Constellation Myths by Eratosthenes

Author:Eratosthenes [Eratosthenes and Hyginus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2015-03-11T14:19:00+00:00

Commentary

The Bull

(i) This was commonly said to be the bull that had carried Europa across the sea from Phoenicia to Crete. Europa was the daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor or Phoenix, and Zeus fathered Minos and other children by her to found the Cretan royal line (Ap. 3.1.1–2). In Eratosthenes’ narrative, Zeus was plainly presented as having sent the bull, but in early sources he is said to have transformed himself into the bull to abduct her (e.g. Hes. fr. 140 MW), and some Latin authors revert to this tradition when recounting the astral myth (Ovid, Fasti 5.604 ff., cf. Germanicus 536 ff.). In that case, Zeus would merely have placed an image of the bull in the sky to commemorate his exploit

(ii) Eratosthenes also cited an alternative in which the constellation represents the transformed Io. This Io was a daughter of the Argive river-god Inachos, and was of genealogical importance as the ancestor of the Argive and Theban royal lines. She aroused the love of Zeus, who subsequently transformed her into a cow to conceal her from the jealous Hera (or else she was transformed by Hera herself ); she then wandered off to Egypt, where she was restored to human form and gave birth to Epaphos, her son by Zeus (Ap. 2.1.3). In that case, the figure in the sky is not a bull at all, but a cow. No one would know, however, because only the front half of the animal is represented there; in fuller narratives, it may have been explained that this was deliberately arranged by Zeus, as Artemis did for Hippe (see p. 51).

(iii) Two other alternatives are recorded elsewhere without further detail (schol. Arat. 167). One appeals to another tale from Cretan myth by suggesting that this is the bull that aroused the passion of Pasiphae. Her husband Minos had aroused the anger of Poseidon by failing to offer him in sacrifice a magnificent bull that he had sent up from the sea, and Poseidon responded by contriving that Pasiphae should mate with it and so conceive the Minotaur (Ap. 3.1.3).

(iv) Or this is the bull of Marathon, which Theseus captured while travelling to Athens to claim his throne, and offered in sacrifice to Athena; since it is identified in our source, as often, with the Cretan bull which was fetched by Heracles as his seventh labour, this story too has a Cretan connection.

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