Europa (mythology)
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Europa and Zeus, on the Greek €2 coin |
Europa (
Greek Ευρώπη) was a
Phoenician woman in
Greek mythology, from whom the name of the
continent Europe has ultimately been taken. The story was a Cretan story, as Kerenyi points out; "most of the love-stories concerning Zeus originated from more ancient tales describing his marriages with goddesses. This can especially be said of the story of Europa"
[Kerenyi 1951, p 108] The name Europa occurs in the list of daughters of primordial
Oceanus and
Tethys, and the daughter of the earth-giant
Tityas and mother of
Euphemus by
Poseidon, was also named Europa.
The
etymology of her name (ευρυ- "wide" or "broad" + οπ- "eye(s)" or "face")
[Kerenyi 1951 p 109: "she of the wide eyes" or "she of the broad countenance".] suggests that Europa represented a lunar cow, at least at some symbolic level. Metaphorically, at a later date it could be construed as the intelligent or
open-minded, analogous to
glaukopis (
γλαυκώπις) attributed to
Athena.
Sources differ in details regarding her family but agree that she is
Phoenician, and from a lineage that descended from
Io, the mythical
nymph beloved of Zeus, who was transformed into a heifer. She is said to be the daughter of the
Phoenician King
Agenor and Queen
Telephassa ("far-shining") or of
Argiope ("white-faced")
[Kerenyi points out that these names are attributes of the moon, as is Europa's broad countenance.]. Other sources, such as the
Iliad, claim that she is the daughter of Agenor's son, the "sun-red"
Phoenix. It is generally agreed that she had two brothers,
Cadmus, who brought the alphabet to mainland Greece, and
Cilix who gave his name to
Cilicia in
Asia Minor. After arriving in Crete, Europa had three sons:
Minos,
Rhadamanthus, and
Sarpedon. She married
Asterion also rendered
Asterius. According to mythology, her children were fathered by Zeus.
There were two competing myths
[Bibliotheke 3.1.1.] relating how Europa came into the Hellenic world, but they agreed that she came to
Crete, where the sacred bull was paramount. In the more familiar telling she was
seduced by the
god Zeus in the form of a bull and carried away to Crete on his back— to be welcomed by
Asterion [According to a scholium on Iliad XII.292, noted in Karl Kerenyi, Dionysus: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life p105. Pausanias rendered the name Asterion (2.31.1); in Bibliotheke (3.1.4) it is Asterion.], but according to a more literal,
euhemerist version in
Herodotus, she was
kidnapped by
Minoans, who likewise were said to have taken her to Crete. The mythical Europa cannot be separated from the mythology of the
sacred bull, which had been worshipped in the
Levant.
According to legend, Zeus was enamored of her and decided to seduce or
rape her, the two being near-equivalent in Greek myth. He transformed himself into a white bull and mixed in with her father's herds. While Europa and her female attendants were gathering flowers, she saw the bull and caressed his flanks and eventually got onto its back. Zeus took that chance and ran to the sea and swam, with her on his back, to the island of
Crete. He then revealed his true identity, and Europa became the first queen of Crete. Zeus gave her three gifts:
Talos,
Laelaps and a javelin that never missed. Zeus later re-created the shape of the white bull in the stars which is now known as the
constellation Taurus. Some readers interpret as manifestations of this same bull the bull that was encountered by
Hercules, the bull of Marathon slain by
Theseus and the bull that fathered the
Minotaur.
Ovid
The poet
Ovid wrote the following depiction of Zeus' seduction:
|
Europa in a fresco at Pompeii contemporary with Ovid |
:
And gradually she lost her fear, and he:Offered his breast for her virgin caresses,:His horns for her to wind with chains of flowers:Until the princess dared to mount his back:Her pet bull's back, unwitting whom she rode.:Then—slowly, slowly down the broad, dry beach—:First in the shallow waves the great god set:His spurious hooves, then sauntered further out:Till in the open sea he bore his prize:Fear filled her heart as, gazing back, she saw:The fast receding sands. Her right hand grasped:A horn, the other lent upon his back:Her fluttering tunic floated in the breeze.
His picturesque details belong to anecdote and fable: in all the depictions, whether she straddles the bull, as in archaic vase-paintings or the ruined metope fragment from Sikyon, or sits gracefully sidesaddle as in a mosaic from North Africa, there is no trace of fear. Often Europa steadies herself by touching one of the bull's horns, acquiescing.Herodotus
According to Herodotus, Europa was kidnapped by Minoans who were seeking to avenge the kidnapping of Io, a princess from Argos. His variant story may have been an attempt to rationalize the earlier myth; or the present myth may be a garbled version of factslater enunciated without gloss by Herodotus.* Greek vase paintings
* Roman frescoes (see image above)
* François Boucher, The Rape of Europa
* Gustave Moreau, Europa and the Bull (see image above)
* Titian, The Rape of Europa
* Paolo Veronese, The Rape of Europa
The continent of Europe is called Europa in all Germanic languages except English, in Hungarian (Európa) and in some Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet, as well as in Greek and Latin. Her name appeared on postage stamps commemorating the "United Europe", which were first issued in 1956.*Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, III, i, 1-2
*Herodotus, The Histories, Book 1.2
*Ovid, Metamorphoses, 862, translation by A.D. Melville (1986), p.50
*Kerenyi, Karl, 1951. The Gods of the Greeks (Thames and Hudson)*A metope from Sicily, carved with Europa, ca 550 - 540 BCE: the bull's face, turned head-on, clearly reveals his Near Eastern iconic antecedents
*Europa on the Greek 2 euro coins
