The Labyrinth

Minos commissioned the Labyrinth from Daedalus, the finest craftsman alive, to hold the Minotaur. Ovid says Daedalus confused the passages so thoroughly that he himself could barely find the exit — a builder defeated by his own building.

Theseus solved it not by navigation but by record-keeping. Ariadne's thread, tied at the entrance and unwound as he went, meant he did not need to understand the maze at all; he only needed a way back. It is one of myth's cleanest pieces of problem-solving, and the phrase 'Ariadne's thread' is still used for the technique of solving a maze by retracing a marked path.

Minos imprisoned Daedalus and his son Icarus in the Labyrinth afterwards, to keep the secret. Daedalus escaped the only way that was left — upward — building wings of feathers and wax. He warned Icarus to fly the middle course, neither so low that the sea soaked the feathers nor so high that the sun softened the wax. Icarus flew high, and fell.

Archaeology found the palace at Knossos in 1900, its ground plan genuinely maze-like, and the double axe — labrys — everywhere in its decoration. 'Labyrinth' may simply mean 'house of the double axe', which would make the maze a memory of a real building.

Whether a labyrinth is a maze at all is a technical quarrel with a long history. In strict usage a labyrinth has one winding path and no choices, while a maze has branches and dead ends. Greek coins from Knossos show the single-path kind — which would mean Theseus could not have got lost, only delayed, and that the thread was for the dark rather than the turnings.