The Labyrinth
The myth of the labyrinth is bound to the figure of Minos, king of  Crete, son of Zeus and Europa, brother of Rhadamanthus, husband of Pasifae, father of Catreus, Deucalion, Glaucus, Androgeus, Acalla, Senodix, Ariadne (o Ariadna) e Phaedra.

Minos was the founder of the Cretans sea lordship and the author of the Cretean constitution, with laws said to be suggested by Zeus himself.

Priest and lawmaker, Minos, because of his equity, had in the Hades the office of judge of the dead together with Rhadamanthus and Aeacus.

Now then the legend:
To find favour with Poseidon for his wish to reign over Crete, Minos asked the god to make a bull get out of the sea that he could sacrifice to him but, breaking his promise, he kept for himself the nice bull  he had got and concealed it in his cowhouse while sacrificing to Poseidon only one of his own. When Poseidon learnt to have been cheated, he made the bull furious.
The legend also wants that from the union of the bull with Pasifae,  Minos' wife, a creature with a bull head on a man body, the Minotaur, was born. Minos locked it up in the labyrinth and an expiatory tribute was due to it of seven Athenian boys and seven girls, every nine years, until, one day, Ariadne, Minos' daughter, fell in love with one of the sacrifical victims, Theseus and, in order to save him, gave him a thread to find the way out of the labyrinth, after killing the monster. Then, escaped with Theseus, after a stay in Delos, she reached the island of Naxos, where Theseus deserted her in her sleep (anyway, there are different versions of the legend). Found by Dionysus, she became his spouse. As such, she was object of cult, especially in Naxos, Delos and Rhode. In Italy Dionysus and Ariadne were identified with Liber and Libera.
The Greek archaic art represents Ariadne while watching the fight between Theseus and the Minotaur, or while embarking with Theseus or, during their stay in Delos, while dancing with the young people they had saved.
 
Ariadne - Vatican Museum
foto from publication in ref. 6
 During the Ellenistic or the Greek-Roman age, we rather find Ariadne in her sleep (as in the well known statue in the Vatican Museum or in the Pompeian paintings) or, as the happy Dionysus' wife, in a procession of satyrs and Maenads.
The Minotaur is instead represented, in the Greek archaic art, as a creature with a bull head on a man body, standing or kneeling, in his fight with Theseus, or escaping; while, in the fifth century b.C., it appears the scene of its murder.

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