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:''For the moon of Jupiter, see Pasiphaë (moon).''
In Greek mythology, 'Pasiphaë' (English // Greek: 'Πασιφάη' Pasipháē), "wide-shining"[1] was the daughter of Helios, the Sun, and the eldest[2] of the Oceanids, Perse;[3] Like her doublet Europa, her origins were in the East, in her case at Colchis, the palace of the Sun; she was given in marriage to King Minos of Crete. With Minos, she was the mother of Ariadne, Androgeus, Glaucus, Deucalion, Phaedra, and Catreus. She was also the mother of "starlike" Asterion, called by the Greeks the Minotaur, after a curse from Poseidon caused her to mate with a white bull that was sacred to Poseidon.[4] In the Greek literalistic understanding of a Minoan myth,[5] in order to actually copulate with the bull, she had a portable wooden cow with a cowhide covering constructed by the artificer Daedalus, within which she was able to satisfy her unnatural[6] desire.
Pasiphae, like her niece Medea, was a mistress of magical herbal arts in the Greek imagination. The author of ''Bibliotheke'' (3.197-198) records the fidelity charm she placed upon Minos, who would ejaculate serpents and scorpions, killing any unlawful concubine; but Procris, with a protective herb, lay with Minos with impunity.[7]
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 Natura Deorum'' that the Spartan ephors would sleep at the shrine of Pasiphaë, seeking prophetic dreams to aid them in governance. According to Plutarch,[8] Spartan society twice underwent major upheavals sparked by 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.
1. An attribute of the Moon: compare Euryphaessa.
2. Hesiod, ''Theogony'' 346.
3. Pasiphae was thus the half-sister of Aeetes and of Circe. Diodorus Siculus (4.60.4) made the mother of Pasiphaë the island-nymph Crete herself.
4. pseudo-Apollodorus, ''Bibliotheke'' 3.8-11''
5. Specific astrological or calendrical interpretations of the mystic mating of the "wide-shining" daughter of the Sun with a mythological bull, transformed into an unnatural curse in Hellene myth, are prone to variability and debate.
6. Greek myth characteristically emphasizes the accursed unnaturalness: a fragment of Bacchylides alludes to "her unspeakable sickness" and Hyginus (''Fabulae'' 40) to "an unnatural love for a bull."
7. See also the ''Metamorphoses'' of Antoninus Liberalis, 41.
8. Plutarch, ''Lives of Agis and Cleomenes''.
★ Kerenyi, Karl, ''The Gods of the Greeks'' 1951.
★ Graves, Robert, ''The Greek Myths'', (1955) 1960.
★ Theoi.com: Pasiphae
★ http://Pasiphae.poems.googlepages.com
Daedalus presents the artificial cow to Pasiphae: Roman fresco in the House of the Vettii, Pompeii, 1st century CE
In Greek mythology, 'Pasiphaë' (English // Greek: 'Πασιφάη' Pasipháē), "wide-shining"[1] was the daughter of Helios, the Sun, and the eldest[2] of the Oceanids, Perse;[3] Like her doublet Europa, her origins were in the East, in her case at Colchis, the palace of the Sun; she was given in marriage to King Minos of Crete. With Minos, she was the mother of Ariadne, Androgeus, Glaucus, Deucalion, Phaedra, and Catreus. She was also the mother of "starlike" Asterion, called by the Greeks the Minotaur, after a curse from Poseidon caused her to mate with a white bull that was sacred to Poseidon.[4] In the Greek literalistic understanding of a Minoan myth,[5] in order to actually copulate with the bull, she had a portable wooden cow with a cowhide covering constructed by the artificer Daedalus, within which she was able to satisfy her unnatural[6] desire.
Pasiphae, like her niece Medea, was a mistress of magical herbal arts in the Greek imagination. The author of ''Bibliotheke'' (3.197-198) records the fidelity charm she placed upon Minos, who would ejaculate serpents and scorpions, killing any unlawful concubine; but Procris, with a protective herb, lay with Minos with impunity.[7]
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 Natura Deorum'' that the Spartan ephors would sleep at the shrine of Pasiphaë, seeking prophetic dreams to aid them in governance. According to Plutarch,[8] Spartan society twice underwent major upheavals sparked by 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.
| Contents |
| Notes |
| References |
| External links |
Notes
1. An attribute of the Moon: compare Euryphaessa.
2. Hesiod, ''Theogony'' 346.
3. Pasiphae was thus the half-sister of Aeetes and of Circe. Diodorus Siculus (4.60.4) made the mother of Pasiphaë the island-nymph Crete herself.
4. pseudo-Apollodorus, ''Bibliotheke'' 3.8-11''
5. Specific astrological or calendrical interpretations of the mystic mating of the "wide-shining" daughter of the Sun with a mythological bull, transformed into an unnatural curse in Hellene myth, are prone to variability and debate.
6. Greek myth characteristically emphasizes the accursed unnaturalness: a fragment of Bacchylides alludes to "her unspeakable sickness" and Hyginus (''Fabulae'' 40) to "an unnatural love for a bull."
7. See also the ''Metamorphoses'' of Antoninus Liberalis, 41.
8. Plutarch, ''Lives of Agis and Cleomenes''.
References
★ Kerenyi, Karl, ''The Gods of the Greeks'' 1951.
★ Graves, Robert, ''The Greek Myths'', (1955) 1960.
External links
★ Theoi.com: Pasiphae
★ http://Pasiphae.poems.googlepages.com
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