A To Z Challenge 2023: Myth And Folk Tale In Fiction - M Is For Minoans

 Have you ever noticed how much Crete is involved in fantasy fiction with a Greek mythology theme? 

And who could blame the authors? There is so much in that civilisation to write about. There are so many beautiful wall paintings and cheery pots with octopus images! 

Refreshing your memory, Minos, King of Crete, prayed to the god Poseidon for a perfect bull to sacrifice to him. A bit weird to be asking a god to supply his own sacrifice, but there you are. Poseidon obliged with the most amazing, beautiful white animal you could ever imagine. In the end, not a good idea. Minos kept the bill to improve his own herds and sacrificed a lesser bull. This being Greek mythology, where crazy things can and do happen, Poseidon was annoyed enough to arrange for Minos’s Queen, Pasiphae, to be filled with lust for the bull. She got the genius craftsman Daedalus to build her a cow she could get into and… yuk! As a result, she bore the Minotaur, a scary being with a human body and bull’s head. Daedalus was also commissioned to build the Labyrinth to hide away and contain the embarrassing child, who was carnivorous and fed with young men and women sent as tribute. Athens had to do it as punishment because a son of Minos had been killed while there. 

Now, I am going to start with a novel series you will know well enough, but maybe never noticed had any Greek myth in it: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It may seem to be just another series set in a dystopian future, but think about it: young tributes, boys and girls alike, are sent from various districts to fight in an arena game they are highly unlikely to survive. They are chosen by lot. There was a mention of a punishment that started it. This is eventually overthrown, as in the myth. When I read the books for the first time, the Greek myth elements jumped up and bit me. 

There is a scene in Circe when the heroine is visiting her sister Pasiphae while she is in labour. Pasiphae says “I fucked the sacred bull, all right?” There is quite a lot about the Minotaur in this novel, with grisly details about its delivery.

Mary Renault’s The King Must Die and The Bull From The Sea are about Theseus, the destroyer of the Minotaur. However, it’s written as basically historical fiction, with just a bit of fantasy in that Theseus can tell when an earthquake is on its way. In this version, Minotaur is the title of the heir to the throne, like Prince of Wales. Pasiphae slept with a bull dancer, not a bull. As it’s a matriarchal society and Pasiphae is the Goddess on Earth, there isn’t much Minos can do about it. The tributes are chosen from among the small, light and agile teens - and yes, Theseus fits into this category. He is much shorter than a hero is expected to be, much to his disappointment. The bull dancers are acrobats. The creation of Daedalus is a wooden bull that the young acrobats use for practice. The Labyrinth is the name of the royal palace.

Wendy Orr, a children’s writer who lives in Australia but has a Canadian background, has written three books set before and after the time of the Thera explosion. 

The first in the trilogy, Dragonfly Song, involves tributes sent to Crete to become bull dancers.  The heroine volunteers to go when another girl has an accident that kills her. The tributes get respect, something she has been lacking. This novel has fantasy elements in it. There isn’t any Minotaur, but the bull dancing is a sacred activity, not just a show. For this reason, you don’t know which bull you will get for any show, unlike in The King Must Die, in which every team had its own bull and trains with him.

Wendy Orr knows about bulls; apart from research she and her husband bred cattle for many years. 

In the third novel, Cuckoo’s Flight, the Trojan War is mentioned; the heroine’s father is Trojan and came to a Cretan island to escape.

Poul Anderson’s time travel novel The Dancer From Atlantis is also a story about bull dancing. The title character is very young, because it’s better to get younger children to perform, as they are more flexible and athletic. It’s true, by the way - our ESL students, mostly refugees from Sudan, did a circus course; it’s amazing what they could do without any previous training. Their performance was breathtakingly beautiful. 

The novel is about the Thera explosion, but Theseus is in it as a villain. The premise is that the tributes are not sent to be killed at all, they go to Crete as hostages, live at court and have become very much Cretans  by the time they go home. And that is the intention. Theseus is a baddie to begin with, but is shocked into eventually becoming a good king.

Available in ebook.

Do you have any favourites in this area?