Oxford Custodian

Season: 5, Episodes: 1, Faction: N/A

Overview

A janitorial custodian worked at Oxford University.

Bull (Minotaur)

Punishment

Death

On the mainland (2007)

5×03 – Jughead

While going through Faraday’s abandoned research equipment at Oxford University, Desmond was surprised by
the custodian who asked if Desmond was a professor. Desmond admitted that he was not, but the custodian did not seem too bothered by this. He told Desmond not to touch the maze that Faraday used for his experiments, and when Desmond asked why, he talked about how he was the one who had to take all the dead rats to the incinerator, so nobody would find out what Daniel was doing. The custodian also said that Desmond wasn’t the first to “poke around”, asking questions about Faraday and his work.

The custodian said that he had heard a rumor that Faraday “was trying to send rats’ brains back in time”, then laughed and said, “Ridiculous, innit?” He then cut a deal with Desmond, saying that he’d forget that Desmond broke the lock if he told his “mates” that all he found was “rubbish”. Desmond agreed and then asked why there was no record of Faraday ever working at Oxford. The custodian said that it was understandable that Oxford would deny any association with Faraday, “after what he’d done to that poor girl.” He then told Desmond about Theresa Spencer. (“Jughead”)

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Casting Call

In the casting call he was described as “Janitor. Male, late 40s or 50s, must have a British working class accent. Nosy, opinionated, resident rumor monger of a school. Knows everyone’s business and can’t keep a secret to save his life.”

“OX”ford University (Ox/Bull)

An ox is a bovine trained as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle (castration makes the animals more tractable), but cows (adult females) or bulls (intact males) may also be used in some areas.

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Related Character Images

Decoded Season 2 & 4 Characters

Desmond Hume

Daniel Faraday

Decoded Season 5 Characters

Moira

Theresa Spencer

Key Episode(s) to Decoding the Character

5x03 "Jughead"

Wiki Info

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur, as the Greeks imagined him, was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, “part man and part bull”. He dwelt at the center of the Cretan Labyrinth, which was an elaborate maze-like construction built for King Minos of Crete and designed by the architect Daedalus and his son Icarus who were ordered to build it to hold the Minotaur. The Minotaur was eventually killed by the Athenian hero Theseus.

The term Minotaur derives from the Ancient Greek Μῑνώταυρος, a compound of the name Μίνως (Minos) and the noun ταύρος “bull”, translating as “(the) Bull of Minos”. In Crete, the Minotaur was known by its proper name, Asterion, a name shared with Minos’ foster-father.

Minotaur was originally a proper noun in reference to this mythical figure. The use of minotaur as a common noun to refer to members of a generic race of bull-headed creatures developed much later, in 20th-century fantasy genre fiction.

Birth and appearance

After he ascended the throne of Crete, Minos struggled with his brothers for the right to rule. Minos prayed to Poseidon to send him a snow-white bull, as a sign of approval. He was to sacrifice the bull in honor of Poseidon but decided to keep it instead because of its beauty. To punish Minos, Aphrodite made Pasiphaë, Minos’ wife, fall madly in love with the bull from the sea, the Cretan Bull. She had the archetypal craftsman Daedalus make a hollow wooden cow for her. Pasiphaë climbed into this wooden cow in order to copulate with the white bull. The offspring of their coupling was the monstrous Minotaur. Pasiphaë nursed him in his infancy, but he grew and became ferocious; being the unnatural offspring of man and beast, he had no natural source of nourishment and thus devoured man for sustenance. Minos, after getting advice from the oracle at Delphi, had Daedalus construct a gigantic labyrinth to hold the Minotaur. Its location was near Minos’ palace in Knossos.

Nowhere has the essence of the myth been expressed more succinctly than in the Heroides attributed to Ovid, where Pasiphaë’s daughter complains of the curse of her unrequited love: “the bull’s form disguised the god, Pasiphaë, my mother, a victim of the deluded bull, brought forth in travail her reproach and burden.” Literalist and prurient readings that emphasize the machinery of actual copulation may, perhaps intentionally, obscure the mystic marriage of the god in bull form, a Minoan mythos alien to the Greeks.

The Minotaur is commonly represented in Classical art with the body of a man and the head and tail of a bull. One of the figurations assumed by the river god Achelous in wooing Deianira is as a man with the head of a bull, according to Sophocles’ Trachiniai.

From Classical times through the Renaissance, the Minotaur appears at the center of many depictions of the Labyrinth. Ovid’s Latin account of the Minotaur, which did not elaborate on which half was bull and which half man, was the most widely available during the Middle Ages, and several later versions show the reverse of the Classical configuration, a man’s head and torso on a bull’s body, reminiscent of a centaur. This alternative tradition survived into the Renaissance, and still figures in some modern depictions, such as Steele Savage’s illustrations for Edith Hamilton’s Mythology (1942).

Tribute price that brought Theseus to Crete

Androgeus, son of Minos, had been killed by the Athenians, who were jealous of the victories he had won at the Panathenaic festival. Others say he was killed at Marathon by the Cretan bull, his mother’s former taurine lover, which Aegeus, king of Athens, had commanded him to slay. The common tradition is that Minos waged war to avenge the death of his son and won. Catullus, in his account of the Minotaur’s birth, refers to another version in which Athens was “compelled by the cruel plague to pay penalties for the killing of Androgeos.” Aegeus must avert the plague caused by his crime by sending “young men at the same time as the best of unwed girls as a feast” to the Minotaur. Minos required that seven Athenian youths and seven maidens, drawn by lots, be sent every ninth year (some accounts say every year) to be devoured by the Minotaur.

When the third sacrifice approached, Theseus volunteered to slay the monster. He promised to his father, Aegeus, that he would put up a white sail on his journey back home if he was successful and would have the crew put up black sails if he was killed. In Crete, Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, fell in love with Theseus and helped him navigate the labyrinth. In most accounts she gave him a ball of thread, allowing him to retrace his path. Theseus killed the Minotaur with the sword of Aegeus and led the other Athenians back out of the labyrinth. But he forgot to put up the white sail, so when his father saw the ship he presumed Theseus was dead and threw himself into the sea, thus committing suicide.

Etruscan view

This essentially Athenian view of the Minotaur as the antagonist of Theseus reflects the literary sources, which are biased in favour of Athenian perspectives. The Etruscans, who paired Ariadne with Dionysus, never with Theseus, offered an alternative Etruscan view of the Minotaur, never seen in Greek arts: on an Etruscan red-figure wine-cup of the early-to-mid fourth century Pasiphaë tenderly dandles an infant Minotaur on her knee.

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