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Asterius dying childless, Minos wished to reign over Crete, but his claim was opposed. So he alleged that he had received the kingdom from the gods,

and in proof of it he said that whatever he prayed for would be done. And in sacrificing to Poseidon he prayed that a bull might appear from the depths, promising to sacrifice it when it appeared. Poseidon did send him up a fine bull, and Minos obtained the kingdom, but he sent the bull to the herds and sacrificed another.[*](Compare Diod. 4.77.2; Tzetzes, Chiliades i.479ff. (who seems to follow Apollodorus); Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. v.431, according to whom the bull was sent, in answer to Minos's prayer, not by Poseidon but by Jupiter (Zeus).) [ Being the first to obtain the dominion of the sea, he extended his rule over almost all the islands. ][*](Compare Hdt. 1.171; Thuc. 1.4 and Thuc. 1.8.)

But angry at him for not sacrificing the bull, Poseidon made the animal savage, and contrived that Pasiphae should conceive a passion for it.[*](Here Apollodorus seems to be following Euripides, who in a fragment of his drama, The Cretans, introduces Pasiphae excusing herself on the ground that her passion for the bull was a form of madness inflicted on her by Poseidon as a punishment for the impiety of her husband Minos, who had broken his vow by not sacrificing the bull to the sea-god. See W. Schubart und U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Griechische Dichterfragmente, ii. (Berlin, 1907), pp. 74ff. ) In her love for the bull she found an accomplice in Daedalus, an architect, who had been banished from Athens for murder.[*](See below, Apollod. 3.15.8.) He constructed a wooden cow on wheels, took it, hollowed it out in the inside, sewed it up in the hide of a cow which he had skinned, and set it in the meadow in which the bull used to graze. Then he introduced Pasiphae into it; and the bull came and coupled with it, as if it were a real cow. And she gave birth to Asterius, who was called the Minotaur. He had the face of a bull, but the rest of him was human; and Minos, in compliance with certain oracles, shut him up and guarded him in the Labyrinth. Now the Labyrinth which Daedalus constructed was a chamber “ that

with its tangled windings perplexed the outward way. ”[*](In the Greek original these words are seemingly a quotation from a poem, probably a tragedy—perhaps Sophocles's tragedy Daedalus, of which a few fragments survive. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 167ff.; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. i. pp. 110ff. As to the Minotaur and the labyrinth, compare Diod. 4.77.1-5; Plut. Thes. 15ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 40; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Achill. 192. As to the loves of Pasiphae and the bull, see also Scholiast on Eur. Hipp. 887; Tzetzes, Chiliades i.479ff.; Verg. Ecl. 6.45ff.; Ovid, Ars Am. i.289ff. ) The story of the Minotaur, and Androgeus, and Phaedra, and Ariadne, I will tell hereafter in my account of Theseus.[*](See below, Apollod. 3.15.7-9; Apollod. E.1.7-11.)