Theseus, Ariadne, and the Thread

Every nine years, Athens owed an impossible debt. Fourteen young people — seven boys, seven girls — sent to Crete to be fed to a monster. The Minotaur, half-man and half-bull, lived inside a maze called the Labyrinth beneath the palace of Knossos. No one who went in ever came out. This was the price King Minos demanded after defeating Athens in war. By the third tribute, a prince named Theseus had had enough. He told his father King Aegeus: I’ll go myself. And I’ll kill it.