One of the most controversial and unusual stories in ancient Greek mythology tells of Pasiphae and the bull. What is the implication of this legend? From this article you can find out the content of the myth of Pasiphae and the bull, as well as its significance and reflection in world culture.
Pasifaya
Before disassembling a legend, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with its actors. The main character, of course, is Pasifaya herself. She was born in the union of the sun god Helios and the oceanic princess of Perseid. The name Pasiphai 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 Pasifaya.
Minos
When the time came to get married, Pasifaya became the wife of Minos - the demigod, the son of Zeus and King Crete. Before the events described in the legend of Pasiphae and the bull, the picture of myths about Minos shows Pasiphae as a beautiful, meek and loving wife. She suffered from cheating on her husband, but she 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 by his relationship with the gods. But for this he was obliged to regularly sacrifice to his father, most often they were bulls. There is no unequivocal statement of who the bull actually seduced Pasiphae was - he is most often mentioned as the best bull of Olympus, beautiful and powerful, whom Poseidon sent to Minos for sacrifice to Zeus. But there are versions in which Poseidon or even Zeus himself turned to the Cretan bull. Below is a photo of the mosaic in which the Cretan bull fights Hercules - after the events of the myth of Pasiphae, the bull went mad. First he was pacified by Hercules (the seventh feat), and then - Theseus killed him.
Pasifaya and the bull: a description of the myth
There are several versions of this legend. The most common says that when the deadline for the next sacrifice to Zeus approached, Minos asked Poseidon to deliver him the best bulls. The God of the seas fulfilled his request - and now a whole herd of the most beautiful bulls came out of the water to the coast of Crete, however, one of them was the best of the best - huge, powerful and snow-white. It was intended for Zeus. However, the admired Minos could not lay such a good beast and sacrificed the second most beautiful. Upon learning of this, Poseidon was angry and in revenge enchanted the wife of Minos, Pasiphaeus, imposing on her an animal attraction to this bull. Below is the embrace of Pasiphais and the bull 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 simply fascinated by the majestic animal and was glad again that he had not sacrificed it. But he soon noticed that Pasifaya too often began to visit the pasture. Not only Pasiphae was crazy about the bull, but all the Cretan cows - they fought to the blood, trying to substitute the back of the magnificent bull. Seeing this, Pasiphae boiled with jealousy and ordered from that moment to feed the bull separately from all other animals. After a couple of days, the madness of the woman reached the point that she forbade anyone to approach the bull, she began to bring him to the pasture, while dressing up in the best dresses and jewelry. She spent whole days next to him, fed him grass with grass and decorated with flowers, hugged and kissed like a lover. She ceased to pay even the slightest attention to her husband Minos.
And so, when Pasifaya’s passionate desire became unbearable, she turned to Daedalus, an engineer who would later construct the Cretan labyrinth and wings for herself and her son Icarus. He puzzled for a long time over the request of the Cretan queen and finally came up with 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 Pasifaya climbed inside, he rolled the cow back to the famous Cretan bull. Long bored in cow society, the bull did not notice the catch and hastened 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 of the shores of Catalonia. She depicts Pasiphae in the womb of a bull (or cow) made by Daedalus.
The further development of the legend was reflected in the myths of Hercules - the bewitched bull was mad after intercourse with a human woman (according to other versions, the madness was due to the abandonment of the bull body and mind by Poseidon or Zeus). In any case, the animal was wild and began to rush along the coast of Crete, ruining villages, destroying crops and trampling everything in its path - people and animals. Only Hercules could defeat him, having completed his heroic seventh feat and sending the bull to the Peloponnese. Later, the beast, not losing its rage, was killed by Theseus.
Minotaur
After what happened between the bull and the queen, Pasifaya gave birth to a monster who was dubbed the Minotaur - a creature with a human body and a bull’s head. Other versions of the legend of Pasiphae and the bull report that after the misconduct of Minos, Poseidon not only enchanted his wife, but also moved into the body of a beautiful bull. According to this version, the Minotaur is the demigod and son of Poseidon.
There is another version of the myth - it was not Poseidon who was angry at Minos, but Zeus himself. He did not cast a spell on Pasiphae, but also dwelt in the body of the bull, and the queen was truly fascinated, since Zeus gave the animal its 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, Pasifaya aroused the wrath of Minos - he ordered her husband to be imprisoned in prison, where she died. Minos, on the other hand, Minos ordered to hide forever in the maze, which the very same Daedalus built specially for this purpose. Each year, seven girls and seven young men were sent to the maze to the monster, whom he killed and ate - this continued until Theseus, who had previously destroyed the Minotaur’s father, sailed to Crete and defeated the monster. The death of Pasiphae, the bull and their offspring of the Minotaur ends with the myth of the bull and the Cretan queen.
The meaning of myth
According to those philosophers of the Renaissance who adhered to the theory of humanism, in the mythology of Pasifaya and the bull were called to personify a conscious mockery of the natural laws of human love and marriage. In subsequent works by psychologists, Pasifaya was called to personify an animal, unbridled passion, before which the call of reason and reason fades.
The use of legends in art
In the most ancient works of literature of Pasiphae, the legend of her and the bull appears in the tragedy "Cretans" written by Euripides, and in the comedy "Pasiphae" written by Alkey. In 1936, Pasifaya and the bull again became literary heroes - the French writer Henri de Monterlan wrote his drama "Pasifaya" about them. In addition, this legend is mentioned in the 2002 novel “Crying of the Minotaur” by Javier Aspeytya and in the play two thousand and nine of the year “Pasifaya, or How to Become a Mother of the Minotaur” by Fabrice Hajaj.
In addition to literature, Pasifaya and the bull became the heroes of a huge number of paintings 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 of 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 latest paintings on this topic is presented below.
Film adaptation
The myth of Pasiphae and the bull was also reflected in the cinema - in the fall of two thousand and thirteen, a British-made series 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 were 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 Pasifaya was performed by the British actress Sarah Parish.