Heroes: Volume II of Mythos

7. T HE C RETAN B ULL ‘The Cretan Bull?’ repeated Heracles. ‘Yes,’ said Eurystheus testily. ‘Do I have to tell you everything twice? The Cretan Bull. Ox. Steer. Male Cow. Crete. Island. Fetch.’ Many years ago, a great white bull had charged out of the sea onto the shores of Crete. It had been sent by the god Poseidon in answer to the prayers of King MINOS, who wished to awe his subjects with a sign that his rule was divinely sanctioned. The idea had been to sacrifice the bull to Poseidon once his brothers accepted this proof, but both Minos and his wife PASIPHAE were so enchanted by the creature’s beauty that they hadn’t the heart to slaughter it. Indeed, Pasiphae went so far as to mate with it. She bore it a son ASTERION, half man half bull, known as the Minotaur, who lived trapped in a cunning labyrinth built to house it by Minos’s architect, inventor and designer, the great DAEDALUS. The bull, meanwhile, rampaged around Crete, savage, untameable and terrifying. As a favour to Minos, Eurystheus sent Heracles there to subdue it and bring it to Tiryns – alive. Heracles, so different in approach, as we shall see, from his younger cousin Theseus, had no technique other than confidence in his own strength and inexhaustible stamina. He found the bull, shouted at it, maddened it and planted himself in its way. When it charged, he simply grabbed its hornsfn13 and wrenched. The bull resisted with all its strength. Gradually Heracles pulled it to the ground, rolling around with it, much as he had the Nemean Lion and the Erymanthian Boar. Never letting go of the horns he roared in the bull’s ear, slapped it, punched it, tweaked it, thwacked it and bit it. Finally, the battered and exhausted beast lay down in the dust beneath him and submitted its will to his. Mounting the creature, Heracles rode it over the waves from which it had been born all the way back to the Peloponnese. He led it into the palace of Eurystheus, who once more sought refuge in his stone jar. ‘All right, damn you, just get rid of it, will you?’ ‘Are you sure you don’t want to tickle its ear?’ ‘Get rid of the damned thing!’ If Eurystheus had called out from the jar ‘Sacrifice it to the gods’, the whole history of the world might be different. As it was, Heracles obediently released the bull into the countryside. Once free of its master, it bucked and galloped for miles and miles, finally making its home all the way over on the east of mainland Greece, on the Plain of Marathon, where it tormented and harassed the local people until another great hero, as we shall see, finally came to face it down and end its extraordinary life.