Ariadne (poem) on a throne, before a flower-strewn bed, surrounded by the dead; how the priests and guards bound the Athenians with thongs and left. Theseus cut his thongs and freed his companion, Euthycles. The Minotaur, seeing the danger, seized a long sword to hold off the unarmed Greeks while it made to escape. Euthycles sprang at it and was killed, allowing Theseus time to crush the creature with its throne. They discover that the Minotaur was King Minos himself in a bull-mask. Hearing this, the horrified Ariadne thinks of the golden tress she left on her father's pillow, as a loving
Minotaur the main political and cultural potency in the Aegean Sea. As the fledgling Athens (and probably other continental Greek cities) was under tribute to Crete, it can be assumed that such tribute included young men and women for sacrifice. This ceremony was performed by a priest disguised with a bull head or mask, thus explaining the imagery of the Minotaur. Once continental Greece was free from Crete's dominance, the myth of the Minotaur worked to distance the forming religious consciousness of the Hellene "poleis" from Minoan beliefs. The Minotaur ("infamia di Creti", Italian for "infamy of Crete"), appears briefly in