Pasiphaë


In Greek mythology, Pasiphaë was the daughter of Helios, queen of Crete, and mother of the Minotaur. After her husband Minos failed to sacrifice the Cretan Bull to Poseidon as promised, the god cursed Pasiphaë to fall in love with the bull. She had Daedalus build a hollow wooden cow for her to hide in, which she then used to mate with the bull; afterwards, she gave birth to the Minotaur.

Family

Parentage

Pasiphaë was the daughter of god of the Sun, Helios, and the Oceanid Perse. She was thus the sister of Aeëtes, Circe and Perses of Colchis. In some accounts, Pasiphaë's mother was identified as the island-nymph Crete herself. Like her doublet Europa, the consort of Zeus, her origins were in the East, in her case at the earliest-known Kartvelian-speaking polity of Colchis.

Marriage and children

Pasiphaë was given in marriage to King Minos of Crete. With Minos, she was the mother of Acacallis, Ariadne, Androgeus, Glaucus, Deucalion, Phaedra, Xenodice, and Catreus.
After having sex with the Cretan Bull, she gave birth to the "star-like" Asterion, who became known as the Minotaur.

Mythology

Birth of the Minotaur

Minos was required to sacrifice "the fairest bull born in its herd" to Poseidon each year. One year, an extremely beautiful snow-white bull was born: the Cretan Bull. Minos refused to sacrifice the animal, and sacrificed another, inferior bull instead. As punishment, Poseidon cursed Pasiphaë to experience lust for the Cretan bull.
Ultimately, Pasiphaë went to Daedalus and asked him to help her mate with the bull. Daedalus then created a hollow wooden cow covered with real cow-skin, so realistic that it fooled the Cretan Bull. Pasiphaë climbed into the structure, allowing the bull to mate with her. Pasiphaë fell pregnant and gave birth to a half-human half-bull creature that fed solely on human flesh. The child was named Asterius, after the previous king, but was commonly called the Minotaur.
The myth of Pasiphaë's coupling with the bull and the subsequent birth of the Minotaur was the subject of Euripides's lost play the Cretans, of which few fragments survive. Sections include a chorus of priests presenting themselves and addressing Minos, someone informing Minos of the newborn infant's nature, and a dialogue between Pasiphaë and Minos where they argue over which between them is responsible. Pasiphaë's speech defending herself is preserved, an answer to Minos's accusations in which she excuses herself on account of acting under the constraint of divine power, and insists that the one to blame is actually Minos, who angered the sea-god.
PASIPHAË:
If I had sold the gifts of Kypris,
given my body in secret to some man,
you would have every right to condemn me
as a whore. But this was no act of the will;
I am suffering from some madness brought on
by a god.
It’s not plausible!
What could I have seen in a bull
to assault my heart with this shameful passion?
Did he look too handsome in his robe?
Did a sea of fire smoulder in his eyes?
Was it the red tint of his hair, his dark beard?

Mythological scholars and authors Ruck and Staples remarked that "the Bull was the old pre-Olympian Poseidon".

Variations on the myth

Pseudo-Apollodorus mentions a slightly differing reason for why Poseidon cursed Pasiphaë; citing that Minos wanted to be king, and he called upon Poseidon to send him a bull in order to prove to the kingdom that he had received sovereignty from the gods. Upon calling on Poseidon, Minos failed to sacrifice the bull, as Poseidon wished, causing the god to grow angry with him.
According to sixth century BC author Bacchylides, the curse was instead sent by Aphrodite and Hyginus says this was because Pasiphaë had neglected Aphrodite's worship for years. In yet another version, Aphrodite cursed Pasiphaë with unnatural desires as a revenge against her father Helios, for he had revealed to Aphrodite's husband Hephaestus her secret affair with Ares, the god of war, earning Aphrodite's eternal hatred for himself and his whole race.
In some more obscure traditions, it was not Poseidon's bull but Minos's father Zeus disguised as one who made love to Pasiphaë and sired the Minotaur. An ancient Greek lexicon mentions a tradition where Zeus and Pasiphaë are the parents of the Egyptian god Amun, who was identified with Zeus.

Pasiphaë's curse

In other aspects, Pasiphaë, like her niece Medea, was a mistress of magical herbal arts in the Greek imagination. The author of Bibliotheke records the fidelity charm she placed upon Minos that caused him to ejaculate serpents, scorpions, and centipedes whenever he laid with another woman, killing them. However, Procris, after consuming a protective circean herb, lay with Minos with impunity.
In another version, this unexplained disease that tormented Minos killed all his concubines and prevented him and Pasiphaë from having any children. Procris then inserted a goat's bladder into a woman, told Minos to ejaculate the scorpions in there, and then sent him to Pasiphaë. The couple was thus able to conceive eight children. Records indicate, this became the first modern documentation of a sheath or condom, though working to promote fertility.

Daedalus and Icarus

In one version of the story, Pasiphaë supplied Daedalus and his son Icarus with a ship in order to escape Minos and Crete. In another, she helped him hide until he fashioned wings made of wax and bird feathers.

Variations about Pasiphaë's death

While Pasiphaë is an immortal goddess in some texts, other authors treated her as a mortal woman, like Euripides who in his play Cretans has Minos sentence her to death. In Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas sees her when he visits the Underworld, describing Pasiphae residing in the Mournful Fields, a place inhabited by sinful lovers.

Personae of Pasiphaë

In the general understanding of the Minoan myth, Pasiphaë and Daedalus' construction of the wooden cow allowed her to satisfy her desire for the Cretan Bull. Through this interpretation she was reduced from a near-divine figure to a stereotype of grotesque bestiality and the shocking excesses of lust and deceit.
Pasiphaë appeared in Virgil's Eclogue VI, in Silenus's list of suitable mythological subjects, on which Virgil lingers in such detail that he gives the sixteen-line episode the weight of a brief inset myth.
In Ovid's Ars Amatoria, Pasiphaë is framed in zoophilic terms:
Pasiphae fieri gaudebat adultera tauri—"Pasiphaë took pleasure in becoming an adulteress with a bull."
Pasiphaë is often included on lists among mythical women ruled by lust; other women include Phaedra, Byblis, Myrrha, Scylla and Semiramis. Scholars see her as a personified sin of bestiality.
Ars Amatoria shows Pasiphaë's jealousy of the cows; she's primping in front of a mirror while she laments that she is not a cow and killing her rivals.

Cult of Pasiphaë

On divination

In mainland Greece, Pasiphaë was worshipped as an oracular goddess at Thalamae, one of the original koine of Sparta. The geographer Pausanias describes the shrine as small, situated near a clear stream, and flanked by bronze statues of Helios and Pasiphaë. His account also equates Pasiphaë with Ino and the lunar goddess Selene.
Cicero writes in De Divinatione 1.96 that the Spartan ephors would sleep at the shrine of Pasiphaë, seeking prophetic dreams to aid them in governance. According to Plutarch, Spartan society twice underwent major upheavals sparked by the ephors' dreams at the shrine during the Hellenistic era. In one case, an ephor dreamed that some of his colleagues' chairs were removed from the agora, and that a voice called out "this is better for Sparta"; inspired by this, King Cleomenes acted to consolidate royal power. Again during the reign of King Agis, several ephors brought the people into revolt with oracles from Pasiphaë's shrine promising remission of debts and redistribution of land.

Celestial deity

In Description of Greece, Pausanias equates Pasiphaë with Selene, implying that the figure was worshipped as a lunar deity. However, further studies on Minoan religion indicate that the sun was a female figure, suggesting instead that Pasiphaë was originally a solar goddess, an interpretation consistent with her depiction as Helios's daughter. Poseidon's bull may in turn be vestigial of the lunar bull prevalent in Ancient Mesopotamian religion.
Nowadays, Pasiphaë and her son, the Minotaur, are associated with the astrological sign of Taurus.

Other representations

In art

The myth of Pasiphaë and the Cretan Bull became widely depicted in art throughout history. Pasiphaë was most often depicted with a bull near her, signifying the connection to the myth.

Scientific representation

One of Jupiter's 79 moons, discovered in 1908, is named after Pasiphaë, the woman of the myth of the Minotaur.

Literary representation

Pasiphaé is mentioned in Canto 12 of Dante Alighieri's Inferno. When Dante encounters the Minotaur, he describes the unnatural and deceptive manner of the beast's conception.
Fiona Benson's third collection of poetry, Ephemeron, contains a long section entitled Translations from the Pasiphaë in which she retells the Minotaur myth from the point of view of the bull-child's mother.

In popular culture

  • Pasiphaë is a major antagonist in Rick Riordan's 2013 fantasy novel The House of Hades. In this novel, she is portrayed as an immortal sorceress and former wife of the late King Minos. Having grown bitter towards the gods after the events of the Minoan myth, Pasiphaë allies with the goddess Gaea and her giant army to overthrow the Olympian gods. She is confronted and defeated by Hazel Levesque, a demigod daughter of Pluto, who had been trained in sorcery by the goddess Hecate. In this novel, it is revealed that the Labyrinth is tied to her life force as much as Daedalus's, thereby rendering the infamous inventor's sacrifice in the previous series useless.
  • Pasiphaë appears in Madeline Miller's 2018 novel Circe, the sister of the book's protagonist Circe, the daughter of Helios and Perse. A witch just like her, she and Circe have an antagonistic and sour relationship; after Pasiphaë has intercourse with the Cretan Bull, she calls in Circe to assist her in the Minotaur's birth though the two sisters hardly reconcile their differences.

Genealogy

Ancient

Modern