>Why did they build a maze for the Minotaur with a possible escape route rather than just an ordinary prison? Why leave the possibility of escape open?
Because it was not a maze, the Minotaur lived in the center of a labyrinth. A labyrinth is a continuous path that leads to the center. The objective was to send people into it so they would end up in the Minotaur's lair and be devoured. The reason the monster stayed was that he had everything he needed there, especially food.
That's a really interesting distinction between the words, but sources from Wikipedia indicate that the minotaur was trapped in a maze:
> Although early Cretan coins occasionally exhibit branching (multicursal) patterns, the single-path (unicursal) seven-course "Classical" design without branching or dead ends became associated with the Labyrinth on coins as early as 430 BC, and similar non-branching patterns became widely used as visual representations of the Labyrinth – even though both logic and literary descriptions make it clear that the Minotaur was trapped in a complex branching maze.
The ancient textual and pictorial tradition are in contradiction to each other here, which probably cannot be resolved. Ariadne's thread suggests a branching labyrinth, but in ancient pictures we actually only find unicursal labyrinths.
Maybe they just found it hard to draw a branching labyrinth? It’s easy for us with Wikipedia and all, but if you’d potentially never seen a branching labyrinth then a non-branching labyrinth is a lot easier to draw.
It’s especially hard for modern people to conceive of a world before the printing press where information wasn’t easy accessible.
The challenge may have also been artistic. I don’t know if those artists would have been up for a branching labyrinth. I have seen how medievals
drew cats and they do not look right.
They overlap in meaning to the extent that I would use either interpretation for either word. For instance in England there are chalk figures called miz-mazes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizmaze) which are non-branching.
Ok, but surely if there are no branches, but only a single path, there would be no way to get lost? The only way would be if you forgot which direction you were facing?
You could have side-paths that quickly go nowhere, but without any hints as to which ones do or don't. That way, backtracking towards the main path is pretty trivial and leads to a constant forward progression.
I like mazes and I saw that distinction be made before, but I am not sure how universally accepted it is? Other than English how many languages even have two different words? I spent some time now on Google Translate and the only language I find (not that I tried ALL) is Finnish. Modern Greek for instance uses the same word (assuming Google is correct), so did people on Crete, whatever their language was, even have two different words?
But Google Translate is correct about Dutch. It was just not one of the languages I tried before. I do not think it is a particularly difficult case for translation.
The reason I checked was in my native Swedish there is only one word (labyrint).
Was it really always two different things even in English? I looked the words up in Gutenberg's public domain Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1890?) a labyrinth there was "an ornamental maze" ... "Labyrinth, originally; the name of an edifice or excavation, carries the idea of design, and construction in a
permanent form, while maze is used of anything confused or confusing,
whether fixed or shifting. We speak of the labyrinth of the ear, or of the
mind, and of a labyrinth of difficulties; but of the mazes of the
dance, the mazes of political intrigue, or of the mind being in a
maze." And from the definition of maze: "A confusing and baffling network, as of paths or passages; an intricacy; a labyrinth". Did the meaning drift a bit since then or was it only in mathematics that the words began to be used in the way that they are often used now for branching vs non-branching mazes?
In common use the terms are interchangeable. Differentiating between them is essentially jargon, but it's not wrong. Inflamable famously means something is both flammable and not flammable depending on who you ask. Words not only have multiple definitions, they sometimes have multiple incompatible definitions.
I don't think you're right. I won't pretend to be an expert on any of this, but as a speaker of modern Greek I can confidently say that λαβύρινθος (labyrinth) is the only word in Greek to describe both your definition of a labyrinth and a maze.
For example, this Wikipedia article[1] on labyrinth in Greek, which has the picture [2] of a maze and calls it a labyrinth.
Because it was not a maze, the Minotaur lived in the center of a labyrinth. A labyrinth is a continuous path that leads to the center. The objective was to send people into it so they would end up in the Minotaur's lair and be devoured. The reason the monster stayed was that he had everything he needed there, especially food.