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In Greek mythology, the Minotaur (,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=English Dictionary: Definition of Minotaur )〕 ;〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=American English Dictionary: Definition of Minotaur )〕 (:miːnɔ̌ːtau̯ros), (ラテン語:Minotaurus), Etruscan ''Θevrumineś''), was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man〔("Minotaur" ) at dictionary.reference.com〕 or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, "part man and part bull".〔''semibovemque virum semivirumque bovem'', according to Ovid, ''Ars Amatoria'' 2.24, one of the three lines that his friends would have deleted from his work, and one of the three that he, selecting independently, would preserve at all cost, in the apocryphal anecdote told by Albinovanus Pedo. (noted by J. S. Rusten, "Ovid, Empedocles and the Minotaur" ''The American Journal of Philology'' 103.3 (Autumn 1982, pp. 332-333) p. 332.〕 He dwelt at the center of the Labyrinth, which was an elaborate maze-like construction〔In a counter-intuitive cultural development going back at least to Cretan coins of the 4th century BC, many visual patterns representing the Labyrinth do not have dead ends like a maze; instead, a single path winds to the center. See Kern, ''Through the Labyrinth'', Prestel, 2000, Chapter 1, and Doob, ''The Idea of the Labyrinth'', Cornell University Press, 1990, Chapter 2.〕 designed by the architect Daedalus and his son Icarus, on the command of King Minos of Crete. The Minotaur was eventually killed by the Athenian hero Theseus. The term Minotaur derives from the Ancient Greek , a compound of the name (Minos) and the noun "bull", translated as "(the) Bull of Minos". In Crete, the Minotaur was known by its proper name, Asterion,〔Pausanias, Description of Greece 2. 31. 1〕 a name shared with Minos' foster-father.〔The Hesiodic ''Catalogue of Women'' fr. 140, says of Zeus' establishment of Europa in Crete: "...he made her live with Asterion the king of the Cretans. There she conceived and bore three sons, Minos, Sarpedon and Rhadamanthys."〕 "Minotaur" was originally a proper noun in reference to this mythical figure. The use of "minotaur" as a common noun to refer to members of a generic species of bull-headed creatures developed much later, in 20th-century fantasy genre fiction. ==Birth and appearance== After he ascended the throne of the island of Crete, Minos competed with his brothers to rule. Minos prayed to Poseidon, the sea god, to send him a snow-white bull, as a sign of support (the Cretan Bull). He was to kill the bull to show honor to the deity, but decided to keep it instead because of its beauty. He thought Poseidon would not care if he kept the white bull and sacrificed one of his own. To punish Minos, Poseidon made Pasiphaë, Minos's wife, fall deeply in love with the bull. Pasiphaë had craftsman Daedalus make a hollow wooden cow, and climbed inside it in order to mate with the white bull. The offspring was the monstrous Minotaur. Pasiphaë nursed him, but he grew and became ferocious, being the unnatural offspring of a woman and a beast; he had no natural source of nourishment and thus devoured humans for sustenance. Minos, after getting 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. Nowhere has the essence of the myth been expressed more succinctly than in the ''Heroides'' attributed to Ovid, where Pasiphaë's daughter complains of the curse of her unrequited love: "The bull's form disguised the god, Pasiphaë, my mother, a victim of the deluded bull, brought forth in travail her reproach and burden."〔Walter Burkert notes the fragment of Euripides' ''The Cretans'' (C. Austin's frs. 78-82) as the "authoritative version" for the Hellenes.〕 Literalist and prurient readings that emphasize the machinery of actual copulation may, perhaps intentionally, obscure the mystic marriage of the god in bull form, a Minoan ''mythos'' alien to the Greeks.〔See R.F. Willetts, ''Cretan Cults and Festivals'' (London, 1962); Pasiphaë's union with the bull has been recognized as well as a mystical union for over a century: F. B. Jevons ("Report on Greek Mythology" ''Folklore'' 2.2 (1891:220-241 ) p. 226) notes of Europa and Pasiphaë, "The kernel of both myths is the union of the moon-spirit (in human shape) with a bull; both myths, then, have to do with a sacred marriage."〕 The Minotaur is commonly represented in Classical art with the body of a man and the head and tail of a bull. One of the figurations assumed by the river spirit Achelous in wooing Deianira is as a man with the head of a bull, according to Sophocles' ''Trachiniai''. From Classical times through the Renaissance, the Minotaur appears at the center of many depictions of the Labyrinth.〔Several examples are shown in Kern, ''Through the Labyrinth'', Prestel, 2000.〕 Ovid's Latin account of the Minotaur, which did not elaborate on which half was bull and which half man, was the most widely available during the Middle Ages, and several later versions show the reverse of the Classical configuration, a man's head and torso on a bull's body, reminiscent of a centaur.〔Examples include illustrations 204, 237, 238, and 371 in Kern. ''op. cit.''〕 This alternative tradition survived into the Renaissance, and still figures in some modern depictions, such as Steele Savage's illustrations for Edith Hamilton's ''Mythology'' (1942). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Minotaur」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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