After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Myth of the Minotaur: Half Man Half Bull

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

The myth of the Minotaur has endured thousands of years for good reason... it's hard to forget! Today, Maddy Pelling tells Anthony Delaney the story of King Minos of Crete, the monster in his maze, and the son of Athens that comes to kill it, thanks largely to the cunning of Princess Ariadne.Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code AFTERDARKYou can take part in our listener survey here.

I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankenpann. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're revisiting the life of Cecil Rhodes. From sickly child to diamond tycoon to leading colonialist in South Africa, he was a bastion of British imperialism. Over the past few years, campuses around the world have been met by students chanting, Rhodes must fall. His legacy has been completely transformed. It's unbelievable how relevant Rhodes still feels

and how often his name is invoked by people contesting really polarizing parts of our contemporary life. But one of the questions about Rhodes is that he takes all the flak and therefore hides away all the other people who were responsible for doing things that may be not quite so bad. That's why I think it's important to think not just about Rhodes and his own life,

but about what that period of British and colonial history meant. And one of the things people often say is you have to judge these figures by the standards of their time. That's exactly what we're going to do, Peter, isn't it? So follow Legacy now from wherever you get your podcasts. Or binge entire seasons early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. The island of Crete sits amid a turquoise blue ocean, its vast mountains tumbling to sun-bleached beaches and rocky inlets. Today, it's a favorite of holidaymakers, a calm paradise away from the stresses of everyday life. But set foot on this island thousands of

years ago and a very different scene would rise up to meet you. For in the ancient world Crete was the kingdom of a powerful king, Minos, half man, half god, the son of Zeus and Europa, and a formidable overlord. His palace at Nossos was famed throughout the Greek islands, sprouting from the earth as an imposing reminder for his enemies never to cross him. But Minos had a dark secret. Bolstered by his own arrogance, he failed to sacrifice a bull to the god of the sea, Poseidon, and so fell out of divine favor. So angry was Poseidon at this snub that he cursed Minos's wife,

Pasiphae, causing her to forsake her husband's bed and instead fall in love with the bull. The result of this unusual union, born months later, was a monster, birthed with the body of a man and the head and horns of a beast. Minos knew that he had to hide the evidence of his wife's infidelity, the result after all of his own hubris against the gods, and so he commissioned the famed architect Daedalus to build a labyrinth beneath his palace, somewhere so intricate that even the most cunning of men would not be able to escape its winding passages. But imprisoning the Minotaur, as the creature came to be called, was one thing. Keeping it quiet was quite another. Minos came up with the solution.

In order to keep the peace, he told his enemies in Athens that he required seven young men and seven young women as sacrifices. Every nine years he demanded they make the journey across the water to Crete and meet their fates in the dank underworld of the monster. And for several years Minos' plan worked. That is, until the son of Aegeus, king of Athens, was selected as tribute. Aegeus begged Minos to take another, but it was no use. In fact, his son, Theseus, was determined to go. He would, he argued, rather die than inherit a kingdom that paid its debts

in the lives of children. And so Aegeus watched, heartbroken and outraged as his son stepped aboard the vessel bound for Nossos and death. What he didn't know was that Theseus himself, like all good heroes, had a plan. INTRO Hello and welcome to After Dark, Summer Sun edition with me, Antony. And me, Maddie. And this week, we are matching ten sexy singles to a half man, half beast, and then sacrificing them in some kind of underworld. We're not.

But, we are taking a little bit of a break from the kind of Victorian landscape, and from that kind of dirty Georgianian grimy London streets that we're really used to. And now we have beaches. I don't like it. I don't endorse this at all. We're on holiday. We're on holiday, which I will not be ever going to a beach. We're on holiday. There's sun, there's sand, and there is minotaurs. There are. And we're going to get into what are minotaurs, but first of all I have to ask why will you not go on a beach?

Oh God, have you seen the colour of me? Look Look I'm transparent. I can't go on beaches. And if I do go on a beach it has to be very very covered. I have to be very very covered. So it's fear of the sun it's not like the sand or the monsters in the sea? Ah god no no no. I actually really like swimming in the sea. No see I will go up to my ankles and that is it and even then I'm worried I'm treading on stuff. I'm worried the stuff in the sand is going to come up and that is it. And even then I'm worried I'm treading on stuff. I'm worried this stuff in the sand that's going to come up and like get me and drag me down to hell.

Listen, this isn't about what this episode is about. Let's get into it. But hold on. Now, let's take ourselves away from the beach for a moment. It's so interesting to me that these stories, these myths from ancient Greece endure. Like you see them even in like the Marvel movies, you see elements of them coming in there. So they're really part of pop culture now. Why is it, do you think, that they endure? Especially because I find it really difficult

to connect with them. I'm not surprised that you say that, but that's because I know you, I think. But I think when it comes to stories from the ancient world, particularly ancient Greece, they're you, I think. But I think when it comes to stories from the ancient world, particularly ancient Greece, they're so, I mean, literally epic. Think of Homer's Odyssey, the Iliad. We've got these great adventure stories that span hundreds, if not thousands of miles. And there's these quests, there's this encountering of a challenge. There's always a hero who has to come everything. We have this great pantheon of gods and these complicated relationships, these complicated betrayals and ally ships and everything's constantly shifting. And I think you're right that you

can see that in Marvel films, you can see it in Game of Thrones, in House of the Dragonright, this recalibrating of these worlds and I think you can trace that back to the ancient world. I think they endure because they're so universal. Their stories, even though they are on the surface outlandish to us today, I think there is something of human nature in them. Their stories about jealousy, about passion, about fear, about anger, and they endure because of that. The other thing that I will say, and I'm interested in the fact that you say that you don't really connect to them, because I think for me, stories from the ancient world are remarkably tangible. And I don't mean because they're true and

there's archaeological evidence, and we will go on to talk about that, but I think these stories have informed all of Western art, from sculpture to pottery to painting, we see the same characters, the same stories being told again and again and again, right through the centuries to our own moment. And I'm thinking of the Hollywood film, Troy, right? Yeah. They're still being, I mean, that's not exactly a topical reference. That's what, like a decade old maybe? I bet you it's more than a decade. I bet you.

Oh God. It could probably be 20 years old. Nobody looked that up because that's really giving it away. No, that's aging us. That was a formative experience for multiple reasons. Not for me, it wasn't. That wig couldn't concentrate on anything else. But yeah, go on.

I know what you're saying though. I was not looking at the wig. But I think, you know, we're constantly reinventing, retelling these stories and they still have appeal to us. Yeah. No, no, no. They absolutely do. I like, I don't know, I think that vastness is one of the reasons why I find them a little bit impenetrable. It's just like, where am I now? Who am I with? What's going on? Nonetheless, the visual of them really does impact me in

a very positive way. It's just I love, especially the actual images from the time, well, there is no time for this, but you know what I mean, from ancient Greece, they are stunning and colorful and really playful. And again, we'll talk about some of these finds later on, but they're definitely still a touchstone. Like look at Stephen Fry's books that have come out. They've been hugely successful. There's three of them, I think, and like, you know, publishing phenomena. We're not being sponsored for this content, but they really are. Maybe I should listen to those. publishing phenomena. We're not being sponsored for this content, but they really are. Yeah, I mean, and again, he's such a great storyteller. These are, in their essence, they're oral traditions that Homer's Odyssey, Homer's Iliad were originally not written

down. They were spoken aloud. They were told, and it's all about storytelling. It's about this is why they're retold so many times. It's about the process of telling that story. And of course, we are replicating that in this episode. Right. Let's get to the Minotaur specifically now. Here's what I think. Tell me what's in your head. So the bottom half of a man. The body of a man. The entire body of a man. Just the head.

The head. Yeah. Yeah. And always quite a buff body, right? Yeah, I would say so. I mean, I would say everyone in the ancient Greek world has a buff body, right? True, true, true. Even the Minotaurs. Even the people with bull heads. Minotaurs are buff people too, actually.

Yeah, sorry, Minotaurs. Wait, is it a bull? Is it a bull's head? It's a bull's head, yeah, with horns and everything. So, the Minotaur is supposedly the offspring of King Minos, the king on Crete, Nosos, the center where his palace is. And it's the offspring of his wife, Pasiphae, and a bull. And the bull's name, the bull has a name, interestingly, is Asterius. Oh, nice name. I know, yeah.

Somebody tell us what that means. So yeah, write in and tell us what that translate probably means bull. I hope so. So Pasiphae falls in love with the bull. And this is a classic thing that we see in the ancient world, right? Where the gods intervene in human lives. And because Minos hasn't paid his dues to the gods, they magic Pasiphae into falling in love with the bull and wanting to be with him. And she's so passionate about being with this bull that she asks the famed architect

Daedalus who exists in the court of her husband, the king, to build her a wooden bull that she and the real life bull can go inside to consummate their love. Ah, here. And it's kind of like echoeses of the Trojan Horse. Did Grodulus do that as well? I don't think he's the same time. And A Midsummer Night's Dream, like, I know that's a donkey, but like, it's very, like, there's a spell to make you fall in love with.

Well, I mean, Shakespeare absolutely borrows from the ancient world, right, in terms of his stories. So, it's an odd start to the story. It's not unusual for myths. To build a bull to go inside. And now she is having a bit of the old sex with a bull. A bit of the old sex. But like that's what's happening, right?

That's what's happening. Yeah. And she, several months later, gives birth to a child that has the body of a human and the head of a bull. And this is the Minotaur. And Minos is horrified that his wife has done this. Well, you might be. You might be. And this child, this thing, this Minotaur has been born. It's an abomination. It was a baby at one point. Oh, I've never known.

I mean, obviously that's how people grow up. Okay, sorry. Yeah. So the child starts to grow and it soon becomes clear that he can't survive on his mother's milk alone. And actually what he needs is human flesh. So obviously a bit of a problem. And Minos realizes that he can use this to his advantage and that he can suppress his enemies in the kingdom, the empire that he's made

for himself by claiming these tributes, these sacrifices from them, from amongst their young people. And every few years... Hunger Games. It's the Hunger Games, yeah. But we have this hero, Theseus, who, like Katniss Everdeen, says, I volunteer to be tribute! And has a plan and is going to unseat this situation, but we're not there yet. We have not got there.

So we have this Minotaur who is eating people, people being sacrificed to him. And Minos builds this, what becomes known as the labyrinth, which where that is, what exactly it looks like is going to become a point of debate. And we're going to get to that. But it's essentially a maze. If you've ever been to like a maze maze on a farm, you know, right? Where you, and you have to sort of find your way through. And it's a way of keeping this creature at the center and these tributes are put into the maze, which seems kind of cool. Like they're put in alive and they have to try and find their way out. And I mean, it would make a great game show, right? But brutal.

I mean, again, I think we can all see where I would live in Hunger Games. Wow. How did myself there? Yeah, so it's this way of sort of containing the creature and I suppose providing some entertainment and it's this kind of interesting puzzle. It's an intellectual space. It's a physical architectural space within the story. And what's interesting is

there are actually references to this in sources in the ancient world. So there is a labyrinth, we think. Potentially. Okay, go on. So there is a reference to a labyrinth, not on Crete, but the Greek historian Herodotus does describe a labyrinth existing in Egypt in the ancient world. So we know that there was maybe something resembling this kind of structure in real life. Knossos itself, the centre of Minos's kingdom on Crete, is mentioned in Homer's Iliad, which was composed around 700 BCE. We know we were getting into some concrete history here. Now, what Homer describes of

Minos's kingdom is not a labyrinth, but he says that Daedalus, the architect of the wooden bullfame. So many names. So Daedalus is the guy who creates the bullfame and he designed the labyrinth. He's commissioned to do the labyrinth. I mean, wildly different commissions and you know, he's working in wood, he's working in stone, he's making a sex bull, he's making a labyrinth. What would his portfolio look like? What else did he work on? I want to know. But there's a description in the Iliad that says that Daedalus

designed not a labyrinth, but a dance floor. Oh, for the bull? For the court of Minos, question mark. I don't really see how that links up, but congratulations. But it's a reference to Daedalus, to Minos's kingdom. So this story, you can see these threads and these little hints of at least references to the story and to Minas existing within a broaded storytelling history. I mean, we're grasping at historical straws here. No, but there is something about bull worship at this time. So the bull is a symbol of power

and all that. We know that there were certain cultures within the ancient world that worshiped bulls. the ancient world that worshiped bolts. So we'll talk about that. So by 200 BCE, so circa 500 years after Homer's written the Iliad and reference this weird dance floor, we do know that Knossos, which is a real place, had labyrinths on the coins that were minted there. Oh yeah. So, and we actually have a picture. What we're looking at is a picture of a coin that is now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where they've got huge amounts from the site at Nossos. And we'll talk about why that is and why they have all those objects in a bit. But hundreds of years after the story is set, there is evidence that this

culture really does reference the labyrinth at least. So the culture on Crete, the Minoan culture as it's known for Minos, is known for its bull worshipping. You're absolutely right. And I've got an image here, which is from the palace at Knossos, which again, we're going to get into when this was discovered, what the archaeological evidence for this culture is in a little bit. But describe what you're looking at, because there's a very interesting and strangely intimate relationship that these people have with bulls. It's not, thank God, on the levels of bestiality in wooden structures designed by architects, but there is something. Firstly, it's beautiful. It is stunning. The first thing you'll notice about it is it's

very blue and it looks like it's kind of maybe on, well I was going to say on tiles, but actually what it is is it's on walls and bits have crumbled away I think. But it's beautiful. It's very blue and it's very gold. Those are the first things that stand out to me. Then in the center there is a very nicely wrought bull. Like he's kind of... Oh god. I need to be careful about what I'm saying here. But like it's a fine specimen of a bull. Buy him if you're at a mart. And he's being... Oh god, what's that person on his back doing? Someone's doing a handstand. Okay, I don't know what this is, so I'm just going to describe it as I see it. Somebody's doing a handstand. Oh, this is ball jumping, isn't it?

We got there. We got there in the end, ladies and gentlemen. In a little loincloth. And then there's two lads, either side of them, one at the head end, one at the bum end. And they are, I don't know, like cheering or something or helping. I don't know what they're doing, but either way, it is beautiful. Maddie, tell me what I don't know. So yeah, this is a wall painting, as you say, from the palace at Knossos. And it does show bull jumping. So bull jumping was an element of the culture on Crete and something that still exists today. You can watch people doing this on YouTube and it is so fascinating. I mean, I don't know, I haven't looked into the welfare of these animals

and I would venture to say that maybe it's not great. They're not killing them, but it's not quite bullfighting, but it is a strange and quite brutal looking practice. And what happens is the bull runs at the person. And I don't know if it's exclusively men who do this, but I think certainly looking at this image, I think there's something here about the expression of masculinity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even the bull looks really masculine, if you know what I mean. I think it's quite a muscular bull, isn't it? All right.

Right, Jesus. So the person, as the bull's coming towards them, will leap into the air and sort of twist their body and sail. The idea is to sail over the animal as it passes underneath you. And it's this kind of rite of passage and it's this expression of athleticism, physical ability, bravery to have this creature coming towards you with these very sharp horns that can impale you and flatten you and can absolutely end your life. And that you in this very sort of balletic fashion sail over it. And there's a real elegance, there's like a masculine elegance to it. So in terms of tangible evidence, we know that Knossos was a real place

on Crete. We know that there is at least by 200 BCE, there is reference on the coins there to Labyrinth. And we know from the palace that survives that bulls are absolutely at the centre of this community, of this culture, that bull jumping, bull worship, the iconography of bulls, the actual animals themselves are absolutely everywhere here. In case you haven't heard, in the U.S. it's a presidential election year. We're going to hear a lot of, this is America. No, no, you're all wrong. This is America. But on American History Hit, we're leaving that to the rest of them.

Join me, Don Wildman, twice a week, where we look to the past to understand the United States of today with the help of some amazing guests. Let us introduce you to the Founding Fathers, guide you through the West Wing of the White House and shelter you on the battlefields of years gone by to find out just how we got here. American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit. Right, let's move on then to, you mentioned sacrifices being placed within the labyrinth and you mentioned what that symbolizes for the king and for power and for power structures. Let's hear a little bit more about that. When Theseus arrived at Crete with the other Athenian sacrifices, he was determined to

survive. When the group were brought before King Minos, the others, afraid, lowered their gaze to the floor, cowering their heads in anticipation of what they knew was coming. But Theseus, a prince of Athens, looked into Minos' eyes with defiance. Minos was amused, at first, by Theseus' boldness and his resolve to live, but he soon tired of the young man and ordered that the Athenians be taken to the dungeons to await their fate. That night, as Theseus paced up and down in his cell, shaking the iron bars that held him with contempt, a figure flitted in and out of the shadows, drawing

nearer to him and all the time silent. Eventually, a young woman stepped from the dark to meet him. This was Ariadne, Minos's daughter and Princess of Nosos. She'd been curious about the man who had stood up to her father, and now, as the pair gazed at each other through the grill, they fell deeply in love. But heartbreak would surely follow, for tomorrow Theseus would be fed to the Minotaur. Ariadne though had a different idea. From beneath her robes, she pulled a ball of thread and handed it to him. It would be one thing for him to kill the beast, but quite another to escape from the labyrinth itself.

If Theseus unraveled the ball, she explained, he could trace his steps after the deed was done, and together the couple could escape to a new life, away from Crete and Ariadne's father's terrible reign. Before long, Theseus found himself standing at the entrance to the labyrinth. His time had come. In one hand he clutched a sword, rudimental, rusted in places, but still sharp. In the other, he held aloft an oil lamp. Its beams pooled and shook before him, conjuring up legions of shadowy figures on the walls beside him as he entered the first passageway. For a long time, his footsteps were the only sound,

bouncing off the rocks and echoing all around him as he followed every twist and turn through the darkness, his breath catching in his throat each time he turned a corner to nothingness. The journey felt never-ending. Perhaps he would simply die in here, unable to get out, resolved to join the scattered bones that lined his route. But then he remembered the thread bundled at his waist and all the time unspooling beside and behind him, threading its way back to freedom and Ariadne. And then, quite suddenly, came a terrible war. Before he knew it, fists as big as hooves rained down on him, great horns flashed before his eyes as the Minotaur cut this way and that, smashing, stampeding, slamming Theseus into the jagged walls, lifting him into the stale air and hurling him into the dust.

But Theseus was ready. He slashed this way and that with his sword, leaping and dashing between the creature's awful glows. His blade found its mark. Blood poured, scarlet and wet, all around until the Minotaur was still. And Theseus had triumphed. Let's take a second for Maddie's writing there, because that is gripping shit. I'm not saying you should be on this podcast, I don't know. But that is gripping stuff. Beep me out if I said that.

I've never had my writing described as gripping shit before. Thanks so much. Now we keep saying shit and the editors are going to hate us. So many beeps are going to be... That's so good. Well done, you. That sounds really patronizing, but I honestly mean it. That is really nicely written. I will be rewriting all the Greek classics. There's so much going on. And this is where I get, you know the way I say sometimes I feel a bit of a disconnect. I'm like, she's

there and he's there and now this is happening. And there's so many names. And that's why you're writing so good because I was like, oh wait, this is happening. And there's so many names. And that's why your writing is so good because I was like, oh wait, this is, tune into this because this is quite good. Okay, we'll come back to the story in a minute because now we want, I want to talk a little bit about some of the archaeology that you had referenced before. Because that's a little bit more tangible, right? So let's go in that way. What do we have? So, Knossos is a real place. There is a real palace, the ruins of, obviously now, discovered in around 1900 by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans. Now, one of my favourite things is eccentric men of the 19th and early 20th century going

out and finding classical archaeology. I love them and being like, I'm going to find, I'm thinking of Heinrich Schliemann who went out and decided that he was going to find the site of Troy, for example, and spent a long time doing it. And potentially did find, I think, a city that had like multiple layers, including one where it had been burned to the ground. And you can see that in the archaeological records. So he was like, it's Troy, I found it. So Evans, it should be said, of course, being a British archaeologist, he comes in and takes the credit. He wasn't the first person to dig on this site.

This is back in Innosos. This is Innosos, yes. So he becomes aware of the site in the 1890s when a local businessman, who's also an amateur archaeologist, called Mylos Kalikairinos, Minos, also the name of the king in this story, of course. He's been digging on the site for a while and he takes Evans and shows him what he's done and what he's found so far. And there are these architectural ruins, there's objects coming out of the ground. And of course, eventually Evans will, with the help of actual excavators on Crete, let's just be clear, Evans isn't doing this all himself. Evans does oversee the unearthing

of the remains of this palace, including, I believe, the wall painting that we talked about earlier on. So, I mean, these are incredible finds. These aren't just bits of rubble. This is like a palace he finds. And he finds things like really advanced plumbing systems. There are storerooms still filled with objects. You know, this is almost frozen in time. I mean, it's not quite Pompeii. There's no disaster that's frozen it in a particular moment, but it's really tangible and it's incredibly old. So it's really remarkable. And one thing that he really wants to find, of course, is the labyrinth. And in the story, the labyrinth is underneath the palace. And when Evans first sees the

ruins, he writes in his diary, I see no reason for not thinking that the mysterious complication of passages is the labyrinth. So his impression of the site is that actually the palace is the labyrinth itself. That makes sense. The structure underneath, which is kind of interesting. And I suppose then it's not this separate thing with a monster. But there is some architectural interest in terms of the palace itself. And it makes sense when you think about the coins that have the labyrinth on, maybe that's

a depiction of the palette and that it was such an incredible structure. The other thing that he finds, and this is fascinating, is this repeated iconography that's carved everywhere. And it's basically like a double axe head, so sort of two blades. It almost looks like a bow tie, if you can picture that. And you can see images of it carved in various aspects of the site today, if you go onto Google. And the ancient name for a double axe head is Labris. And so Evans, he basically comes to the conclusion that the labyrinth may have referred to the palace as the house of the double axes, as the house of Labris. And so you can see the tangibleness of this story, you can see elements of it that obviously are included

in the myth. But there is some reality here. We're not saying there was a minor thought. There is something. The reality or the suggested reality is actually more interesting to me. Like that, that I'm fully on board with. Like that I'm like, oh, okay, tell me more about this. I want to know about what that might have looked like if we have these pieces like that to me is really engaging. That's where I start to really fall into the story wholeheartedly. Yeah, definitely. And I think as well just that history we've talked before about how a Carter in Egypt and obviously I've just mentioned my

favorite Heinrich Lehmann. I think there's something as well about that kind of so-called golden age of archaeology in the 19th and 20th century. And of course it is usually tied to all these narratives of empire and it's not necessarily an uncomplicated history. But I think we can absolutely read what happens on Crete in that moment. There's a move towards trying to go down into the earth to understand the ancient world in particular. And I think it's incredible that Knossos was discovered in that moment. And I think that's a whole history in and of itself. Let's talk about how the myth and the archaeology slash the fact come together then because

that kind of sets imaginations alight, right? For generations because we're still living with them very much today and very successfully today as we mentioned Stephen Fry's books, again not sponsored but like I'm going to be listening to them. Stephen if you want to come on the podcast. Yeah, come on and talk about the myths and all that. And all that. That's how I describe our podcast. But go on, yeah, like how did that come together?

Is that, do you think that's the reason there's a longevity around this? I think the stories survive in their own right. But I think when you can put some archaeological evidence, some tangibility that provides just a little bit of a foundation in reality for these stories, I do think that's really tangible and really fascinating. I think we have to though, think of the Minotaur story as a separate thing, really. There's, you know, we're not looking for the palace that held the minotaur, we're not looking for the place where Theseus killed him, we're not looking for the bundle of

thread that he used to escape from that labyrinth. They are different things, but I think it's so fascinating that what is visible at Knossos even today is the centrality of bulls in particular to that cult there. And so you can see something of where that story has come from. You can place it in a moment in history, which I do think is fascinating, when as you say, often with stories in the ancient world, there is a slight intangibility to them, even though they are replicated on objects and images constantly. They are hard to hold in your head and they are traditionally told orally. And so there's something nice about being able to put physical material evidence into the picture.

Let's hear about the end of the story. And then I want to ask you what you think this story is actually about. Because does it have a moral? Does it need to have a moral? Let's decide. Okay. With the Minotaur defeated, Theseus and the other Athenian youths escaped the labyrinth, all the time feeling in the dark for Ariadne's thread to lead them to the light. Together, Theseus, Ariadne, and the others fled Crete, pulling up the anchors of the

boats by which they had come and unfurling their sails to the wind. What happens next depends on who is telling the story. In some versions, Theseus grows bored of the Cretian princess to whom he owed his life, and abandons her on the island of Naxos on his way home to Athens. In others, the mischievous god Dionysus steals her for himself, leaving Theseus alone and heartsick for his lost love. Whatever version though, they all end the same. Whether distracted by Ariadne's abduction, or overly excited by his victory, or simply lazy,

Theseus makes a fatal error. When he left Athens, he promised his father one thing. That, were he to return alive, any ship carrying him would fly a white flag instead of the usual black. But, as they neared land and began to dream of settling once more by familiar hearts, Theseus neglected to make the change. From the shoreline, his father, King Aegeus, saw not a white flagged ship approaching, but one bearing the colour of his deepest fear. His son, he believed, was dead. In a moment, Aegis rushed to the cliff edge and threw himself

into the water, sinking, distraught, beneath the waves. What do you think about Ariadne's treatment? Because I think if it hasn't been done already, and I'm assuming that it has, there needs to be like a feminist rewriting of the story, because it's her idea to use the thread. The wool or whatever, yeah, thread, yeah. To escape the labyrinth. Yeah. Vesius would be dead, presumably, without her, because he didn't think it through.

Okay, he killed the mind at all, but he didn't get out of the labyrinth without her, and presumably didn't get out of creep without her as well, like she's literally a princess and helps him escape. And then she's abandoned by Theseus, so he just ditches her, he's got bored. And of course she can't go home because she's betrayed her father, King Minos, or she's abducted by a god, which is a sort of classic, classical trope. But it's just so grim and frustrating. It just feels like they didn't have any narrative used for her anymore. They were just like,

oh, we need to pop her off there somewhere. So just, yeah, we'll give her a lazy exit kind of a thing. A lazy exit. A lazy exit. Yeah, they just didn't need her anymore, did they? Like narratively, I don't mean as a mythological figure, but yeah, she just had fulfilled her purpose, which, you know, obviously says a lot about how women, some women in these types of stories are used or treated. Yeah, they're absolutely sort of narrative functional moving parts. I think for me, because it seems quite abrupt that Aegis, because of this mistake with the flag, Aegis throws himself into the sea. Yeah. The Aegean Sea. Oh.

I'm assuming named after him, not, it wasn't fated. He was like, I'm Aegis, that's the Aegean Sea. I'm assuming named after him, it wasn't fated. He was like, I'm Aegeus, that's Aegean Sea, I'm going in. Presumably he gave his name to it. But it seems to me to be about almost the bittersweet nature of triumph and the cost of that. To borrow from another Greek story, if you fly too close to the sun, if you are arrogant about your success too much, you will slip up and make a mistake and it will cost you dearly. Maybe it's about Theseus should have been more emotionally available to Ariadne and not ditched her and also should have been a better communicator with his father. So gentlemen gentlemen, that is the moral

of the story. Treat women better and also communicate more with your child. And the concept of a baby Minotaur is cute, but the reality is that they eat flesh. Yeah, but I feel like a baby Minotaur would be quite a cute thing to have around. Oh my god, that'd be huge on Instagram or on TikTok. Can you imagine? What would the handle be? At Baby Mine at all? Yeah. We're like, mine oh baby. Done.

That's the end of the episode. Thanks very much for listening to After Dark. So we do love these episodes because sometimes they are absolutely bat ya crazy, but like there is so much history and myth and mythology that grows up around these things that it is really, and I don't apologize for not understanding them because sometimes I don't understand them. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Yeah. But I do enjoy engaging with them because it's just...

Also, it helps to alleviate some of the really heavy topics that we do sometimes talk about and abstract. But listen, thank you very much for joining us again. Leave us a five star view wherever you get your podcasts and we'll see you again soon. If you can find your way out of the labyrinth. I couldn't. You know I get lost. Not a chance. I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankenpem. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in

history. This season, we're revisiting the life of Cecil Rhodes. From sickly child to diamond tycoon to leading colonialist in South Africa, he was a bastion of British imperialism. Over the past few years campuses around the world have been met by students chanting Rhodes must fall. His legacy has been completely transformed. It's unbelievable how relevant Rhodes still feels and how often his name is invoked by

people contesting really polarizing parts of our contemporary life. But one of the questions about Rhodes is that he takes all the flak and therefore hides away all the other people who were responsible for doing things that may be not quite so bad. That's why I think it's important to think not just about Rhodes and his own life, but about what that period of British and colonial history meant. And one of the things people often say is you have to judge these figures by the standards of their time. That's exactly what we're going to do, Peter, isn't it? So follow Legacy now from wherever you get your podcasts.

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