Part 5: Dr. Buttass tells the tale of the Minotaur's origin in the most effective way.

It does mean "the bull of Minos", but you're off on the rest of the details. Minos was the king of Crete when the story happens, and to a certain degree it's his fault.

See, he was competing with his brothers for the right to rule Crete and actually be king proper, so he asked Poseidon to lend a hand. Poseidon says, "Okay, sure. Here's a white bull, I want you to sacrifice it in my name." This should have been fairly simple instructions to follow, but Minos said, "That is the best fucking bull I have ever seen in my life. I'm going to keep this bull. I'll just sacrifice one of my own. Bulls are bulls and Poseidon won't know the difference, right?" This is what we in the business call Hubris.

Now before I go on, you're going to notice that Hubris is something of a theme in Greek mythology. The Greeks have very definite ideas about Hubris and none of them are all that forgiving. To a certain degree our own modern definition of hubris applies but mostly to the Greeks Hubris more or less means not obeying the will of the gods. This does not necessarily refer to a conscious decision to defy said will; sometimes, not being prescient is enough for the gods to call Hubris. What Minos did was Hubris, because he thought he knew better than the gods, but, on the other hand, if a giant eagle had come along and eaten the bull before Minos could get to it, this would still be Hubris and Minos would still deserve to be punished, because reasons. Okay, back to the story.

Poseidon is obviously not happy about this decision but, for some reason, letting Minos actually lose the conflict with his brothers doesn't seem like the right punishment (you can tell by the way Minos is king in the rest of the story). Instead, he calls up Aphrodite, who makes Minos' wife Pasiphae fall in love with the bull. Do not ask me how, but somehow she managed to convince Daedalus to make her a wooden cow to hide inside. The bull, being a bull and therefore not that bright, decided that a real cow was totally right in front of him and he should fuck it right now, even though it didn't seem to be moving or breathing or even smell much like a cow. So it goes to town, blissfully unaware of the fact that this weird cow's pussy is way tighter than it should be.

Nine months later Pasiphae gives birth to a grody little thing with a bull head. Poseidon laughs in Minos' face and says, "That's what you get punk!" Minos thinks the little bugger is just so fucking ugly and he can't stand it, so he goes to Daedalus too, and Daedalus, again roped into the royal family's stupid bullshit, builds a labyrinth to hold the Bull of Minos.

The bit with Theseus and the thread comes later, so I'll wait and see if it comes up in the game before I butcher that story.