From the Vault: The Minotaur, Part 1

One after another, they fall, without my ever having to bloody my hands. Where they fall, they remain, and their bodies helped distinguish one gallery from the others. I do not know how many there have been, but I do know that one of them predicted as he died that someday my redeemer would come. Since then, there has been no pain for me in solitude, because I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end he will rise

and stand above the dust. If my ear could hear every sound in the world, I would hear his footsteps. I hope he takes me to a place with fewer galleries and fewer doors. What will my Redeemer be like I wonder will he be bull or man? Could he possibly be a bull with the face of a man? Or will he be like me? Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind? Production of my Heart Radio album Hey you Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's been

a long time coming. We finally enter a labyrinth of the Minotaur. That's right. We're gonna try and leave string behind us as we go through these episodes so that you can find your way back out again. But we figured this would be a perfect journey to take during October when we frequently engage on Halloween themed episodes. Now, that cold opening I want to point out was from the just fabulous short story The House of Hysterian by

Johey Luis Borges. This one is translated by Andrew Hurley and I got this out of the Book of Collected Fictions, which is put out by Penguin. The Minotaur is kind of the perfect monster. I think the Minotaur has very often been done injustice by by films and TV shows, and one of the few exceptions I can think of is Jim Hinson's storyteller, where that minotaur I think has has just the right balance of of pain and terror and anguish and and and uh and menace uh and

and I like that. You you don't often get a very full look at the minotaur in that story. Yeah, they do. The Hintston team does a fabulous job presenting just the physicality of the minotaur. But then also the minotaur is written and performed in such a way that that he is this true hybrid. You know, he's not just beast, but he is also uh human as well. You know, there's this juxtaposition in his being. Uh. He stands across this threshold because we we we find him

both both terrifying and tragic. You know, we fear the minotaur even as we empathize with it um you know, and and even as just an adversary in the myth it can it is supposed to combine brute strength and savagery, but also with this cunning, predatory nature. That story by Jorge Luis Borgees is quite good because it captures the pity and the pathos that we should feel for him,

but it does it in an ironic way. It's like that you feel pity for the minotaur because he's deluded, like he he has a very his vision of his role in in the culture is very confused, like he believes. At one point, he says, he gets out of his labyrinth and he wanders around in the streets, and he says the people are afraid of him, but he believes it's because they recognize his royal blood and they're like, oh, you know, here's the you know, here's the powerful descendant

of the queen. We must defer. But of course, the the implication once you get to the end of the story and realize that it's about the minotaur, is that I guess they were looking at his horns. Yes, yeah, this is as as perfect a short story as as I can think of, and it is about really about the perfect monster. And Borhes of course totally this was this. I mean, Borhes was was obsessed by a by labyrinths and and the like, so that this is the perfect

myth for him to consider. And indeed the labyrinth is essential to understanding the minotaur. If you take the minotaur out of the labyrinth, as so many works of fiction and films and games do, and all you have is like a pretty cool beast man, but just a beast man. For for the myths to work, for the monster to have its true terror, and and and all of these other emotions were attributing to it, he has to reside within this maze, within this artificial habitat that is seemingly

designed to confuse us. Yeah, in a way, I think it's almost a mistake to have made the minotaur into um less of a less of a unique sort of proper noun type monster, and more into a species of monster that you might encounter in Dungeons and Dragons or something like that, because it really does it takes him out of his proper context, right right, and and and we'll come back to Dungeons and Dragons in a bit, because I think there are cases where it can be

it has been some correction applied, But for the most part, Yeah, you you take me, you make the minotaur into just a species, and you mostly just have a beast man. Uh. The setting is key, and in fact is as Borges pointed out in another work, The Book of Imaginary Beings. This is also from translation by Hurley quote. Indeed, the image of the labyrinth and the image of the minotaur

seemed to go together. It is fitting that at the center of a monstrous house there should live a monstrous inhabitant. I agree, And I think another uniting theme here is confusion, because what is the thing that makes the hybrid scary. It's that it is a perversion. It is a confusion of nature and what makes the labyrinth scary? Uh, this is the I guess, the more classic maze understanding of the labyrinth rather than the unidirectional labyrinth. We can get

into those distinctions in a bit. But the terror there is also a confusion. It's a um it's you know, having the stability city of nature and of direction, uh taken out from under you. You are unmoored when dealing with the minotaur because you don't know which way is which, and you don't know what kind of beasts this is. Yeah, and and in and in many ways, this basic idea reverberates through a lot of our horror fiction. I mean, a haunted house has a ghost in it, you know,

like that, That's that's how it works. So Leatherface lives in the crazy chainsaw house, you know, and uh uh, Leatherface takes Manhattan would not work right? Uh? You know, Freddie Krueger occupies the realm of dreams, and even even Jason is a is a creature of like of Crystal Lake, right, He's a creature of the woods, of this environment that is farig into the various teenagers and what have you

that have that are visiting it. I guess that is one reason Jason Takes Manhattan is so funny, is because it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever out of his context.

And you actually see that in the tone of the movie because in Jason Takes Manhattan when he's walking around times where the movie at that point transitions to become a full comedy, like on purpose comedy with jokes where he just lifts his mask up at the punks and scares them, you know, and everybody's now and the kids are saying, like there's a maniac chasing us, and the

waitress at the diners like welcomed into York. You know, I never thought of this before, but I'm now assuming that movie came out after Crocodile Dundee, right, probably, Oh yeah, it's Crocodile Dundee, but he's Jason. Yeah, and yeah, of course that's another fish out of water story. But the minotaur is very much a fish in its own waters, waters that are foreign and dark and mysterious to us. And uh and I and I feel like like this is a perfect metaphor for so many fears and anxieties

in life. And that's another huge reason that the Minotar myth and things that are like the Minetar myth resonates so strongly, the idea of a realm that we're uncertain about and the things that might be in there that can harm us. I don't think we've said it so far, but we should acknowledge this is gonna be a two part series because we've wanted to do the Minotaur for years. I don't know why it took us so long to get around to it, but we're gonna have two episodes

worth of Minotaur for you. And I think maybe at first here we should just tell the myth, right, yeah, yeah, we should. We should just remind everybody what the story is, who the major players are here, and and what happens

now before we we get going. I do want to to drive home, of course, that the minuetar emergence from Greek myth, but as always, myths are amorphous they change over time with different tellings, with different peoples and cultures, stories merged together, stories split apart, stories are finally recorded and then re recorded and translated, etcetera real history, magical thinking, and many other factors come into the creation of a myth,

and the Minotaur is no exception. That's right. And this is one thing we talked about when we when we did the Medusa episodes earlier this year that I find often today, like kids are really insistent on knowing what cannon is, like what is what is technically canon and what is not cannon. I think that that's a product of modern myth making, like star wars and stuff, where you've got ideas of intellectual property and like one artist or owner's control over what technically really happens in this

mythical universe. That's not how ancient myths are ancient myths or you know, there's a million different versions of them, especially with like you know, the ones where we have a lot of different sources over hundreds of years, like

the Greek myths. You know, you've got sources they go back to a couple of centuries b c. And you've got sources going way up into some of our fullest sources are from the earliest centuries c. And so you end up with tons of different variations and there's no way to pick one and say, oh, this is the real version of the myth. Yeah. And I feel like it would be healthier for us if we approached things

like Star Wars in that way. I've thought about this a little bit because I've been thinking way too much about Star Wars this year. Uh. But yeah, I feel like the Clone Wars, for instance, this is uh, you know, this is a mythic event. Uh. And You're going to have various tellings and retellings of it, and there will continue to be tellings and retellings of it, and and and it's and the thing itself is going to ultimately

be shapeless and unformed at the center. The fixed canon is a product of a society that operates largely on the basis of fixed recorded media and has a like capitalist conception of intellectual property. I think those things are just death to mythology. You gotta let it breathe. Yeah. And and certainly you see even with with with films and whatnot, you see that energy there in the in the fandom and people that follow. You know, we we all want to have our own interpretations of what happened,

alternate interpretations. There's this yearning for for for for these interpretations, for fan fictions, for additional fleshings out of mysteries, And I think I think that's basically the same sort of energy that you would see go into the deviation and the and the recreation and of myths over time. Now, having said all that, I guess we should also try to identify, though, what are the main sources we would be looking at for the closest thing to a canonical

version of the myth. I guess the closest thing to canonical would be the version of the myth that most people know right, And a lot of a lot of the modern understanding of of the menatur story, like as without many other myths, comes down down to all its metamorphosis. Uh. And so that was one of the key areas we

turned to here. As always, I I pick up Carol Rose's uh books of Monsters and Fairies, because she she did such a fabulous job, uh, you know, basically, uh, you know, nailing down that the essential myths, uh, that sort of thing. But certainly what we're gonna about to roll out. Here is not the It is not the cannon, but it is maybe as close to the cannon as we can sort of agree on for the purposes of moving forward. Yeah, I just wanted to mention another major

source on this I think would be pseudo Apollodorus. The I think this is probably now leave to be like a first or second century CE work, but you know, it's the Biblioteca. It's tells a lot of classic Greek and Roman myths, and it was traditionally attributed to an author named a Polydorus. Now that authorship is questioned, so it's largely known as pseudo Apolodorus. Now ask your doctors about pseudo Apolodorus. Okay, Well, what's the story? Okay, alright, So so here we go on the isle of Crete.

There is a king who, like most kings, desires above all else to ensure and extend his reign. And as he lives in a world ruled by the gods, and is himself not entirely without divine blood, he seeks their support. Now, given the creed is surrounded on all sides by the sea, it makes sense to reach out to Poseidon. Getting into bad company there. Yeah, but you know, kings, they're they're vain, uh, and they see themselves as powerful enough to stand beside

such deities. So he asked the sea god to deliver up a sign of his divine to rule, as well as a proper beast of sacrifice. And so the god does just this. He delivers up this white bull from the surf. It comes, comes comes out. It's just why it is the frothing sea foam itself. And this beast comes to be known as the Cretan Bull. I think even this aspect of the myth is very interesting because what he does is King Minos asks Poseidon to send him a bull that he can then turn around and

sacrifice to Poseidon. So he wouldn't even really be giving of himself. He'd just be sort of returning the favor in a way. Well, I guess it does kind of remind me of like the the gesture of say you you visit somebody's house for dinner, and you bring a bottle of wine, and then the expectation is kind of like that bottle of wine will then be opened and

shared with the guests. Okay, I can see that the analogy I was thinking of was checking the ball in a game of basketball where you've only got one goal. Check the ball like the ball, you know, like when you you never played half court basketball where you get to the when possession changes you, you check the ball, you throw it to the other team, you say check, and then they throw the ball back to you. It is a sign that possession has changed. Okay, I'll take

your word for it. Okay, So the Cretan Bowl is fabulous, is beautiful, and then then factors into some other myths as well. But but so splendid is this beast, and so self interested is King Minos that he decides to keep this trophy for himself and instead to offer up the blood sacrifice of immortal bowl so that Poseidon, you know, will still be pleased. Uh So, it's like you bring a really nice bottle of wine to dinner and the host is like, oh thanks, and then gets out the

two buck chuck exactly. Yeah. But, as we've touched on before, Poseidon is certainly nobody to trifle with um, even if you do have a little bit of of royal blood of Zeus in your system, as is uh supposed to be the case with Minos. Okay, Well, we know from experience ends that Poseidon does not deal well with slides. In fact, Poseidon does not even usually treat people well if they've done nothing to him. So he is he's bad news. How is he going to react to this?

Well horribly, But by comparing preparing it to other things, Poseidon is done. I mean he he was almost playing a little softball here, as we'll see, but that still he definitely has the last laugh. So here's what Poseidon did. He bewitched Ninos, his wife Pacific, causing her to fall

in love with the Cretan bull. So she ends up belonging to be one with this beast, and she convinces the master artificer Daedalus, who was then residing in Crete, to craft for her this mechanical bovine likeness that wouldn't enable her to then mate with the bull. Yes, so Poseidon, by which is pacifically says, you're gonna fall in love with this bull? She does. She gets Deadalus to build her a robot bull so she can get inside it

and have sex with the white bull bowl. Yes, and this results in a monstrous pregnancy, producing a monstrous hybrid part human part bull. This is the Bull of Minos or the minotaur, also known as a stereon yes um. And certainly that that gets back to the title of that Bores story the House of Asteria. Now, the exact form of the minotaur was not always well to find, uh.

The the A. S. Klein translation of The Metamorphosis describes a quote strange hybrid creature, a twin form of bull and man, and Bores is actually in that passage that I read, he's alluding to this a little bit, uh, the idea that sometimes there is this idea that maybe the minotaur is more like the face of a man on the body of a bull rather than the reverse.

So now we have the minotaur, and it's easy to sort of overlook how strange this creature is and exactly like what it's mixed lineage means, because this is a monster of two worlds yet none. It's the It's a product of Minos's blast from me Poseidon's wrath, specifics lust. It was an unnatural being, and yet it also was sacred. Minos could not simply just kill it and swatter it or cast it out back into the sea. You know

where it's It's it's father, the bull came from. So instead he chooses to hide it away, and luckily he had in his employ just the right man to design a most elegant hiding place. I want to read here from the Metamorphoses, the Garthen Dryden translation that talks about this part. So of it writes, when Minos, willing to conceal the shame that sprung from the reports of tattling fame, resolves a dark enclosure to provide, and far from sight,

the two formed creature hide. Great. Dadalus of Athens was the man that made the draft and formed the wondrous plan, where rooms within themselves encircled, lie with various windings to deceive the eye. As offt meanders, wanton current plays when through the Phrygian fields, it loosely strays backward and forward rolls, the dimpled tide, seeming at once two different ways to glide when circling streams their former banks survey and waters past succeeding waters sea now floating to the sea, with

downward course now pointing upward to its ancient source. Such was the work, so intricate, the place that scarce the workman all its turns could trace. And Dadalus was puzzled how to find the secret ways of what himself designed that wonderful. Oh yeah, So he's describing this thing that's these galleries, this place that's often described as a maze or a labyrinth, as as being as confusing as waters that churned back and forth without apparent rhyme or reason. Yeah,

I love this. So he makes some comparisons to the natural world here. But but it is the ultimate unnatural environment to house the ultimate unnatural creature. But maybe I should read the next two lines because that sets up what we're getting into now, these private walls the minotaur include who twice was glutted with Athenian blood. That's not a good rhyme, is it. I guess that reflects how English pronunciation has changed over time. This is a very

old translation. I think it's ultimately perfect too, that that Minos has this constructed, you know, because ultimately, again, think of the of the minotaur as a creature representing the shaming of Minos. You know, it is the revenge of of Poseidon. But a king doesn't really suffer shame like you or I. His awfulness is common knowledge, right, he he can't just change the central vileness upon which everything spends.

But he can alter the surrounding reality. He can foster confusion, misinformation. He can care apart your faith in the ordered structure of cosmos, of society, of law or order. In short, a king builds a maze, or certainly he pays a great inventor who is, by the way, in the case of datal Ists, fleeing his own shame to build it for him. Yeah, and so it's kind of hard to understand exactly what it means that Dadalust, like the great craftsman,

builds this maze. The other things we know of Dadalust for creating are, for example, the wings that he uses ultimately to escape the realm of King Minos or Minos. I know, we keep saying it both ways, and we're probably just gonna keep saying it both ways. I hope you're all right with that. But yeah, he makes the wings of the wax and the feathers that he and Icarus used to to escape the island that doesn't go so well for for Icarus. We all know that story.

But he, you know, and he's also renowned to be, you know, the great master craftsman who makes statues that are so lifelike. It seems as if they will, they will become quickened and walk away. But here he has made this, this sort of like palace of Confusion, which is ultimately some combination of prison and weapon, and it is his ultimate creation, and as as Ovid points out,

a creation so well designed that Datalus himself barely escapes it. Uh. And that of course plays more into the myth of Icrius. But you're right, Yes, the maze of the King becomes not only a defensive ploy but a weapon. And indeed, the Minoan maze came to feature into Minos's destructive policies.

He required tributes sent each year by other lands, including Athens, and these individuals were thrown into the labyrinth, where they were then hunted through the twisted halls amid the echoing screams, until they too confronted the minotaur and were torn to bloody shreds and and presumably consumed as well. Yes, so they demand tribute from Athens or is it just from Athens or is it from other city states as well?

I believe other city states as well. But of course this is the Athens is most central to the telling of the myth, right because ultimately the hero of the story Theseus will come from Athens. But from Athens every nine years they demanded fourteen young people of sacrifice, seven maidens and seven young men, and so they would be taken away by ship to to the palace of of Minos, and then they would be sent into the labyrinth to meet their fate as a human sacrifice to the monster.

Oh and of course the minutar would eat them. I don't know if we mentioned that part. The minotaur would devour their flesh. Yum, yum. So inter Theseius. Thetheus is the fated one, the one, the fated slayer of the monster. Um. And of course there's more to his story as well. But basically what happens is he takes the place of a tribute that is being sent to Crete. Right, He's like one of these guys who would be sacrificed. Now I'll go instead because I know what I can do.

I can kill that minotaur. Right. And of course he is uh, you know, he's a handsome prince. So what does he do he you know, he impresses people with his charisma. He makes an ally in Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos. Right, it's often said that she falls in love with him, though I don't know if that's in every telling. So for some reason they end up allied. Yes, and uh and what does she do? Well? She she

gives them privileged information. She gives him a ball of string to unwind behind him as he travels through the labyrinth, and she tells him the various twist and turns that will lead him not out of the labyrinth, because that's what the string is for, but to the heart of the labyrinth, to the place where the minotaur can be found. Uh. In other words, turned the hunted into the hunter instead of being in there just kind of lost and hunted by the minotaur. He'll know how to get straight to

the monster and kill it. And that's exactly what happens. He follows her instructions, he slays the minotaur and then follows the string back to the surface. He ends up eloping with the daughter of King Minos, but then ultimately abandons her, just totally maroons her on an island. Yes, and and this is That's another great thing about the the Jim Hinson Storyteller episode is that it it definitely

doesn't just play theseus up. Is this perfect monster killer hero, but also shows this, I think, to at least to modern interpretations and modern viewers, this unsavory nature of the hero. You know, I was thinking about how the story of Theseus and the Minotaur has actually so much in common with the story of Perseus and Medusa, especially in the broad strokes and in the way modern audiences would react

to it. And you have to imagine, are we reacting to the story with different values in a in a different way than ancient Greek audiences would have reacted to it. But you know, some of the broad contours that are the same are starts with Poseidon doing something cruel because he's awful, and this cruelty of Poseidon results in the creation of a monster. The monster ends up living in some kind of secluded underworld where it kills people, but

only really when they come to its domain. There is a young Hero, the son of a king of Sorts. Now in Perseus is actually the son of Zeus. Theseus is the son of a Gius, the king of Athens, but either way the son of a king, the son of a king. Hero sets out to kill the monster. He receives tools and strategies to help him from other people. Perseus gets helped from Athena and Hermi is giving him

tools and advice that will help him kill Medusa. Theseus gets tools and advice from Ariadney and Dadalus that will help him kill the monster. The young hero succeeds in killing the monster, then turns out, at least on a critical reading, to be an absolute jerk. Remember Perseus going around just showing the head of Medusa at a random people. Oh yeah, and then like if someone ticks him off, he'll just turn him to stone with it. You know.

He's just kind of rampaging through the aisles, surrounding aisles with that thing. Yeah. And Theseus of course abandons Ariadne on the on the island, and then in the end, at least as a modern critical reader, for some reason, I in both stories end up feeling more sympathy for

the monster. The monster is kind of pitiable. Yeah, there is this sense in some of the tellings that that the and and this is also reflected in Borges retelling that the monster doesn't even necessarily put up much of a fight, or get to put up much of a fight. He is just dispatched by our hero here because you have to again, I think you have to think of the minotaur not only is an occupant of the maze, but a part of the maze, a function of the maze,

like the killing center of the maze. And via this privileged information that he gets Theseus makes himself the center of the maze, makes himself the killing function of the Manoan maze. Oh and by the way, I also think it's fitting that the the that this whole episode ends up with with this tragic turn of events for Minos his daughter as well, which also feels a part, uh somehow of Poseidon's grand design. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

And there's more tragedy too, because when um, when Theseus is returning home to Athens, his father a Gus gets confused about what's happening is the way the boat is returning and ends up killing himself throwing himself into the sea. Uh. And then that's how we get the name of the g and C. Yeah. So there's so many interesting themes in this story that that we can get into over the next couple of episodes. It deals with, of course, this this hybrid bull human monster. Of course, it deals

with human sacrifice, it deals it deals with mazes, and labyrinths. Uh, there's a lot of rich territory here, yes, and and certainly in a one angle on it too. Is is going to be just questions of the the Noan civilization of Crete and the Greek perceptions of that civilization. But I wanna, I want to stress that the episode following this one will get more into that than this episode. So just just stay tuned if you have a lot of of of of of nagging questions about that aspect

of the myth. Alright, on that note, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we will venture into hell. Alright, we're back. So I want to talk a bit about how the figure of the minotaur developed after the Greco Roman world. And one example that I've come across recently, because I think we've talked about this on the show, is that this year Rachel and I have been rereading The Divine Comedy, which has been surprisingly fun. I know, like to to modern readers

that can seem kind of weird. Oh really, you want to get into all this stuff about you know, medieval Catholic theology and politics, But if you have an addition that's got really good notes filling you in on the historical context is actually a really fun and interesting and funny read. We've been reading from several translations. We used

the Pinske translation of the Inferno. Uh, We've been using the Gene Hollander translation of the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, but using the notes by John Chiardi, and those notes Charity's notes are fantastic. But so the minotaur does appear in the Divine Comedy in Hell, of course, and this is in Canto twelve, when Dante and his guyed the the Latin poet Virgil, are descending into the Seventh Circle

of Hell. So, of course Virgil is guiding Dante through the different realms of the afterlife to sort of educate him on what awaits after death and get him to repent and turn more fully to God. And so they're descending through Hell, and Dante is witnessing all the horrors of Hell, and they're going down into the seventh Circle, which is reserved for people whose nature is violence. And they enter the circle by descending a fallen rock wall.

And here I just want to read from the RT translation, such was the passage down the steep and there at the very top at the edge of the broken cleft lay spread the infamy of crete, the air of beast reality, and the lecherous queen who hid in a wooden cow, and when he saw us, he gnawed his own flesh in a fit of spleen, And my master mocked, how you do pump your breath? Do you think perhaps it is the Duke of Athens who, in the world above

served up your death. Off with you, monster, This one does not come instructed by your sister, but of himself to observe your punishment in the Lost Kingdom. As a bull that breaks its chains just when the knife has struck its deathblow, cannot stand nor run, but leaps from side to side with its last life. So danced to the minotaur, and my shrewd guide cried out, run now while he is blind with rage into the past, quick

and get over the side. This is great. And one of the things I love about about like this, this particular passage from Inferno, is that it almost is like a Looney Tunes cartoon. Yes, you know, yeah, I mean a lot of stuff in the Inferno is that way. It's like they run into a monster or a figure,

you know, an evil figure or something. Uh, there's a great part where they come up to plute Us, who's clucking at them, and uh, you know there are parts where uh, the beasts menacing them in untranslatable languages of Hell, you know, the tongue of the Inferno, Poppy, Satan, Aleppe and all that great stuff. But uh, but yeah, and then and then Virgil will often like mock them, or

they'll kind of scramble away. And so what Virgil does is he gets the minotaur really mad, and he's like stomping and huffing like a bull, I guess, you know, the like the Loony Tunes bull actually scratching and the ground and snorting. And then they scramble over the rocks and get away. But I like the implication of them

scrambling away. This is never fully made clear in the Divine Comedy, but it makes me wonder, like, was there a possibility that Virgil and Dante could be killed while in Hell and would not get to complete the tour of the afterlife. I don't know, Um, it's certainly implied. You know, there is this sense of danger at times where where virgils having to urge him on, and and is there is a protector of sorts, so you know, in addition to guide uh So, yeah, I always got

the sense that that that that was a possibility. And oh and by the way, um, I was always partial to the robert Ian Durling translations of of Inferno and U and Purgatory uh as. I recall when I was reading these they had not yet come out with up or they had not yet published a translation of his All of Paradise. But that is out now as well, and has been for for years. Oh. Interesting, I don't know anything about that translation. I'll have to look into it.

I feel like I'm almost without doing it on purpose, becoming a sort of Dante translation nerd this year, just because we've been we've been looking at so many different ones. I don't remember the details on that translation so much, but but when I um, when I studied uh Dante a little bit in college, they those were the additions that our our teacher recommended. So that's the one we got,

and I found it quite I think. Earlier, without the you know, the aid of a class environment, I had tried reading some other translation, like a Penguin translation, and I didn't get as much out of it. But I

really liked these these additions. One thing I will say, if you want to make a go of reading The Divine Comedy, I think it is absolutely crucial to seek out one that has really good notes that absolutely it helps explain everything because these books like this is this is medieval epic poetry that is full of contemporary political and historical and you know, theological mythological references. It's just crammed with culture and cultural references that you're not gonna

understand unless you have some background. But if you do get the background, it can become very like interesting and funny watching like how you know again, like medieval Florentine politics are projected into the afterlife. Oh yeah, there's a lot of Dante settling old scores and picking at his enemies and also like talking about friends who you know, tragic things happen to and sort in remembering them like it's it's it's it's a really beautiful work and it

covers it does. It covers a lot of territory. Once you even emerge from just the inferno, you'll feel like you've had a crash course in in in the politics and uh and uh and and religious and just cultural world of the time. Totally. Now, I wanted to talk about a couple of things about this passage that I thought were interesting. One of them is, uh, why is this where the minotaur is in Hell in the seventh circle?

I mean, one part is clear, because this is the circle of violence, right, One part is clear, it's the violence against others. You know, the minotaur kills and eats people. But I think there's like a threefold thing going on here, which is that the minotaur is depicted as a violent against others by killing and eating them, violent against himself because it shows him gnawing his own flesh and anger, and then finally that this is the kind of thing that shows up a lot in the inferno. He is

violent against nature by way of his monstrous hybridity. The fact that he's part human and part bull is a form of violence. Now you could say that's not really

the minotaur's fault, but uh. In the in the medieval Catholic theology that places people in Dante's Hell, a lot of people are there for things that we would say are not really their fault, right, right, But this is also, interestingly one of the dozens i'd say, probably hundreds of instances throughout the Divine Comedy of what I think would be called syncretism in any other context. Of course, syncretism

is the blending or mixing of different religious or cultural traditions. Uh. Dante is supposedly writing orthodox Catholic theology and fantasy form, but throughout the Divine Comedy he takes as real all the gods and heroes and monsters of classical Greek and Roman mythology, which would have been considered like Satanic paganism in a way by by a lot of you know,

Christian thinkers. But it seems for Dante, Greco Roman mythology is is just sort of rolled straight up into Christianity as if they are the same thing and part of the same tradition. So hell is full of figures from Greek mythology, as if they actually existed and are real figures, you know, dealing with with the ramifications of of Christian salvation and stuff. Yeah, it is a It is a rich hell that Dante creates here, full of full of

all these mythological figures. Uh, these monsters, also demons and devils, but also people he knew, people, he liked, people he hated, reviled characters, from recent histories. Uh, yeah, they're all there. I just find that so interesting if anybody out there is a Dante scholar and wants to get in touch with us about the uh syncretistic aspects, like what why was it seen as totally acceptable to just essentially take all of these classic Greco Roman myths as basically true,

except unfortunately Odysseus was not afforded Christian salvation. All right, well, we could, We could obviously keep going on and on about Dante, and we should, we should probably will definitely come back to Dante again in the future, and maybe we should do a proper episode about about Inferno as well. But let's come back to the meat here. Let's come back to the minute our. Okay, So maybe we should

talk about labyrinths and mazes. We alluded earlier to the fact that these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but sometimes they're used to mean very distinct and different things. Yeah. At times, there's this distinction between a branching assembly of artificial paths and halls that are designed to confuse, and in some cases these attributes are defined as a maze, not a labyrinth. And then on the other hand, there's the idea of this complex system that has but one

path through it. Uh. And this is sometimes described more as a pure labyrinth. Uh. We need not get caught up too much in the terminology here, because they are used interchangeably today. But but this is this idea is rather fascinating because you know, first and foremost, a labyrinth or maze is generally an artificial environment um or at least an artificial reworking of the natural environment in terms

of things like hedge mazes, hedge labyrinths, etcetera. But in in there, in the purer sense of the word, a labyrinth or made has no other purpose other than to confuse the individual with a complex system or to seamlessly guide them through it. So the sort of labyrinth one encounters on stones and church courtyards, for instance, there's only one way through, there's not You don't have to make

any decisions. You just follow the path and it will lead you through a complex system and back out again. It's essentially a mindfulness exercise. Yeah, these are Sometimes the terminology used is unicursive versus multi cursive. So like, if a labyrinth is the of the unicursive type, it means there's only one path. It is very complicated, but you can only basically go one direction unless you turn around

and go back the way you came from. The multi cursive would be the ones where you have options about which way to turn and can reach dead ends. Yeah. In one you you lose your way, and the other one you sort of lose your your sense of self. Yeah, and and and so the unicursive labyrinth, it's interesting to think how that, like, you know, it could be thought of as having metaphorical meanings, Like it's kind of fatalistic in a way, there's only one way you can go.

It's also sort of an an act of submission in a way, you're submitting to the designer of the labyrinth and saying like, I will just go the only way there is to go. Yeah. And what I find interesting is that ultimately both of these interpretations work well with the minotaur myth. I mean, we we tend to go with the version of the Minoan maze or the labyrinth that the minetar resides in as being a place of confusion, and then the master of confusion is the minotaur that

lives there. But you know, I also like the idea of the labyrinth as a thing that is complex, but leads you down one path, and that one path, of course, will take you to the mazes kill function the minotar. Yeah, that's that's a different kind of terror. You can instead of confusion, you can only go one way and you know what lies that way, but you can't go back. There's nowhere to go there. Yeah. You can either go

forward to death or not go at all. Yeah. And again the data lists is the you know, the master builder here, so you know, you can easily imagine him creating this sort of structure that is about delivering people under the minotaur. Which do you think Dadalus would have been more likely to create? I mean, I think it's often described explicitly as a maze, a multi cursive maze.

But if you have the option which is more Dadalus like, I don't know, if he's more egotistical, if he's more you know, obsessed with his own skill and all that, he might want to be the the ultimate controller that sets you on a unicursal labyrinth where you know you have to go the way he tells you to go. Yeah, you know, I think, I like, I think I can make a case for either way, but ultimately I see the Maze of the Minotaur as being a place of multiple,

multiple branching paths and confusion. Now, I think one of the things that you begin to see though, when you read about labyrinths and ancient accounts of alleged labyrinths, aside from just how diverse the subject is, is that there's often a description leveled at certain ancient complexes and uh and and temples and structures like that, and over time there's a transformation from a place that has another purpose but it is also confusing into a place that was

clearly designed and built to confuse. And perhaps we kind of observed the same sort of hyperbole when considering confusing store layouts, you know, new cities and more, you know where we think, oh man, they just they just made this place to drive me crazy. Why is this place constructed like this? Um is is like Walmart a maze, whereas I Kea is a unicursal labyrinth. It's true, I Kia does have that layout where you can you you can cut directly through everything, but still they are very

much guiding your path. So I don't know. I don't have much experience with Ikea. I went there once and I remember it being more more like that there is a minotar, they say, but it's called flingbow with an

ooml out probably. But coming back to what you were saying about places with an original use being laid are confused for a labyrinth, I think that that actually does apply to some possible ruins in Egypt which um have been interpreted by some archaeologists, or maybe not archaeologists, by some thinkers throughout history as something that was supposed to be a confusing maze or labyrinth, but in fact was probably just some kind of like temple or burial complex

that has been you know, massively degraded in a structural sense over time and appears confusing to people who are unearthing and exploring it. Now, Yeah, this is the case of the ancient Egyptian labyrinth, so it was often referred I was reading about this in a book by William

Henry Matthews, A Mazes and uh in Labyrinths. This is a siminal work on the subject, but he mentions just the the evocative language of of using labyrinth quote a structure which evoked so much wonder and admiration in ancient times that can hardly fail to have roused the curiosity

of later generations. And so when he's talking about the the ancient ancient Egyptian labyrinth, this is interesting because this is the the oldest structure or place that apparently has been described in these terms, and it was described by the likes of Herodotus Um. Now these these whatever this exactly was. It did not survive destruction during Roman times. Uh. And it seems though that it was some sort of

temple structure or some sort of temple compound. It definitely was not created just to confuse foreigners, much like um, foreign airports that you travel to were not designed just to confuse you, even though that is the effects you may feel. Um. But at any rate, the thing that confuses foreigners becomes a thing that was built to confuse

them in these tellings. Oh, that's like one of those ecocentric biases we've discovered, where you think that the the effect a thing has on you is the purpose it was intentionally created for. Yeah. Uh. There's a quote that gets into some of this too that ran across. This is from pet Penelope read Dube from the idea of the Labyrinth from classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages. Quote, what you see depends on where you stand. And thus,

at one and the same time, labyrinths are single. There is one physical structure and double they simultaneously incorporate order and disorder, clarity and confusion, unity and multiplicity, artistry and chaos. Nice much like the minotaur in his double nature. Yeah, and you know, I have to say I see another common trend as well. If you write about mazes and labyrinths,

or even if you do a little podcast that covers them. Um, if you're doing fiction or nonfiction, it doesn't matter if you if you do something about mazes and labyrinths, you can end up crafting or traversing this sort of literary um maze or labyrinth as well. This is something that's that's often you know, cited in these works like just straight up either sometimes ingest but other times as part

of the texture of the piece. Almost more than any other physical object or structure in the world, the maze or labyrinth just asks you to use it as a metaphor. I mean, the maze is time, right, It's like you can't see around the corner. Yeah, the maze is time. I think that the maze is is the world, but it's also our perception of the world. Um And again,

I think that's why this idea so engages us. There's like, there's basically no complex system in the world or in our you know, information technology, etcetera that you cannot apply the metaphor of the maze and the minotaur too and get something memorable out of it. You know, there's like any complex system. I don't I don't care if it's the law, or politics or or science. I mean that

whatever it is, there is conceivably a minotaur in there. Alright, on that note, we're going to take a quick break, but we will be right back. All right, we're back now. I think it's time that we talk a little bit of minotaur biology because one of the things that I have always wondered about the minotaur is why does it eat humans? Now, I could imagine if the minotaur was not the minotaur, but say the minto croc and it had the head of a crocodile, a crocodile that could

eat a human. And so you could totally understand why the human with the head of a crocodile would live at the center of a maze and eat fourteen youths from Athens every year. But bulls do not normally eat humans. A bull is a herbivore. It eats grass, or it eats grain, or you know, it can of course eat some animal protein supplemented grain if that's what you're feeding it. But in the natural world, we do not think of bow vines like bulls and cows as hunting and eating

other animals, certainly not other mammals. So why doesn't the minotaur just eat grass? Well, I think maybe we've got a good answer for you, and it's along some lines that might be familiar to listeners of the show. Now, we've already ruined squirrels for you. You know, sometimes a squirrel just needs to eat a bird or another rodent. How do you like that? Well, we're going to do

the same thing with cattle, Joe, I am. I am happy to report that chipmunks have also developed an appetite for the meal worms that I put out for the squirrels. Uh um, that's that's been one of my recent observations. Uh here in quarantine, more beautiful rodents getting in on the animal flesh action. Yeah, but they're adorable when they do it. Chipmunks cannot help the adorable But but as far as the myth goes, I guess I gathered that the minotaur has been starved. He is down there like

an animal in a pit. Uh, so he's gonna tear into whatever he gets. But then, on the other hand, of course he is not entirely bull. He has also part human in humans eat meat. But yeah, but if he was fully human, wouldn't that mean he would eat twice as much meat as it It just doesn't make sense that like adding part bull to him would make him more desiring of human flesh, except in the general logic of well, he's a monster, and monsters eat humans, so maybe he could also have the head of a

rabbit and he would eat humans. He would not be as terrifying. But yeah. This brings us back to some of the best of modern zoology, which is that some of the animals, many of the animals that subsist largely on plant based food, are actually able to eat meat. We now know this in the modern world, especially with you know, modern video documentation, you can learn quite a bit about what supposedly docile herbivores will do when given

the opportunity. Uh. And it appears that bovines are no exception. So I want to start with a story that was reported in Reuters from March seven, two thousand seven. Uh. This is a dateline Calcutta quote. When dozens of chickens went missing from a remote West Bengal village, everyone blamed the neighborhood dogs. That would make sense, right, you know, the dogs get into the chicken coop. But it continues.

But Agi Ghosh, the owner of the missing chickens, eventually solved the puzzle when he caught his cow, a sacred animal for the Hindu family, gobbling up several of them at night. That's gobbling up several of the chickens, not of the family. We were shocked to see our calf eating chickens alive, Ghost told Reuters by phone from chand Poor village. The family decided to stand guard at night on Monday at the cow shed, which also served as a hen coop, after forty eight chickens went missing in

a month. Instead of the dogs, we watched in horror as the calf, whom we had fondly named Lal sneak to the coop and grabbed the little ones. But the precision of a jungle cat, said his brother Gor ghosh uh. And then it goes on to describe how a local television station in India went to the village to get pictures of the cow grabbing and eating a chicken uh

and uh. Then the article consults me here sat Pati, who is a district veterinary officer, who said, quote, we think lack of vital minerals in the body is causing this behavior. We have taken a look and ask doctors to look into the case immediately. The strange behavior is possible in some exceptional cases. So it says that hundreds of villagers had come to chant poor to Uh to

watch the cow eat and sometimes eat chickens um. And it said that local veterinary authorities believe the cow was probably suffering from some kind of disease that made it eat these chickens, but ultimately they didn't really know. Now, on one hand, I would say, okay, this is a Reuters report. I think of Reuter's is very credible reporting. But also this story feels very daily mail. You know, I I could easily react to this and say this is I don't know. I don't trust this reporting except

that there's video. I don't necessarily recommend people watch it because I don't know if if you are inclined to feeling bad about watching a live chicken get eaten the whole by a cow, if that sounds like something that would upset you, don't check out this video. But if you're interested, look at it. It just yeah, it's just a chicken wanders up in front of the cow and the cow just bites it and eats its whole body. Oh man, well, you know this this brings a few

thoughts to mind. First of all, in terms of relatives of the cow that eat meat. I mean, now you can certainly point you know, not directly, but by you know, if a few degrees removed to carnivorous whales. Yes, that is interesting, And actually I wish I had looked this up. I don't know if the ancestors of whales. Of course, one of the most fascinating things about whale biology is that we now know that whales evolved from a creature

that once dwelt on land. So the the ancestors whales going way back were land dwelling tetrapod mammals, four footed mammals that walked around on the earth. And we know that over millions of years, they gradually adapted and evolved to a sea based existence. And I don't know if their ancestors on land were carnivorous or not, or if they transitioned to eating meat once they became uh full time dwellers of the sea. Well this makes me think also of horses, because there are tales of horses eating

meat as well. UM. And I I was not familied with this story previously, but even shackledon UM, they explore UH and noted his his his pony socks UH, preferring a meat based diet in UH. In some in the you know, the harsher climates, This would have been in nineteen o eight, I believe. Yeah, So there are a lot of these little stories here and there, and you

wonder if you should believe the stories now. In the case of the cow in the West Bengal village, there's at least video or there's video of a cow eating a chicken that I think is video of that cow. I can't be a hundred percent certain, but whatever cow it is, it's eating a chicken. I don't think there's any special effects involved. But but but no, apparently this is it's not limited to just these few weird cases

described in the extreme. UH. For example, I was reading a paper in the Wilson Journey All of Ornithology from two thousand five by Jamie L. Knack and Christine A. Ribbic or Ribbits r I B I C called apparent predation by cattle at grassland bird nests. The authors here were documenting pastures in southwestern Wisconsin during the years two thousand to two thousand one which were used for cattle grazing.

So there's video documentation of what's going on in these pastures, and UH, it was noticed there was something odd that was noticed about this video. Cattle appeared to be mostly grazing but also occasionally quote behaving as a vian predators, removing nestlings and eggs from three active ground nests. So with video documentation, they showed that cattle were removing eggs and baby birds from bird nests that were on the

ground or at ground level and probably eating them. A couple of the nests belonged to the savannah sparrow past circulus sandwich insist that is its name him uh. And in one of these savannah sparrow nests, they removed three of the four eggs from the nest, and they damaged the fourth egg. In the other savannah sparrow nest, they removed all three of the nestlings. So these were baby birds. They were already hatched there they took them out of

the nest. There was another nest that belonged to the eastern meadow lark, which is Sternella magna, and the cattle apparently took all four nestlings out of this nest. Uh the author's right quote. We found only two of the three missing eggs intact and one of seven missing nestlings dead near two of the nests. Cows may have eaten the egg and nestlings we were unable to account for. Alternatively, the egg and nestlings may have been scavenged by predators

or removed from the area by the adult birds. Without videotaped documentation, we would have attributed nest failure to traditional predators and cattle would not have been implicated. We may be underestimating the impact of cattle on ground nests by not considering cattle as ventil predators. This is almost like you're wondering, you know, you find like your window broken and several items missing from your house and you assume it is a burglar until the I don't know, until

the can't security camera footage reveals it was your house cat. Yeah. I mean the cows are out there in the field. They're easy to take for granted. Um. I also love how this feels very much like something from Gary Larson Far Side cartoons. You know, this is exactly what his cows would be up to. They got out their cow tools and then they went to town on the nests. Um. So what do we make of this? Well? I was reading about this on a blog post by the British

paleo zoologist Darren Nice. He's got a blog called tetrapod Zoology. It's a very good blog and Nice makes the following points. First of all, a lot of animals that we understand as strict herbivores are just not really that strict. Uh. You know, they are primarily herbivores, but there are certain scenarios. Eating of other animals is quote absolutely deliberate and likely motivated by a need for calcium. This brings us back

to the squirrels, right. This came up in some of our research about squirrels gnawing on the bones of other animals. A a leading hypothesis to explain why something that is mostly herbivorous would sometimes need to like eat a bird skull or something, and the ideas that there are certain mineral deficiencies that can lead to it, primarily calcium. But deer and other hoofed animals in particular have frequently been observed eating the antlers and bones of other dead animals.

Red deer or service a lap as sometimes eat seabirds, but Nice reports that they sometimes appear to intentionally avoid eating the flesh of the birds, sort of separating out the bones and just eating those bones. He also mentions the study that I just talked about where videotape caught domestic cattle rating ground level bird nests and apparently eating the birds, eating the chicks and the eggs, and Nice says quote this behavior is likely opportunistic, but may well

be common and widespread. It is difficult to document since it mostly occurs at night and no evidence remains. I guess unless you're just randomly picking through you know, cow feeces to see if there are bird bones in it, and then there are just a bunch of other examples, it often appears to be opportunistic. A cow is not going to chase down a human and eat it, but small defenseless animals they might just sort of be in

the why not zone. Now, there are a few other reasons that animals we think of as strict herbivores might sometimes eat meat. Nice points out a study from two thousand by b. B and Griffiths that documented how cattle drinking from water sources often accidentally ingest lots of water dwelling life, say tadpoles, So they are eating the tadpoles, but it doesn't appear to be on purpose. They're just sort of like getting sucked into the mouth in the

same way. I think probably grazing herbivores end up eating a lot of insects without meaning to. I think a lot of carnivory by herbivores is probably just a result of not being super picky or careful while eating plants or drinking water. So one option is that some herbivores deliberately eat other animals to make up for a mineral deficiency.

Another option is it's just accidental. But then Nice goes on to say, quote, but as shown by the studies cited below, bird eating in bovids and deer may actually just be a fairly normal bit of behavior that we're only beginning to document. I also think that individuals of herbivorous species sometimes learn quote accidentally that they can kill and eat other animals, and then take to this habit as and when the opportunity arises. That is because they

can not because they need to. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that an ammals and other organisms likely do a lot of things simply because they can not because their anatomy or physiology is is specifically suited to that activity. So there seems to be quite possibly a role for just sort of you know, almost like

skin aery in kind of adaptation. Right, if you just happen to eat an animal one time and it works out just fine for you, you might well learn that like, oh, you know, this is a this is a beneficial activity I never thought of doing before, But I can just keep repeating it if it seems to yield a benefit.

And I think sometimes when we consider ideas like being a herbivore or a carnivore, I think the metabolic bottleneck is is not nearly as likely to rule out meat as it is to rule out tough, fibrous, or chemically hostile plant matter. I mean, what what you need to have a really specialized digestive system to digest. I would think it is probably more likely to be plants than to be meat. Animal flesh is relatively energy rich and

easy to digest. Yeah, I mean, we certainly see that in in uh animals like the panda, which I would have adapted over time from this um more very diet to a very particular herbivorous diet. Yeah, exactly. So you know, obviously different animals have differently specialized digestive systems. Those are shaped by evolution like everything else. But without being sure, I'd imagine it's probably easier for more herbivores to get down on some available meat than it would be for

carnivores to try to survive on leaves. M That's interesting, But I don't know. This is one of those many things where you start to wonder about what undocumented observations could have occurred in the ancient world. You know, if somebody suddenly had a cow like law that starts eating chickens, or somebody has a bull that starts eating I don't know,

whatever kind of meat you give to it. Could that give rise to the idea that that well, maybe there's some kind of like hidden monstrous nature that is easy to unlock when you starve a bull and make meat.

It's only opportunity to get calories. Huh. Well, you know, I'm not as well read on on this episode, but the minotaur would not be the only Greek mythological um herbivore to eat meat, specifically the meat of humans, because you also have the mayors of the Omides, the man eating herd of horses that were one of the labors

of Hercules. Right he had to corral them or something, right? Ah? Yeah, and uh and I if I remember correctly, Like there, it's it's sometimes implied that like this is part of their magical nature that they eat humans, but other times it's like it's the ideas they've been conditioned to do so because this is the way their master treats them. Yeah, that they feed unsuspecting guests on the island to these

man eating horses. I mean, I would be surprised. Again, I don't know, but I would be surprised if a if a bovine could live entirely on meat. It does have a ru minute digestive system that is in many ways specialized to eating tough plant matter. But but yeah, I don't know. I mean, you could probably get by feeding feeding a well adapted bull or cow all kinds of strange things if you give it an acquired taste, so uh so as possible, something like this lies behind

the horror of the Minotaur. Yeah, if Ernest Shackleton gives you, um, some feed with some some meat added to it, you want seconds. Well, I think we're gonna have to wrap it up for part one here, But there is so much more fun minute our stuff to talk about. We need to talk about my knowing crete. We've got to talk about other weird scientific interpretations of the origin of the minotaur legend. I'm I'm so excited for part two.

I can't wait. Oh and by the way, we originally intended for part two of our Minotaur series to come out this following Thursday. Due to some scheduling issues, we're going to actually have to air part two the next Tuesday, so it'll be a week out from this episode, so you have an extra week there to be lost in the maze. Since we're talking about myths, uh and the monsters. First of all, we have other episodes in the vault

dealing with these, such as the Medusa episodes. We have episodes that deal with data lists UH in more detail. But also if you go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, that will shoot you over to our I Heart page and if you look over to the right there you'll see some show links and you'll see something that says store. Click on that. See I'm guiding you through the labyrinth here. Click on that and you will go to our key public store and here you'll

find we actually have some monstrous shirts available. We have, of course, the the all Hail the Great basiliska shirt

uh that relates to a monster episode. We have two different monstrous squirrel episodes, one with a squirrel gnawing on a bone with death in its eyes, and then we have the skug King of Rats shirt and uh, I am I am to understand that there will soon be an additional a Deusa's shirt added that says Petrifying Gaze with a with an illustration that my son created of so it's like it's drawn by an eight year old and eight year old's um dedicated idea of what the

Medusa looks like. Lest it be forgotten, your son was also the origin of the phrase skug king of Rats, which I think might be my favorite shirt in our store. I love my scug King of Rat's shirt. Yeah, he still wears he's wearing this the other day. Um, that's why he is a head of marketing. Well deserved promotion. Now, wherever you get our podcast, we do just ask that you rate, review and subscribe, especially if those are positive ratings. Positive reviews, um, then you then you should do so.

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