According to legend, King Minos of Crete had a vast labyrinth, or maze, underneath his palace. Deep inside the maze lived a fearsome creature, half man and half bull, called a minotaur (MIN-oh-tawr). Once a year, Minos would demand that the people of Athens send him seven young men and seven young women to feed to the Minotaur. If the Athenians did not send these young people to be sacrificed, Minos would destroy their city.
Finally a young Athenian named Theseus (THEE-see-uhs), son of the king, went to his father and asked to be sent to Crete with the others. The king reluctantly agreed, with one condition. Normally the ship that carried Minos's victims went under a black sail, in honor of the dead; but if Theseus were successful in his mission, the king said, he should put up a white sail before he sailed into the harbor at Athens. That way his father would know
He was safe and could stop worrying. Theseus agreed and went away with the others to Crete.
When the sacrificial victims were shown to King Minos, his daughter Ariadne (air-ee-AD-nee) was present. She fell in love with Theseus and gave him two gifts to aid him in surviving the labyrinth: a sword and a ball of yarn. He unwound the yarn as he went in. He killed the Minotaur with the sword and, using the yarn, found his way back to the entrance. Theseus escaped the island with Ariadne.
They did not live happily ever after, however. Theseus left Ariadne on an island because one of the gods commanded him to, and even worse, he forgot to replace the black sail with a white one. His father, seeing the ship in the distance, thought Theseus had been killed and jumped off a cliff to his death.
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