Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Pasiphae.
The gallery
Daedalus and Pasiphaë
Jean Lemaire, c. 1635
Lemaire stages the carpenter's gift: Daedalus presents the hollow wooden cow to the Cretan queen whose desire for Poseidon's bull will beget the Minotaur. Oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Agen (Louvre deposit).
Pasiphaë
Gustave Moreau, c. 1880
Moreau's Symbolist Pasiphaë turns the queen's unnatural passion into jewelled nightmare — Helios' daughter and the bull myth as fin-de-siècle obsession rather than classical anecdote. Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris.
Daedalus Presenting the Wooden Cow to Pasiphaë
Unknown (Roman wall-painter, Pompeii), 1st century AD
From the House of the Vettii at Pompeii, the fresco shows Daedalus unveiling the wooden cow to Queen Pasiphaë — the craft that lets her mate with the bull and stain Minos' house. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (inv. 8979).
Pasiphaë Adorning the Bull with Flowers
Henry Cros, 1891–1907
Cros's pâte-de-verre relief freezes the queen in the act of garlanding the bull — Pasiphaë's doomed courtship cast in coloured glass for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Pasiphaë and the Minotaur
Settecamini Painter, c. 340–320 BC
On the tondo of an Attic red-figure kylix from Vulci, Pasiphaë faces the child she bore — the Minotaur already horned beside his mother. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cabinet des Médailles (De Ridder 1066).
In play
The King Must Die
Mary Renault
Renault's Theseus novel rebuilds Minoan Crete around the bull-court: Pasiphaë's world of sacred kings and the labyrinth that waits for the tribute.
The Bull from the Sea
Mary Renault
Renault's sequel keeps Pasiphaë's Crete in view as Theseus' world widens — the bull-kingdom and the queen whose passion shaped the labyrinth's shadow.
Pasiphaë
Pasiphaë endures as the witch-queen of the bull — Helios' daughter whose unnatural desire begot the Minotaur and stained the house of Minos.