The bull and Europa
Taurus is the white bull Zeus became to carry Europa across the sea to Crete. Only its front half shows in the sky, as if wading out of the water.
In the tradition
Zeus took the shape of a gentle bull among the herds, Europa climbed on his back, and he swam with her to Crete, where she bore Minos. Ovid tells it in the Metamorphoses, and Eratosthenes and Hyginus give the same myth for the constellation.
The bull was in the sky long before the Greeks. The Babylonian star catalogue MUL.APIN already names the Bull of Heaven, and the Pleiades and the red star Aldebaran sit on its shoulder and eye.
Sources
- Ovid, Metamorphoses (8 CE). The Latin poem of transformations, the best-known telling of many of the zodiac myths.
- Hyginus, De Astronomia (1st century BCE or later). The Latin handbook of constellation myths, often giving several versions side by side.
- Babylonian astronomers, MUL.APIN (compiled by about 1000 BCE). The Babylonian star catalogue that already lists the goat-fish and the bull of heaven.
Updated October 9, 2026.
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