other stories. Minos was a revengeful person who never spared his enemies without treating them a perfect tit for tat, for example, he punished Aegeus, the king of Athens, who was the cause of his son Androgeous's death.

At first, Minos defeated him on the battlefield then with the help of his biological father Zeus spread a deadly disease called plague and destroyed the city of Athens.

He forgave them with the condition that they had to send seven boys and seven girls to Crete for the Minotaur. Their lives would be sacrificed to the creature.

He refused to sacrifice the bull which looked attractive in honor of the god Poseidon and as the result, he faced a deadly curse, which was the main reason for the birth of the monster called Minotaur. Daedalus, a Greek inventor, built the much-talked-about labyrinth of Minos.

Facts About King Minos

Minos is a name that was inscribed in the history of Greek mythology and helped to get a close idea about the ancient world. He was a mythical king.

The Minoan civilization that belonged to the pre-Hellene Crete was named after him.

We have a reference to Minos in the Inferno segment of Dante's Divine comedy, where he plays the role of a judge in Limbo and punishes the demon soul.

A magnificent palace at Knossos was built by the great engineer Daedalus (whose son was Icarus). It was the place where he used to live with his family.

Minos was introduced as the first king of Knossos in the ancient Greek epic Iliad and Odyssey, which was written by the great poet Homer.

King of Crete was among one of the first rulers who built a navy in his defense and created a strong loophole on the water path.

Minos was a great ruler who always maintained the law and order in his region. He was credited as the author of the constitution of Crete and also conducted a successful code of law.

Minos recognized the creature of Labyrinth which was built by his great engineer Daedalus on the island of Crete.

According to linguistics the word Minos is used as the Cretan word for king.

The origin of his birth also symbolized something, where his mother Europa who was a Phoenician princess, and his father Athenian King of gods Zeus and their son King Minos symbolized as the king of the Europe continent.

He was murdered at Campus in Sicily. He was murdered in different ways by the daughter of Agrigentum, named Cocalus.

According to the archaeologists, a great example of the architecture of his time period was his magnificent castle which has suffered from several disasters like the eruption of the volcano of Thera.

King Minos' Family

Minos who was well-known to readers in Greek mythology had an in-depth family line. Many of the family members of Minos were the main sources of Greek folklore. You will know more about the family of the legendary character king Minos.

Minos was the son of the king of gods, Zeus of Athens, who ruled over thunder and sky, and the Phoenician princess (who was a human being), Europa.

He also had a foster father called king Asterian.

He had two siblings, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon.

His first wife was Pasiphae, who was the Queen of Crete and had eight sons with Minos. The sons were Ariadne, Androgeos, Deucalion, Phaedra, Glaucus, Catreus, Acacallis, and Xenodice.

He also had four children with a natural deity or nymph called Pareia. The names of their three sons were Eurymedon, Nephalion, Chryses. They all were slain by the great warrior Heracles.

He was also intimate with Dexithea, who was one of the Rhodian Telchinese and they had a son named Euxantheus.

Asterian, who was famous as the commander of the war between Dionysus-Indians, was the son of Minos and Androgeneia of Phaistos.

He was also a foster father who brought up two children of King Poseidon and Orion. The names of the children were Euryale and Pholegander.

His first wife Pasiphae was also the mother of Minotaur who was a demon. He was not the father of the creature. She got pregnant when she mated with Crete, the bull due to a curse that Poseidon had given to Minos when he refused to sacrifice a bull in his honor.

King Minos' Characteristics

When you are trying to evaluate a legendary mythological character like King Minos, his characteristics become one of the most important topics that act as a key to unlock the time frame and justify some of the narratives that are still famous about him.

Some of the famous legends related to Cretean ruler introduced many of the personality traits that he showed in his life span.

He was a very powerful king who always annihilated his enemies from the root. All his neighboring kingdoms were afraid of him.

He was very strict about morals and laws. He took many important decisions for his kingdom.

He was a fair-full person who always stood for the truth and did some amazing deeds towards those people who were wrong for example. He punished Scylla for betraying his father though she helped him to get the victory.

He had a dreadful character who was hungry for power and captured his own siblings for the throne.

He had an intelligent persona who arranged an amazing competition with the purpose to catch the Daedalus, where he asked for a riddle and announced a huge amount of prize money. He knew only Daedalus can solve the riddle and he would be able to catch him.

He had a great judgment power and always followed the path of truth, for this event especially, he became one of the three judges of the dead in Hades.

King Minos's Timeline

King Minos is a legendary mythological character who is a part of many Greek folklore and epic. He had a taste in many important events like art, literature, sculptures, and myths. Let's try to evaluate his timeline, which also depicts the important events and his region as well.

He was portrayed as a tall, muscular male with a growing beard and curly hair and wearing a diadem, just like how his biological father Zeus used to do that.

In the famous painter Michael Angelo's painting fresco, the last supper, we can get the reference to King Minos as the judge of the underworld.

Let's go through the poetry called Aeneid, which was written by Virgil, where he narrated King Minos as the judge of the people who were accused of a false charge. He sat with an urn and Minos demanded that the sinner would be dumped for punishment in either Elysium or Tartarus.

In another interpretation from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy Inferno, king Minos sat on the second circle of hell and he was also portrayed with a long snake-like tail.

In Plato's representation, we also get some dialogue related to king Minos.

Minos was also depicted as the pharaoh of the early dynastic period.

In the relation of king Minos with astronomical myths, you can evaluate that he, including his family, was portrayed as a dramatized persona.

For example, Telephassa, the grandmother of the king, Pasiphae, the wife of the king and daughter of the sun god Helios.