Tales and Mythology where you can find all tales and mythologies on the world
Search This Blog
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’.
Loud was the song of the Muses about Danaus, first of a line of great kings and heroes. King Danaus of Libya had fifty daughters, his brother, King Aegyptus, had fifty sons. The fifty sons wanted to marry the fifty daughters, but they were rough and rowdy and King Danaus did not want them for sons-in-law. He feared that they might carry off his daughters by force, so secretly he built a ship with fifty oars and fled with his daughters. The fifty princesses pulled at the oars and rowed the ship across the wide sea. They reached Argos, in Greece, and when the people there saw the king standing in the prow of a gorgeous ship rowed by princesses, they were awed. They were certain that Danaus had been sent by the gods, and made him their king. Danaus was a good ruler, and peace and happiness reigned in Argos until one day another splendid ship arrived. And who should be at the oars but King Aegyptus' fifty sons, who had come to claim their brides. Danaus did not dare to oppose th...
BRIAREOS (Briareus) was one of the Hekantonkheires (Hecatoncheires), three primordial hundred-handed, fifty-headed storm giants. He was more specifically a god of sea-storms and in this guise he was often named Aigaion (Of the Aegean). Briareos wed Poseidon 's daughter Kymopoleia ("Wave-Ranging") and dwelt with her in the depths of the sea. His two brothers, on the other hand, were appointed guardians of the gates of the storm-pit Tartaros. According to some Aigaios (Aegaeus) was a storm-giant ally of the Titanes and father of Briareos instead of a just a by-name of Briareos himself. AEGAEON (Aigaiôn), a son of Uranus by Gaea . Aegaeon and his brothers Gyges and Cottus are known under the name of the Uranids, and are described as huge monsters with a hundred arms (hekatoncheires) and fifty heads. Most writers mention the third Uranid under the name of Briareus instead of Aegaeon, which is explained in a passage of Homer, who says that men called him Aegaeon, but ...
THE First Labour which Eurystheus imposed on Heracles , when he came to reside at Tiryns, was to kill and flay the Nemean, or Cleonaean lion, an enormous beast with a pelt proof against iron, bronze, and stone. b. Although some call this lion the offspring of Typhon , or of the Chimaera and the Dog Orthrus , others say that Selene bore it with a fearful shudder and dropped it to earth on Mount Tretus near Nemea, beside a two-mouthed cave; and that, in punishment for an unfulfilled sacrifice, she set it to prey upon her own people, the chief sufferers being the Bambinaeaus. c. Still others say that, at Hera’s desire, Selene created the lion from sea foam enclosed in a large ark; and that Iris, binding it with her girdle, carried it to the Nemean mountains. These were named after a daughter of Asopus, or of Zeus and Selene; and the lion’s cave is still shown about two miles from the city of Nemea. d. Arriving at Cleonae, between Corinth and Argos, Heracles lodged in the hou...
Comments
Post a Comment