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Author(s): P. B. S. Andrews
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Apr., 1969), pp. 60-66
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/642899 .
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EUROPA
and
THE
MYTH
OF EUROPA
AND
MINOS
61
THE
62
MYTH
OF EUROPA
AND
MINOS
Taurus would be rising before the sun and some of those of Orion. This
is why the Starry King as well as the Bull of Heaven comes into the myth
as a long-stop; in any case, when the new moon really did coincide with
the rising of the Pleiades, the stars of Orion would be dominating the
dawn by the next lunation, which is why Asterios has the bringing up
of Minos.
of Minos:
p oiAEVuE
EvvcAopoS
Al6S lr~d&hou
6apto-r'is. (Od.xix. '79)
The statementonly makes sense, in terms of the octaeteris,if 'Minos'
here is the moon. The sun is alwaysthere at the right time, and so for
practicalpurposesarethe stars;it is only the moon that goes wandering
all over the place, and turns up properlyfor its appointmentonly every
eight (or by Greekreckoning'nine')years. As to the Moon's being the
'confidentialgossip'of greatZeus, is the implicationof this perhapsthat
Zeus himself,the Sun, and everyoneelse can see and hear what goes on
in the daytime; only the Moon is aroundat night to hear, and report,
what possibly treasonablewhispersgo on in the dark?
I see no difficultyin supposingthat the proper name or title of the
Moon became the regularroyal title of the kings of Knossos. It corresponds directly to 'Son of RE"'as the principaltitle of the kings of
Egypt, and to the kings of Hatti sometimes calling themselves simply
'the Sun'. The Cretanking was regardedas the earthlyrepresentative
and avatarof the other luminary,becausethere was no male sun-god at
all or becausehe was a minorand unimportantfigure. Philologicallythe
identificationseems of some interest, since it is hard, if Minos really
means the moon-god, not to connect it with *mines- in some unidenti-
the constellationsas we do, but the Bull and the Giant are surely of all
constellationsthe most compulsive. In the Mediterraneanthey south
63
at just the right altitude to catch the wondering eye, and are always the
right way up. They lie in the most brilliant region of the sky, with three
first-magnitude stars between them besides the Pleiades and Hyades,
Belt and Sword, and four more strung round them to the east. And to a
Minoan the Giant would surely have a special appeal-for would he not
see in him a bull-dancer, with tight belt and codpiece, reaching up his
arms to seize the horns of the Bull and vault between them ? (May it not
even have been this fancy which first impelled Cretan athletes to try
whether it could really be done?)
It seems to me impossible to accept that Cadmos brother of Europa
and Cadmos founder of Thebes can be originally the same person; they
have been confounded, and their myths run into one, through a purely
chance homonymy of Phoenician q-d-m with the native Helladic ethnic
Cadmeios. The myth of search for a lost god is found alike at Ugarit
(Anat and Baal), in Hittite (Telepinus), and in classical Greece (Demeter
and Kore). In all these cases the lost one is the spirit of fertility, and
therefore must be found and recovered-till next year!-in the end. If
the search of Cadmos for Europa is original and integral, it must surely
be of the same type. Europa is only the sun-goddess, as such quite
simply, for the immediate calendar purpose of this myth, but the
functions of bronze-age gods are never as simple and clear-cut as that:
as a great royal goddess of Crete, the divine queen of Knossos, she is
properly, if cumbrously, 'the aspect of the fertility-goddess embodied in
the sun', just as Artemis and her avatars are 'in the forest', and the oldest
Aphrodite, sprung from the sea-foam on the fall of the seed of Heaven,
'in the sea' (the exact equivalent of Ugaritic Asherah). If Cadmos then
ever in fact set out in search of her, he must certainly have run her to
earth in Crete in the end.
The myth of Cadmos of Thebes on the other hand begins simply at
the point where a wandering man arrives, following or driving a cow
with a sacred mark, to win a wife and found a city. It has a close doublet
in the foundation-myth of Colophon, also traceable to Delphi, where
'Ragged son of Pot' (Rakios of Lebes) arrives from nowhere to marry
the weeping Manto, daughter of Teiresias. The roots of this lie somewhere far back in neolithic Europe, for we find the three main personsragged man, weeping maid, and the cow 'with the crumpled horn'-even
turning up in our English nursery rhyme of the House that Jack Built.
It is the myth of the founding of the first 'city' ever, by the fertility god
and goddess and their magic cow; it has nothing whatever to do with
Europa and Cadmos, the sun goddess and god of Minoan Crete. Perhaps
Agenor, however, was the Theban's original father?
In the astronomical context it is tempting to equate Ariadne and
Phaidra with the constellation Gemini, but I think this would be wrong.
THE
MYTH
OF EUROPA
AND
MINOS
65
finds Ariadne in Naxos, deserted by Theseus, and takes her for wife.
Presumably in the original Cretan myth he boasted of this to his rightful
mistress Artemis, who then killed Ariadne. (Notice that Dia perhaps
corresponds to Dione, in Homer mother of Aphrodite, as do Cythera and
Cyprus to her usual titles; in these myths she is always fundamentally
a sea-goddess.)
A Corinthian version appears, much disguised, attached to Jason in
Euripides' Medea. Medea is the sun-goddess (granddaughter of Helios,
her father, like Europa's, lord of the eastern shore), Glauce lady of
Corinth is Aphrodite with an epithet of the sea for name; so the Athenian roles of Phaidra and Ariadne are reversed.
The simplest version of the other form belongs to Delos: Orion the
hunter deserted Artemis for Eos, for which Artemis killed him. This
reverses the Athenian roles of Procris and Eos. Whether Orion the
hunter is yet to be identified with the constellation is not clear, but in the
bewildering kaleidoscope of shifting personalities among these Aegean
gods it is quite possible. The Master of Animals lurks behind Cephalos
and Dionysos and, in some Procris versions, Minos himself, so he may
well do so behind Asterios as well.
The original Troezene version was presumably that Hippolytos deserted Aphrodite for Artemis, and Aphrodite herself sent the sea-monster
to kill him. But Euripides, who was clearly fascinated by the permutations of this myth, has deliberately welded this and the Theseus version
together (with the Potiphar's Wife theme thrown in for good measure)
so that Aphrodite-Ariadne takes simultaneous revenge for her wrongs on
Sun-Phaidra and Theseus, Artemis and Hippolytos all together. Only
Dionysos, in an Athenian tragedy, is beyond her power-but he at least
did prefer her, even if he afterwards betrayed her.
Doubtless other versions may still be found, or once existed. The
theme perhaps contributed something to the Judgement of Paris, but in
that all three goddesses improperly appear together, and the Sun and
Artemis have been replaced by the Mycenaean royal goddesses, Hera
Queen of Heaven and Athene the shield-goddess.
This curious myth-complex is perhaps of little interest in itself, but
I have discussed it at some length as evidence for the cult of a prehellenic
sun-goddess in the presumed area of the Minoan 'empire'-Crete, the
Cyclades, Attica, and the Saronic gulf. I have found no variant in the
Mycenaean Peloponnese, as yet.
One remaining feature of the Pasiphae version of Europa is worth
noticing. It is clear that this is in fact an Athenian distortion of the true
Cretan myth, almost a deliberate parody, inspired by a hostility to
'Minos' with its roots deep in immemorial folk-tradition. How far its
details are the deliberate invention of tragedians is hard to tell (but surely
3871.1
66
THE
MYTH
OF EUROPA
AND
MINOS
at least the wooden cow?); but there seems no reason to doubt that at
some remote period Athens was subject to kings of Knossos and was
compelled to supply young athletes, of both sexes, to be trained for the
bull-dance. But this does not in itself explain the substitution of Poseidon for Zeus as god of the sacred bull, nor the motif of Minos' cheating
over the sacrifice.
I have already pointed out (Greece & Rome, N.S. xii, no. I [1965]) that
exactly the same theme of Poseidon's anger at being cheated of his due
by a king is found in the myth of Laomedon of Troy, and that there it
can be confidently connected with a genuine tradition of the Troy VI
earthquake. Here the implication is surely the same. But the tradition
is distorted or disarranged as we have it-it hardly makes sense to make
the Athenian tribute to the cruel Minotaur the result of a disastrous
earthquake in Crete itself, which would surely be rather the occasion for
Athens to revolt and end it. And in any case Knossos seems to have had
so many great earthquakes that there is no way of linking the Athenian
tradition with any particular one. All we can say is that Athens always
remembered a great Cretan earthquake, and mixed it up inextricably
with the Minotaur tradition since it too went to prove how very wicked
Minos was. What Minos really did to enrage the Earthshaker was of
course unknown, but it was safe to assume with him that it would be
something to do with bull-sacrifices, and would certainly be something
both as mean and as stupid as it was wicked.
VERSION
Mr. JonesI
'There's been an accident!'they said,
'Your servant'scut in half; he's dead!'
'Indeed!' said Mr. Jones, 'and please
Send me the half that's got my keys.'
HARRY GRAHAM
x Mr. Jones is reprinted from Ruthless Rhymesfor Heartless Homes by Harry Graham,