Heroes: Volume II of Mythos

T HE M ARATHONIAN B ULL The news that Aegeus had sent Theseus to kill the bull at Marathon sent shockwaves throughout Attica. For the king had sent a young man on the very same mission before, with disastrous consequences. He had received Prince ANDROGEUS, a son of King Minos of Crete, as a guest, and foolishly sent him on the same errand, to rid Athens of a terrible bull that was devastating the countryside. The bull had promptly killed Androgeus, and as a punishment for such an egregious sin against the laws of hospitality, Minos had invaded Attica and threatened to raze the city to the ground unless … Well, we will come to that soon enough. For the moment, everyone wondered how Aegeus could be making the identical same disastrous mistake, for it was the identical same disastrous bull. We first encountered this prodigiously significant beast when it was known as the Cretan Bull, the very one Heracles had been ordered to capture for his Seventh Labour.fn8 After he let it go, you will recall, it fled from Mycenae and eventually ended up in Marathon, where it had been terrorising the inhabitants ever since. Theseus went to Marathon and once more demonstrated the difference between his brand of heroism and that of Heracles who, if you remember, had planted himself on the ground and let the bull come at him, seizing it by the horns and using his sheer physical strength to subdue it. Theseus approached the problem in his own way. He watched the bull for some time. He saw no flames jetting from its nostrils, but he did see enormous strength and a terrible primal savagery in its furious snorting, bellowing and pawing of the ground. The ravaged countryside, gored livestock and flattened buildings all told him of the animal’s formidable power and instinct to kill. ‘But he’s really no more frightening than Cercyon, whom I wrestled to the ground and dashed on the rocks,’ he said to himself. Sure enough, employing that same subtle art of turning the strength of an adversary against him, Theseus wore the bull out. Theseus was too lithe, nimble and quick for it. Each time the bull came at him, Theseus jumped into the air and the baffled animal found itself charging through vacant space beneath him.fn9 ‘You don’t breathe fire,’ said Theseus, leaping over him for the tenth time, ‘but your breath is hot.’ At last the great beast was too tired to resist any further. Theseus harnessed him and ploughed the Plain of Marathon.fn10 The ploughing demonstrated his mastery of the beast and proved to the delighted inhabitants that they could now grow crops and farm their land in safety. Theseus returned in triumph to Athens with the bull, which he sacrificed to Apollo in the agora.