Pasiphae.
    Daughter of Helios and wife of King Minos of Crete, Pasiphaë was the mother of Ariadne and Phaedra as well as two sons. She was also the unwitting victim of one of Minos’s sacrilegious acts. After receiving a magnificent sacrificial bull from Poseidon, the king could not bring himself to kill the animal. Poseidon punished Minos by afflicting Pasiphaë with an abnormal passion for the bull. To satisfy her lust, she engaged the craftsman Daedalus to build a wooden cow in which she could conceal herself. So realistic was Daedalus’s invention that the bull approached it and thus mated with Pasiphaë. This union produced the Minotaur, a creature with a human body and a bull’s head. Disgraced and horrified, Minos ordered Daedalus to construct the labyrinth, a huge maze in which the Minotaur was confined.

See also: MINOS