Europa Rides

Hellenistic fresco from 'the House of Jason', Pompeii, First quarter of the 1st century AD

Europa was the subject of one of the most venerable legends of the classical world. Europa was the mother of Minos, Lord of Crete, and hence the progenitrix of the most ancient branch of Mediterranean civilization. She was mentioned in passing by Homer. But in Europa and the bull, attributed to Moschus of Syracuse, and above all in the Metamorphoses of Roman poet , Ovid, she is immortalized as an innocent princess seduced by the Father of the Gods. Wandering with her maidens along the shore of her native Phoenicia, she was beguiled by Zeus in the guise of a snow-white bull

Here was the familiar legend of Europa as painted by Grecian vases, in the houses of Pompeii, and in modern times by Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Veronese, and Claude Lorrain.

The historian Herodotus, writing in the fifty century BC, was not impressed by the legend. In his view, the abduction of Europa was just an incident in the age-old wars over women-stealing. A band of Phoenicians from Tyre had carried off Io, daughter of the King of Argos; so a band of Greeks from Crete sailed over to Phoenicia and carries off the daughter of the King of Tyre. It was a case of tit for tat.

The legend of Europa has many connotations. But in carrying the princess to Crete from the shore of Phoenicia (now south Lebanon) Zeus was surely transferring the fruits of the older Asian civilizations of the East to the new island colonies of the Aegean. Phoenicia belonged to the orbit of the Pharaohs. Europa’s ride provides the mythical link between Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. Europa’s brother Cadmus, who roamed the world in search of her, orbe pererrato, was credited with bringing the art of writing to Greece.

Europa’s ride also captures the essential restlessness of those who followed in her footsteps. Unlike the great river valley civilizations of Nile, of the Indus, of Mesopotamia, and China, which were long in duration by lethargic in their geographical and intellectual development, the civilization of the Me;diterranean Sea was stimulated by constant movement. Movement caused uncertainty and insecurity. Uncertainty fed to constant fermented of ideas. Insecurity prompted energetic activity. Minos was famed for his ships. Crete was the first naval power. The ships carried people and goods and culture, fostering exchanged of all kinds with the lands to which they sailed. Like the vestment of Europa, the minds of those ancient mariners were constantly left ‘fluttering in the breeze’ – tremulae sinuantur flamine vestes.

Europa rode in the path of the sun from east to west. According to another legend, the Sun was a chariot of fire, pulled by unseen horses from their secret stables behind the sunrise to their resting place beyond the sunset. Indeed, one of the several possible etymologies contrasts Asia, ‘the land of the Sunrise’, with Europa, ‘the land of Sunset.” The Hellenes came to use “Europa” as a name for their territory to the west of the Aegean as distinct from the older lands in Asia Minor.

At the dawn of European history, the known world lay to the east. The unknown waited in the west, in destinations still to be discovered. Europa’s curiosity may have been her undoing. But it led to the founding of a new civilization that would eventually bear her name and would spread to the whole Peninsula.

~ Pages xvi, xvii (The Legend of Europa)
(Europe a History) by Norman Davies

Vaclav Havel en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A1clav_Havel begins his “Help for Europe” with mythical etymologies.

Recently, when I looked into how Europe got its hame, I was surprised to discover that many see it primeval roots in the Akkadian word “erebu” which means twilight or sunset. Asia, on the other hand, is believed to have derived its name from Akkadian asu, meaning sunrise…. The somewhat melancholy association we tend to attack to the word twilight may be the typical consequence of the modern cult of beginnings, openings, advances, discoveries . . . outward expansion and energy, characteristically modern blind faith in quantitative indices. Dawn, daybreak, sunrise “the morning of nations,” and similar words and phrases are popular these days, while notions like sunset, stillness or nightfall carry for us, unjustly, only connotations of stagnation, decline, disintegration, or emptiness. ~ Page 223

Salman Rushdie too is enamored of his ecentric Europa, not a twilight goddess of wisdom b ut a lively “Asian maiden.”

Europe begins … with a bull and a rape. Europa was an Asian maiden abducted by a god (who changed himself, for the occasion into a white bull) , and held captive in a new land that came, in time, to bear her name, The prisoner of Zeus’s unending desire for mortal flesh, Europa has been avenged by history, Zeus is just a story now, He is powerless; as Europa is alive.

At the very dawn of the idea of Europa, then, is an unequal struggle between human beings and gods and an encouraging lesson: While the god-bull may win the first skirmish , it is the maiden-
Continent that triumphs, in time.

I have been engaged in a skirmish with a latter-day Zeus, though his thunder bolts have thus far missed their mark. Many others -- in Algeria and Egypt, as well as Iran -- have been less fortunate. Those of us engaged in this battle have long understood what it’s about. It’s about the right of human beings -- their thoughts, their works of art, their lives -- to survive those thunderbolts and to prevail over the whimsical autocracy of whatever Olympus may presently be in vogue. It’s about the right to make moral, intellectual and artistic judgments without worrying about judgment day. - 222