Seventh Labor - Hercules (Heracles - Herakles)
Apollodorus Labor 7 - Cretan Bulls
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This is a retelling of what Apollodorus has to say about the seventh labor the Greek hero Hercules performed for Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns, a cousin of Hercules, and the timid mortal in charge of assigning the seemingly impossible 12 labors:
With the seventh labor, Hercules travels to Crete where he is to capture a bull whose identity is unclear, but whose indisputable nature is to cause trouble.
The bull may have been the one that Zeus used to abduct Europa, or it may have been one associated with the sea god Poseidon. Assuming it is the latter, King Minos of Crete had promised a beautiful, unusual white bull as a sacrifice to Poseidon, but failed to deliver. When he reneged, the god made Minos' wife, Pasiphae, fall in love with it. She wished to have sexual relations with it, but there were problems. Daedalus was a master problem solver. He later created the labyrinth and wings that allowed him to fly free although the pair on his son Icarus melted, leading to Icarus' tragic fall to his death. Behind her husband Minos' back, Pasiphae had Daedalus build a contraption to allow the beautiful bull to impregnate her. The contraption was a success. The offspring of Pasiphae and the bull was the Minotaur, the half-bull, half-man creature who regularly ate the Athenian tribute of 14 young men and women sent to the creature's home at the heart of the labyrinthine maze Daedalus built.
An alternative story is that Poseidon revenged himself on Minos' sacrilege by making the white bull savage.
Whichever of these bulls was meant by the "Cretan Bull", Hercules was sent by King Eurystheus to capture it. He promptly did so -- no thanks to King Minos, who refused to help, and brought it back to Eurystheus, King of Tiryns. But the king didn't really want the bull. It was just one more seemingly fatal task he had assigned. After Eurystheus released the beast, its troublesome nature -- held in check by the son of Zeus -- returned to the surface, as the Cretan bull ravaged the countryside, traveling around Sparta, Arcadia, and into Attica.
