Pasiphae and the bull: summary and photo

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

One of the most controversial and unusual stories in ancient Greek mythology tells of Pasiphae and the bull. What is the subtext of this legend? From this article you can find out the content of the myth of Pasiphae and the bull, as well as its meaning and reflection in world culture.

Pasiphae

Before parsing the legend, you need to familiarize yourself with its characters. The main character, of course, is Pasiphae herself. She was born in the union of the sun god Helios and the oceanic princess Perseid. The name Pasiphae is translated as "luminous", "shining" and personifies the light of the sun reflected in the water. Below you can see a fragment of a mosaic with a portrait of Pasiphae.

Minos

When it was time to get married, Pasiphae became the wife of Minos, a demigod, son of Zeus and king of Crete. Before the events described in the legend of Pasiphae and the bull, the picture of the myths about Minos shows Pasiphae as a beautiful, meek and loving wife. She suffered from her husband's betrayals, but she herself was always faithful to him.

Cretan bull

Since Minos was the son of the supreme god Zeus, he won the trust of the Cretan people with hisconnection with the gods. But for this he was obliged to regularly sacrifice to his father, most often they were bulls. There is no unambiguous statement about who the bull that seduced Pasiphae really was - most often he is referred to as the best bull of Olympus, beautiful and powerful, which Poseidon sent to Minos to sacrifice to Zeus. But there are versions in which Poseidon or even Zeus himself turned into a Cretan bull. Below is a photo of a mosaic in which the Cretan bull fights with Hercules - after the events of the myth of Pasiphae, the bull went mad. He was first pacified by Hercules (the seventh feat), and then - killed by Theseus.

Pasiphae and the bull: description of the myth

There are several versions of this legend. The most common one says that when the next sacrifice to Zeus came up, Minos asked Poseidon to deliver the best bulls to him. The god of the seas fulfilled his request - and now a whole herd of the most beautiful bulls came out of the water onto the coast of Crete, but one of them was the best of the best - huge, powerful and snow-white. He was meant for Zeus. However, the admiring Minos could not lay down such a good beast and sacrificed the second most beautiful one. Upon learning of this, Poseidon became angry and in retaliation he bewitched the wife of Minos, Pasiphae, imposing on her an animal attraction to this bull. Below is a picture of Pasiphae and a bull embracing in a photo of an ancient Greek stone section.

The spell worked - and from that day on, Pasiphae could not take her eyes off this bull. At first, Minos thought that his wife was justfascinated by the majestic animal and once again rejoiced that he had not sacrificed it. But he soon noticed that Pasiphae began to visit the pasture too often. Not only Pasiphae was crazy about the bull, but all the Cretan cows - they fought to the blood, trying to turn their backs on the magnificent bull. Seeing this, Pasiphae boiled over with jealousy and ordered from the same minute to graze the bull separately from all other animals. After a couple of days, the woman's madness reached the point that she forbade anyone to approach the bull, she herself began to take him out to pasture, while dressing up in the best dresses and jewelry. She spent whole days next to him, fed him with blades of grass from her hands and decorated with flowers, hugged and kissed him like a lover. She stopped paying even the slightest attention to her husband Minos.

And so, when Pasiphae's passion became unbearable, she turned to Daedalus, an engineer who would later construct a Cretan labyrinth and wings for herself and her son Icarus. He puzzled over the request of the Cretan queen for a long time and finally came up with the idea of making a wooden cow (according to another version it was a bull), empty inside and with a hole in the genital area. He covered the finished product with the skin of a real cow, and when Pasiphae climbed inside, he rolled the cow to the famous Cretan bull. Having long missed cow society, the bull did not notice the catch and hurried to copulate with a fake female. Thus, both Pasiphae and the bull satisfied their old passions. The photo below shows a sculpture located on one ofcoast of Catalonia. She depicts Pasiphae in the womb of a bull (or cow) made by Daedalus.

Further development of the legend was reflected in the myths about Hercules - the bull enchanted by the gods went mad after intercourse with a human woman (according to other versions, madness was associated with the abandonment of the bull's body and mind by Poseidon or Zeus). In any case, the animal ran wild and began to rush along the shores of Crete, devastating villages, destroying crops and trampling everything in its path - people and animals. Only Hercules was able to defeat him, having completed his heroic seventh feat and sending the bull to the Peloponnese. Later, the beast, which did not lose its rage, was killed by Theseus.

Minotaur

After what happened between the bull and the queen, Pasiphae gave birth to a monster, which they dubbed the Minotaur - a creature with a human body and a bull's head. Other versions of the legend about Pasiphae and the bull report that after Minos' misdeed, Poseidon not only bewitched his wife, but also moved into the body of a beautiful bull. According to this version, the Minotaur is a demigod and the son of Poseidon.

There is another version of the myth - it was not Poseidon who got angry with Minos, but Zeus himself. He did not cast a spell on Pasiphae, but also moved into the body of a bull, and the queen was truly fascinated, as Zeus gave the animal his anthropomorphic features and sexual power. If you stick to this version, the Minotaur should be considered not only a demigod, but also the brother of Minos. Below is an image of Pasiphae with a newborn Minotaur.

Having given birth to a monster, Pasiphae provoked the wrath of Minos - he ordered to imprison his wife in a dungeon, where she died. Minos ordered the Minotaur to be hidden forever in the labyrinth, which Daedalus built especially for this purpose. Every year, seven girls and seven young men were sent to the labyrinth to the monster, whom he killed and ate - this continued until Theseus, who had previously destroyed the father of the Minotaur, sailed to Crete and defeated the monster. With the death of Pasiphae, the bull, and their offspring the Minotaur, the myth of the bull and the Cretan queen ends.

Meaning of the myth

According to those philosophers of the Renaissance who adhered to the theory of humanism, in mythology Pasiphae and the bull were called to personify a conscious mockery of the natural laws of human love and marriage. In the subsequent works of psychologists, Pasiphae was called upon to personify an animal, unbridled passion, before which the call of reason and reason fades away.

Using the legend in art

In the most ancient works of literature, Pasiphae and the legend about her and the bull appear in the tragedy "The Cretans", written by Euripides, and in the comedy "Pasiphae", written by Alcaeus. In 1936, Pasiphae and the bull again became literary heroes - the French writer Henri de Monterland wrote about them in his drama Pasiphae. In addition, this legend is mentioned in the 2002 novel Lament of the Minotaur by Javier Azpeiti and in the 2009 play Pasiphae, or How to Mother the Minotaur by Fabrice Hadjaj.

Besides literature, Pasiphae and the bullbecame the heroes of a huge number of works of painting and architecture, both in ancient times and in modern times. In addition to those already mentioned above, it is worth mentioning the painting of the same name by Giulio Romano of the sixteenth century, the painting by Gustave Moreau of the nineteenth century.

Also a series of abstract paintings by Andre Masson and Jackson Pollock, painted independently of each other in the forties of the last century. One of the paintings of the latter on this topic is presented below.

Screening

The myth of Pasiphae and the bull was also reflected in the cinema - in the fall of two thousand and thirteen, a series of British production called "Atlantis" was released. Despite the name, the plot is based on a large number of ancient Greek myths that have nothing to do with Atlantis, and the main characters are Hercules, Jason and Pythagoras.

In the episode leading up to the seventh feat of Hercules, the legend of the bull and the Cretan queen is told. The role of Queen Pasiphae was played by British actress Sarah Parish.