Air Serbia planes arrive in Athens 15 times a week, and from there you can reach Crete, or more precisely Heraklion, site of the island’s main seaport and airport, by plane or ferry. vazdušne i morske luke na ostrvu, može doći avionom ili feribotom Avionima „Er Srbije“ 15 puta nedeljno stižete do Atine, odakle se na Krit, tačnije do Herakliona, glavne
CONSTRUCTION FOR THE MINOTAUR
In order to hide this shame, and on the advice of an oracle, King Minos ordered that Daedalus construct an inescapable building. This led to the building of the Labyrinth, with its many halls and corridors, and there the Minotaur was imprisoned and fed human flesh. This need meant that Atheni- ans had to send Minos seven young men and sev- en maidens every year. In order to free the country of this blood tribute, Athenian hero Theseus trav- elled to Crete and, with the assistance of King Mi- nos’s daughter Ariadne, managed to navigate a path through the Labyrinth and slay the Minotaur.
LOVE’S FORGETFULNESS AND THE AEGEAN SEA
Theseus’s volunteering to travel to Crete and do battle with the Minotaur, with the outcome un- certain, caused his father, Aegeus, to worry. Aegeus thus requested that his son, should he survive, re- move the black sails from his ship and replace them with white ones. Intoxicated by love, Theseus for- got the promise he’d made to his father. Aegeus impatiently awaited his son’s return from rocks on the coast, but when he saw the black sails he was overwhelmed by grief that he threw himself into the sea, which was subsequently named after him.
DAEDALUS AND ICARUS
EUROPA ON THE BACK OF A BULL
POSEIDON’S PUNISHMENT
Daedalus, the great artist, sculptor, architect and inventor, was led by prideful vengeance to kill his nephew and apprentice who invented the saw. His punishment for that crime was to be ex- iled to Crete, where he married one of King Mi- nos’s slaves, who bore him a son, Icarus. When the king discovered that Daedalus had provided the ball of string for Theseus to escape the Labyrinth, thereby helping him to slay the Minotaur, Daeda- lus was punished by being imprisoned in the Laby- rinth together with his son. Considering how to es- cape, they came up with the idea of using feathers to make wings and wax to fasten those wings to their shoulders. However, despite his father’s ad- vice, Icarus soared upwards towards the sun, which melted the wax holding his wings. He fell to the sea that is today known as the Icarian Sea, while Daedalus flew on to reach Sicily.
The beauty of Europa, daughter of Phoenician King Agenor, intoxicated Zeus. In order to get close to her, he turned into a mighty white bull that the beautiful prin- cess petted fearlessly. Unable to resist his beauty, she climbed onto the white bull and Zeus, so disguised, carried her back to Crete. Legend has it that this caused the emergence of the Taurus constella- tion in the heavens. This beautiful Phoe- nician princess became Zeus’s wife and bore him three sons: Minos, Sarpedon and Rhadamanthys. In order to immortalise his great love, he ordered that the mainland to which the island of Crete also belonged be named after his love, Europa.
Another wonderful legend is linked to Crete. According to it, the god Poseidon gifted a mighty bull to Cretan King Minos for him to sacrifice to the gods. Not want- ing to kill such a fine specimen, Minos de- cided to keep the bull. This enraged Po- seidon, prompting him to cause Minoses wife Pasiphaë to fall deeply and unnatu- rally passionately in love with the beautiful beast. Another story tells of how Daedalus, Greece’s greatest sculptor, painter, builder, and inventor, enabled the queen to satis- fy her lust, but this resulted in the birth of an unusual child that was later known as the famous mythical beast the Minotaur – half-bull, half-man.
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