Minos.
The name of several rulers of Cnossus during the Minoan era, which flourished on Crete between 3000 and 1000 BCE. The first Minos was a son of Zeus and Europa and brother of Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon. This Minos is often considered the grandfather of the king around whom a group of myths have gathered, but in some sources the two are identical.
      To resolve a dispute over who should rule Crete, Minos prayed to Poseidon, who sent a sacrificial bull that confirmed Minos’s right to the throne. Instead of sacrificing the magnificent animal, Minos loosed it among the royal herd. As punishment, Poseidon instilled in Minos’s wife, Pasiphaë, a lust for the bull; from this union the Minotaur was born. Pasiphaë bore Minos a number of human children as well, among them Ariadne and Phaedra.
      During his reign, Minos waged war on Nisus, king of Megara, and took the city with the aid of Nisus’s daughter Scylla. Either out of love for Minos or because she was bribed, Scylla cut off the red (or purple) lock of her father’s hair that rendered the city safe; this caused Nisus’s death and the fall of Megara. Sickened by her deed, Minos either drowned her or caused her to commit suicide. Nisus was changed into an osprey, and Scylla became a seabird pursued for eternity by her father.
      Minos also attacked Athens to avenge the death of his son Androgeos. To avoid destruction, the Athenian king Aegeus was required to provide Minos with seven youths and seven maidens to be sacrificed to the Minotaur on a yearly (or nine-yearly) basis.
      Among Minos’s other adventures was his pursuit of Britomartis, a Cretan goddess often identified with Artemis (Diana). After avoiding his advances for nine months, Britomartis jumped over a cliff into the sea, but was saved by a fisherman’s net (Greek, diktyon; hence her alternate name, Dictynna).
      When Daedalus, who had facilitated Pasiphaë’s tryst with the sacred bull, escaped from the labyrinth in which Minos had imprisoned him and his son Icarus, Minos pursued him to Sicily. There, Daedalus contrived with King Cocalus’s aid to have Minos scalded to death by hot water (or pitch). Minos became a judge of the dead in Hades, along with his brother Rhadamanthys and Aeacus, son of Zeus and Aegina.
      
      
      See also Ariadne, Icarus and Daedalus, Minotaur, Pasiphaë