Europa

A fresco of ‘Europa and the bull’, from a house in Pompeii, Italy, which was buried for over a thousand years under volcanic ash. Paintings, furniture, and other everyday items were discovered at Pompeii, giving a view of Roman life in the 1st century.

In Greek mythology, a princess carried off by Zeus under the guise of a white bull. She was the daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor of Tyre; sister of Cadmus, founder of Thebes; and the personification of the continent of Europe.

Zeus abducted her while she played on the seashore, and crossed the sea to Crete where she bore him three sons: Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon. She married Asterius, king of Crete, who adopted her sons as his heirs; Zeus gave him the bronze giant Talos to guard his realm as recompense. After her death she was worshipped in Crete as Hellotis. In one tradition she was transformed into a bull and became the constellation Taurus.

Her son Minos eventually became the ruler of all Crete; Sarpedon, having fled, later became king of Lycia; and Rhadamanthys, after fleeing to Boeotia and marrying Alcmene (mother of the hero Heracles by Zeus), proved such a just ruler that he became a judge of the dead and ruler of Elysium, the paradise of the blessed dead.