Europa

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the story in short –

On the outskirts of Tyre on the coast of Lebanon, the scheming Jupiter gets his son, Mercury, to drive the royal cattle from their high pastures to the sea shore.
He has his eye on Europa, the daughter of the king of Tyre who is hanging out on the beach with her friends .

The girls are quite surprised but not unhappy at the arrival of all the cattle and among the herd is a spectacularly beautiful pearly white bull. Obviously it does not occur to them that this is Jupiter in disguise – and why would it ?

The bull is so very tame and friendly that they deck it with flowers and hang garlands round its neck and eventually the princess Europa climbs onto its back. She is not a bit alarmed as it ambles down to the edge of the sea but when it reaches the water it takes off and it is only by hanging onto its horns that she doesn’t fall into the sea.

Eventually they reach the island of Crete which was where Jupiter had been born on Mount Ida and raised by a goat called Amaltheia so he is practically taking her to meet the family. Not that she wanted to be there at all .

Later they have three children, Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon and these three became the three judges of the Underworld when they died and having raised the three sons with Jupiter, Europa then married Asterion/Asterius, the king of Crete and became mother (or step-mother) of his daughter Crete, after whom the island is named so it is all a bit circular .
Unless Crete was named after the island – like Brooklyn . A.G.

A.G

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Bk II:833-875 Jupiter’s abduction of Europa

Jupiter speaks to Mercury …
‘Son, faithful worker of my commands, go, quickly in your usual way, fly down to where, in an eastern land, they observe your mother’s star, among the Pleiades, (the inhabitants give it the name of Sidon). There drive the herd of royal cattle, that you will see some distance off, grazing the mountain grass, towards the sea shore!’ He spoke, and immediately, as he commanded, the cattle, driven from the mountain, headed for the shore, where the great king’s daughter, Europa, used to play together with the Tyrian virgins. Royalty and love do not sit well together, nor stay long in the same house. So the father and ruler of the gods, who is armed with the three-forked lightning in his right hand, whose nod shakes the world, setting aside his royal sceptre, took on the shape of a bull, lowed among the other cattle, and, beautiful to look at, wandered in the tender grass.

In colour he was white as the snow that rough feet have not trampled and the rain-filled south wind has not melted. The muscles rounded out his neck, the dewlaps hung down in front, the horns were twisted, but one might argue they were made by hand, purer and brighter than pearl. His forehead was not fearful, his eyes were not formidable, and his expression was peaceful. Agenor’s daughter marvelled at how beautiful he was and how unthreatening. But though he seemed so gentle she was afraid at first to touch him. Soon she drew close and held flowers out to his glistening mouth. The lover was joyful and while he waited for his hoped-for pleasure he kissed her hands. He could scarcely separate then from now. At one moment he frolics and runs riot in the grass, at another he lies down, white as snow on the yellow sands. When her fear has gradually lessened he offers his chest now for virgin hands to pat and now his horns to twine with fresh wreaths of flowers. The royal virgin even dares to sit on the bull’s back, not realising whom she presses on, while the god, first from dry land and then from the shoreline, gradually slips his deceitful hooves into the waves. Then he goes further out and carries his prize over the mid-surface of the sea. She is terrified and looks back at the abandoned shore she has been stolen from and her right hand grips a horn, the other his back, her clothes fluttering, winding, behind her in the breeze.

Bk III:1-49 Cadmus searches for his sister Europa

And now the god, dispensing with the deceptive image of the bull, confessed who he was, and made for the fields of Crete.


https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Metamorph2.php#Bktwo833

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