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The Seventh Labour: The Cretan Bull
EURYSTHEUS ordered Heracles, as his Seventh Labour, to capture the Cretan Bull; but it is much disputed whether this was the bull sent by Zeus, which ferried Europe across to Crete, or the one, withheld by Minos from sacrifice to Poseidon, which sired the Minotaur on Pasiphaë. At this time it was ravaging Crete, especially the region watered by the river Tethris, rooting up crops and levelling orchard walls.
b.When Heracles sailed to Crete, Minos offered him every assistance in his power, but he preferred to capture the bull single-handed, though it belched scorching flames. After a long struggle, he brought the monster across to Mycenae, where Eurystheus, dedicating it to Hera, set it free. Hera however, loathing a gift which redounded to Heracles’s glory, drove the bull first to Sparta, and then back through Arcadia and across the Isthmus to Attic Marathon, whence Theseus later dragged it to Athens as a sacrifice to Athene.
c.Nevertheless, many still deny the identity of the Cretan and Marathonian bulls.
1.The combat with a bull, or a man in bull’s disguise-one of the ritual tasks imposed on the candidate for kingship-also appears in the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, and of Jason and the fire-breathing bulls of Aeëtes. When the immortality implicit in the sacred kingship was eventually offered to every initiate of the Dionysian Mysteries, the capture of a bull and its dedication to Dionysus Plutodotes (‘giver of wealth’) became a common rite both in Arcadia (Pausanias) and Lydia (Strabo), where Dionysus held the title of Zeus. His principal theophany was as a bull, but he also appeared in the form of a lion and a serpent. Contact with the bull’s horn enabled the sacred king to fertilize the land in the name of the Moon-goddess by making rain-the magical explanation being that a bull’s bellow portended thunderstorms, which rhombi, or bull-roarers, were accordingly swung to induce. Torches were also flung to simulate lightning and came to suggest the bull’s fiery breath.
2.Dionysus is called Plutodotes (‘wealth-giver’) because of his cornucopia, torn from a bull, which was primarily a water charm; he developed from Cretan Zagreus, and among Zagreus’s changes are lion, a horned serpent, a bull, and ‘Cronus making rain’.
SISYPHUS, son of Aeolus, married Atlas ’s daughter Merope, the Pleiad, who bore him Glaucus , Ornytion , and Sinon, and owned a fine herd of cattle on the Isthmus of Corinth. b. Near him lived Autolycus , son of Chione , whose twin-brother Philammon was begotten by Apollo , though Autolycus himself claimed Hermes as his father. c. Now, Autolycus was a past master in theft, Hermes having given him the power of metamorphosing whatever beasts he stole, from horned to unhorned, or from black to white, and contrariwise. Thus although Sisyphus noticed that his own herds grew steadily smaller while those of Autolycus increased, he was unable at first to accuse him of theft; and therefore, one day, engraved the inside of all his cattle’s hooves with the monogram SS or, some say, with the words ‘Stolen by Autolycus’. That night Autolycus helped himself as usually and at dawn hoof-prints along the road provided Sisyphus with sufficient evidence to summon neighbours in witness of the th
MINOS was the first king to control the Mediterranean Sea, which he cleared of pirates, and in Crete ruled over ninety cities. When the Athenians had murdered his son Androgeus, he decided to take vengeance on them, and sailed around the Aegean collecting ships and armed levies. Some islanders agreed to help him, some refused. Siphnos yielded to him by the Princess Arne, whom he bribed with gold; the gods changed her into a jackdaw which loves gold and all things that glitter. He made an alliance with the people of Anaphe, but rebuffed by King Aeacus of Aegina and departed, swearing revenge. Aeacus then answered an appeal from Cephalus to join the Athenians against Minos . b. Meanwhile, Minos was partying the Isthmus of Corinth. He laid siege to Nisa, ruled by Nisus the Egyptian, who had a daughter name Scylla. A tower stood in the city, built by Apollo [and Poseidon ?], an at its foot lay a musical stone which, if pebbles were dropped upon from above, rang like a lyre-because Ap
CRONUS married his sister Rhea , to whom the oak is sacred. But it was prophesied by Mother Earth , and by his dying father Uranus, that one of his own sons would dethrone him. Every year, therefore, he swallowed the children whom Rhea bore him: first Hestia , then Demeter and Hera , then Hades , then Poseidon . b. Rhea was enraged. She bore Zeus , her third son, at dead of night on Mount Lycaeum in Arcadia, where no creature casts a shadow and, having bathed him in the River Neda, gave him to Mother Earth; by whom he was carried to Lyctos in Crete, and hidden in the cave of Dicte on the Aegean Hill. Mother Earth left him there to be nursed by the Ash- nymph Adrasteia and her sister Io, both daughters of Melisseus, and by the Goat-nymph Amaltheia. His food was honey, and he drank Amaltheia's milk, with Goat-Pan , his foster- brother. Zeus was grateful to these three nymphs for their kindness and, when he became Lord of the Universe, set Amaltheia's image among
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