Minotaur, the Wild Beast of Crete Minotaur, the Wild Beast of Crete Minotaur, the Wild Beast of Crete () is a 1960 film based on the Greek legend of Theseus, the Athenian hero who is said to have slain a minotaur on Minoan Crete around 1500 or 1450 BC. The film was directed by Silvio Amadio and starred Bob Mathias. The island of Crete lives in fear of the Minotaur, a dreadful beast trapped inside a labyrinth under the royal palace. The monster is venerated as a god, and to appease it, the Cretians regularly sacrifice a maiden to it. One day, Minos' wife Pasiphaë is
Daedalus Minos kept it for himself; and in revenge, Poseidon, with the help of Aphrodite, made Pasiphaë, King Minos's wife, lust for the bull. For Pasiphaë, as Greek mythologers interpreted it, Daedalus also built a wooden cow so she could mate with the bull, for the Greeks imagined the Minoan bull of the sun to be an actual, earthly bull, the slaying of which later required a heroic effort by Theseus. This story thus encourages others to consider the long-term consequences of their own inventions with great care, lest those inventions do more harm than good. As in the tale of