Cretan Bull
The Cretan Bull was a magnificent bull Poseidon sent from the sea for King Minos to sacrifice - a bargain Minos broke by keeping the animal, which the god punished by making Queen Pasiphaë fall in love with it, producing the Minotaur. Heracles later captured the maddened bull alive as his seventh labor and released it, after which it rampaged to Marathon in Attica, where Theseus finally killed it.
The Cretan Bull, father of the Minotaur
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Core Myth
Apollodorus tells the story of the Cretan Bull as the seventh of Heracles's labors, but its history begins earlier, in the reign of King Minos of Crete. Poseidon sent a magnificent bull up from the sea for Minos to sacrifice in the god's honor, on the promise that Minos would offer back whatever the sea produced. Minos, admiring the animal, kept it for his own herds and sacrificed a lesser bull in its place. Poseidon punished the deception by making the bull itself savage and dangerous, and by making Minos's wife, Pasiphaë, fall in love with it - a union that, with the help of the craftsman Daedalus, produced the Minotaur. Apollodorus records that this is the same bull, not a separate animal, tying the seventh labor directly to the parentage of the Minotaur elsewhere in the corpus of Cretan myth. Eurystheus assigned Heracles to bring back this bull alive. Heracles traveled to Crete, and although Minos offered to let him fight and keep it for himself, Heracles simply caught the maddened bull and carried it back across the sea to Eurystheus. Once the labor was verified complete, Eurystheus had no further use for the animal and released it. Freed, the bull roamed widely - through the Peloponnese and across the Isthmus of Corinth - before settling near Marathon in Attica, where it became known as the Marathonian Bull and terrorized the local population. It was Theseus, not Heracles, who finally killed it there, capturing the bull alive first and then sacrificing it to Apollo in Athens, an episode usually told as one of Theseus's deeds on the way to his fuller confrontation with the Minotaur that same bull had fathered.
Is the Cretan Bull the same animal that fathered the Minotaur?
Yes, according to Apollodorus. It is the bull Poseidon sent from the sea for King Minos to sacrifice; when Minos kept it instead, Poseidon made Pasiphaë fall in love with the animal, and that union produced the Minotaur. The bull Heracles later captures for his seventh labor is explicitly the same creature, not a separate one.
Apollodorus, Library 2.5.7
Did Heracles kill the Cretan Bull?
No. His labor was to capture it alive and bring it to Eurystheus, which he did, reportedly wrestling it into submission rather than killing it. Once Eurystheus had confirmed the labor complete, he released the bull, which wandered off and eventually reached Marathon in Attica, where it was killed years later - by Theseus, not Heracles.
Apollodorus, Library 2.5.7
Why did Poseidon punish Minos through the bull instead of directly?
Minos had broken a specific bargain: he promised to sacrifice back whatever Poseidon sent from the sea, then kept the bull for his own herds once he saw how fine it was. Poseidon's response targeted both the animal and Minos's household, making the bull savage and causing the king's wife Pasiphaë to fall in love with it, a punishment that outlived the original offense by generations.
Apollodorus, Library 3.1.3-3.1.4
How did Theseus finally kill the bull?
By most accounts, Theseus captured the Marathonian Bull alive first, much as Heracles once had, driving it through the city as a public display before sacrificing it to Apollo Delphinius in Athens. The episode is usually told as one of Theseus's early heroic deeds, undertaken before his more famous confrontation with the Minotaur that this same bull had fathered.
Plutarch, Life of Theseus 14
Is there disagreement about where the bull originally came from?
Yes. Apollodorus notes that the mythographer Acusilaus identified it as the same bull that carried Europa across the sea for Zeus, a completely different origin from the more commonly told version in which Poseidon sends the bull from the sea for Minos to sacrifice. Apollodorus records both without resolving which is correct.
Apollodorus, Library 2.5.7
Why did the bull end up at Marathon specifically?
After Eurystheus released it, Apollodorus says it roamed through the Peloponnese and across the Isthmus before settling near Marathon in Attica, where it caused enough damage to the local population that it became known there as the Marathonian Bull. Its presence at Marathon is also what puts it in Theseus's path rather than anywhere else in Greece.
Apollodorus, Library 2.5.7
Later Traditions
Apollodorus notes that even ancient sources disagreed about the bull's ultimate origin: the mythographer Acusilaus identified it instead as the same bull that had carried Europa across the sea for Zeus, a wholly different tradition from the Poseidon-sent bull most accounts follow. Either way, the animal's arc across three separate episodes - sired the Minotaur, was captured by Heracles, and was killed by Theseus - makes it one of the few figures in Greek myth whose single continuous life links two of Crete's and Athens's best-known heroic cycles together.
Lineage
See the full family tree1 recorded relation, each with the ancient line behind it.
Children
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Pasiphaë's union with this same bull, sent by Poseidon and later captured by Heracles as his seventh labor, produced the Minotaur.
Where Accounts Differ
- origin of the Cretan Bull
- Origin variant: most sources say Poseidon sent the bull from the sea for Minos to sacrifice, but Apollodorus records that the mythographer Acusilaus instead identified it as the same bull that carried Europa across the sea for Zeus.
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Sources
- Apollodorus, Library 2.5.7
- Apollodorus, Library 3.1.3-3.1.4
- Plutarch, Life of Theseus 14
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)