Summary

In the prologue, after King Minos of Crete’s son, Androgeos, was “torn to pieces by a . . . bull on a lonely Athenian hillside,” Minos waged war on Athens (1). On the way to Athens, he destroyed Megara by cutting the king Nisus’s lock of red hair, the source of his strength. Minos’s lover and Nisus’s daughter, Scylla, had told Minos the secret of Nisus’s power. Afterwards, Minos drowned Scylla, having no interest in a woman who “betrayed her father and . . . kingdom” (2).

In Part I, Chapter 1, Ariadne had heard the story of Scylla many times. Though some said she “transformed into a seabird” to escape her fate, Ariadne doubted she survived (5). Minos’s anger was fabled in the region. To avenge Androgeos’s death, Minos had 14 Athenian youths annually sacrificed to Ariadne’s brother, the Minotaur.

The palace at Knossos...