The Labyrinthine Wedding – Day 7

Today was our first of two “free” days in Crete, which meant that there were no planned wedding activities, so we could do whatever we liked.  After some complaining on my part that I wanted to experience and see something on Crete other than the airport and one single village, my wife decided to take me to the Palace of Minos in Knossos.  This has long been believed to be the site of the origin for the myth of the Labyrinth and the Minotaur.

The myth goes that after ascending the throne of the island of Crete, Minos competed with his brothers as ruler.  Minos prayed to the sea god Poseidon to send him a snow-white bull as a sign of the god's favor.  Minos was to sacrifice the bull to honor Poseidon, but owing to the bull's beauty, he decided instead to keep him.  Minos believed that the god would accept a substitute sacrifice.  To punish Minos, Poseidon made Minos's wife Pasiphaë fall in love with the bull.  Pasiphaë had the craftsman Daedalus fashion a hollow wooden cow, which she climbed into to mate with the bull.  She then bore Asterius, the Minotaur.  Pasiphaë nursed the Minotaur, but he grew in size and became ferocious.  As the unnatural offspring of a woman and a beast, the Minotaur had no natural source of nourishment and thus devoured humans for sustenance.  Minos, following advice from the oracle at Delphi, had Daedalus construct a gigantic Labyrinth to hold the Minotaur.  Its location was near Minos's palace in Knossos.

All the stories agree that prince Androgeus, son of King Minos, died and that the fault lay with the Athenians.  The common tradition holds that Minos waged a war of revenge for the death of his son, and won. The consequence of Athens losing the war was that they had to send a tribute of young men and maidens every year as a sacrifice.  These young men and unwed women were sent into the Labyrinth to be devoured by the Minotaur.  When the time for the third sacrifice approached, the Athenian prince Theseus volunteered to go instead and slay the Minotaur.  In Crete, Minos's daughter Ariadne fell madly in love with Theseus and helped him navigate the Labyrinth.  In most accounts she gave him a ball of thread, allowing him to retrace his path.  According to various classical sources and representations, Theseus killed the Minotaur with his bare hands, sometimes with a club or a sword.  He then led the Athenians out of the Labyrinth, and they sailed with Ariadne away from Crete.  (Wikipedia)

I found it interesting to hear one tour guide share that it was believed that the Minotaur represented King Minos himself.  He was depicted as a half bull / half man to represent the bull-worshiping culture of the Minoans; the Minotaur being the combination of the gods (the bull) and men.  The Minotaur’s name of Asterius even means “of the stars,” which would further the notion of the gods or the aspiration of the king to attain god-like status.  At the time, the Minoans were waging a cruel and terrible war on Athens (that much was true), and Theseus, being a personification of Athens, represented Athens rising up in revolt to break free of Minoan rule.  No ruins of the Labyrinth has ever actually been found at Knossos, leading many to believe that it was not an actual maze, but represented the maze-like structure of the Palace of Minos.  Theseus navigating the Labyrinth represented an invading Athenian army searching the Palace of Minos for the king to depose him.  Thus, the killing of the Minotaur by Theseus represents the end of the Minoan civilization at the hands of the Athenians.

Of course, all Troy cared about was finding the Minotaur, which I tried to explain was long dead.  But he was insistent that we should still be able to find its bones, which would also be acceptable.  I tried to explain that his bones would have long been disintegrated after 3300 years, but that was an unacceptable answer.  If dinosaur bones could still be found, then so could the Minotaur’s!  So, I resorted to telling him that since the Minotaur was so bad, that God took the Minotaur’s bones away, so that nobody would ever try to bring him back to life at a later time.  He was only moderately pacified by this.  On one hand, it’s hard to argue with the God angle.  On the other hand, he really wanted to see the Minotaur.  In the end, he had to be satisfied with a bull fresco on the wall.

The day was blisteringly hot, and the ruins of the palace are laid out in the full sun.  We had spent the morning shopping for groceries and driving to the site, so that by the time we finally made to the palace grounds, the heat was in full force.  We brought water, but at some point, even that wasn’t staving off the impending heat stroke.  The other issue was that the heat was making my wife and I extremely irritable, so Troy’s meanderingly slow pace and incessant chirping about seeing the Minotaur were starting to grate on us.  Overall, Troy didn’t really care about the ruins or the history of the place, which I expected.  I was hoping that the mythology would be enough to satisfy him and give him some interest, but then the heat sapped my natural inclination to placate him with stories.  We didn’t explore the entire site, because we left when I felt that I was in real danger of developing heat stroke.  It was a cool place, and I’d definitely recommend visiting, but August is maybe not the best time to go.

So, we left Knossos tired, hungry, hot, sweaty, and barely clinging to life, and I had a massive headache.  And then my wife informed me that we were going to meet my brother-in-law and the wedding party at the beach.  Because when I’m tired, hungry, hot, sweaty, barely clinging to life with a massive headache, I immediately think that I should go lay out in the sun on the beach!  But apparently my opinion doesn’t matter, and we headed to the beach in Matala.

We arrived to find everyone sitting on the beach near the bar / café.  Luckily for me, Troy wanted to go straight into the water.  I would have preferred to eat first, but the prospect of being in the water rather than on the hot beach sounded appealing too.  So, we changed into our swimsuits and headed into the sea.  It was cool and refreshing, and it was definitely a welcome reprieve from the heat.  The beach under the water was made of small pebbles, rather than fine sand, which was unexpected.  Even though there was very little wind, the waves were consistently crashing to shore.  Maybe it had to do with the crescent-moon shape of the bay we were in. 

Either way, Troy had fun riding the waves and letting them pull him onto the shore like a beached whale.  He also enjoyed playing with his Uncle Georgios, pretending to drag him out of the water and up onto the beach when he got “stuck.”  There was only one kid out in the water, which was the 18-month old from the party yesterday, Nikolas.  He was in his little yellow floaty raft thing, and his dad was throwing him into the air (raft and all) to land with a splash in the waves.  Nikolas loved it!

After we were done playing in the water, Troy and I were the last ones out, we stayed to watch the sunset between the cliffs before heading to finally get some food.  It was another late night, but that seems to be the Greek way.