THE TAUROS KRETAIOS was a ferocious bull sent up from the sea by Poseidon in response to the prayers of King Minos of Krete. When the King refused to sacrifice it to the god, he had the king's wife Pasiphae fall in love with, and mate with the beast.
Herakles was sent to fetch it as one of his twelve Labours, and later it was slain by Theseus at Marathon. The gods then placed it among the stars as the Constellation Taurus, perhaps with the fish-tail of Cetus attached.
It was closely identified with the Bull of Europa.
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"Pasiphae ... Kypris [Aphrodite] implanted desire in her [text missing]: to Eupalamos' son Daidalos, most skilled of carpenters, she told her unspeakable sickness [the lust for a bull]; she made him swear a binding oath and ordered him to build a wooden cow, so that she might join her body to that of the mighty bull, hiding from Minos [text missing] the union she shared." - Greek Lyric IV Bacchylides, Frag 26
"That adulteress [Pasiphae] who in a cow of wood beguiled a savage Bull and bore a monster [the Minotauros] in her womb! ... His [Minos'] dynasty's disgrace has grown; the monstrous beast [Minotauros] hybrid beast declared the queen's obscene adultery." - Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.130
Dead like Me
DLM
Herakles was sent to fetch it as one of his twelve Labours, and later it was slain by Theseus at Marathon. The gods then placed it among the stars as the Constellation Taurus, perhaps with the fish-tail of Cetus attached.
It was closely identified with the Bull of Europa.
.
"Pasiphae ... Kypris [Aphrodite] implanted desire in her [text missing]: to Eupalamos' son Daidalos, most skilled of carpenters, she told her unspeakable sickness [the lust for a bull]; she made him swear a binding oath and ordered him to build a wooden cow, so that she might join her body to that of the mighty bull, hiding from Minos [text missing] the union she shared." - Greek Lyric IV Bacchylides, Frag 26
"That adulteress [Pasiphae] who in a cow of wood beguiled a savage Bull and bore a monster [the Minotauros] in her womb! ... His [Minos'] dynasty's disgrace has grown; the monstrous beast [Minotauros] hybrid beast declared the queen's obscene adultery." - Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.130
Dead like Me
DLM
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