buLL

A common animal featured in Greek and Roman mythology. Bulls were sacred to Zeus, the supreme Olympian God. He turned himself into a snow-white bull to enchant Europa, the daughter of the king of Phoenicia. Zeus had fallen in love with the maiden and he carried her away in his disguise. The vicious monster of Crete, known as the Minotaur, was said to have the body of a man but the head of a bull. He consumed the young Athenians brought to him as sacrifices until the hero Theseus killed the monster. In Roman mythology, Mars, a god of war, was known as the "bull god" and often portrayed as having the ears and horns of a bull. Ancient artists from Greece and Etruria, a region in north-central Italy, often painted bulls on pottery. The bull was a powerful symbol for the farming societies that preceded the development of the cities of Athens and Rome. People commonly sacrificed bulls to the gods and goddesses. They also used bulls as a way to torture other people. The Sumerian word for bull was taurus. The Greeks used this as a surname, or last name, for some of their gods. Poseidon, for example, was given the last name of Taureus because he gave green pastures to bulls. The constellation Taurus is the second sign of the zodiac.