The Minotaur is one of the more unlikely conceptions of Greek mythology, the offspring of Pasiphaë and a bull, for which she had developed a passion, gratified through the contrivance of Poseidon. The queen placed herself in an artificial cow made by Daedalus, and so became the mother of the monster, half-man half-bull, a man with a bull's head. Minos, the husband of Pasiphaë, shut him up in the Cnossian Labyrinth, and there fed him with the seven youths and seven maidens, whom Athens was obliged t supply at fixed periods, as a tribute, until Theseus, with the help of Ariadne, slew the monster.