Editing Europa (consort of Zeus) (section)

== In art and literature ==
[[File:Europa copy.jpg|thumb|Europa and [[Bull (mythology)|bull]] on a Greek vase. [[Tarquinia National Museum|Tarquinia Museum]], [[Italy]], {{c.|480 BCE}}]]
[[File:Apulian red-figure dinos in the Eskenazi Museum of Art, scene of the abduction of Europa.jpg|thumb|Scene of Zeus in the form of a bull abducting Europa from an Apulian red-figure [[dinos]], dating {{c.|370}} – {{c.|330 BCE}}, now held in the [[Eskenazi Museum of Art]]]]

''Europa'' provided the substance of a brief [[Hellenistic]] epic written in the mid-2nd century BCE by [[Moschus]], a bucolic poet and friend of the Alexandrian grammarian [[Aristarchus of Samothrace]], born at Syracuse.<ref group=note>The poem was published with voluminous notes and critical apparatus: Winfried Bühler, ''Die Europa des Moschos'' (Wiesbaden: Steiner) 1960.</ref>

In ''[[Metamorphoses (poem)|Metamorphoses]]'' Book II, the poet [[Ovid]] wrote the following depiction of Jupiter's seduction:
{|
|
: And gradually she lost her fear, and he
: Offered his breast for her virgin caresses,
: His horns for her to wind with chains of flowers
: Until the princess dared to mount his back
: Her pet bull's back, unwitting whom she rode.
: Then—slowly, slowly down the broad, dry beach—
: First in the shallow waves the great god set
: His spurious hooves, then sauntered further out
: <nowiki/>'til in the open sea he bore his prize
: Fear filled her heart as, gazing back, she saw
: The fast receding sands. Her right hand grasped
: A horn, the other lent upon his back
: Her fluttering tunic floated in the breeze.
|}
[[File:Kylix figure rosse 370 ac tomba 32 necropoli Poggio Sommavilla archivio SBALazio.png|thumb|Kylix, red-figure pottery 370 BC depicts the Rape of Europa (Ratto d'Europa), tomb 32 [[Archaeological area of Poggio Sommavilla|Poggio Sommavilla]] necropolis, archivio SBALazio Etruria Meridionale.]]
His picturesque details belong to anecdote and fable: in all the depictions, whether she straddles the bull, as in archaic vase-paintings or the ruined metope fragment from [[Sikyon]], or sits gracefully sidesaddle as in a mosaic from North Africa, there is no trace of fear. Often Europa steadies herself by touching one of the bull's horns, acquiescing.

Her tale is also mentioned in [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]]'s ''[[Tanglewood Tales]]''. Though his story titled "Dragon's teeth" is largely about Cadmus, it begins with an elaborate albeit toned down version of Europa's abduction by the beautiful bull.

The tale also features as the subject of a poem and film in the [[Enderby (fictional character)]] sequence of novels by [[Anthony Burgess]]. She is remembered in ''[[De Mulieribus Claris]]'', a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the [[Florence|Florentine]] author [[Giovanni Boccaccio]], composed in 1361{{endash}}62. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature.<ref name="Brown_xi">{{cite book |author=Giovanni Boccaccio |author-link=Giovanni Boccaccio |year=2003 |translator=Virginia Brown |title=Famous Women |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, MA |series=I Tatti Renaissance Library |volume=1 |isbn=0-674-01130-9 |page=xi}}</ref>