King Minos of Crete had Daedalus build a Labyrinth, a house of winding passages, to house the bull-man, the Minotaur, the beast that his wife Pasiphae bore after having intercourse with a bull. (Minos had refused to sacrifice a bull to Poseidon, so the God took revenge by causing his wife to desire the bull). The Minotaur had the body and head of a bull and the face of a man. At its birth it was foretold that the Minotaur would never be killed by club, knife, spear or sword.

Ovid says that Daedalus built a house in which he confused the usual passages and deceived the eye with a conflicting maze of various wandering paths (in errorem variarum ambage viarum)^[22] "so Daedalus made the innumerable paths of deception [innumeras errore vias], and he was barely able to return to the entrance: so deceptive was the house [tanta est fallacia tecti]"^[23] Daedalus was inspired by the winding river Meander which seems to have no beginning or end as it flowed back upon itself in its course to the sea.