Guard: Your Majesty, Daedalus, the unparalleled craftsman, requests an audience.
Pasiphaë: Admit him. Perhaps his agile mind has deduced some strategy to assuage my tortured psyche.
(Daedalus enters, along with a life-size sculpture of a white cow.)
(Daedalus Presenting the Wooden Cow to Pasiphaë, first century CE; fresco; Pompeii, from triclinium p of the House of the Vettii; Regio VI, Insula 15, number 1.)
Daedalus: Your Majesty, I cannot help but hear that you have been troubled as of late.
Pasiphaë: Ay! Yes, I am overtaken constantly by the most lecherous impulses! I have seen a beautiful white bull in the fields outside the palace. And though it is a beast, when I look upon it I cannot help but feel in my loins a stirring, nay, a pandemonium! Have you a way to rid me of these depraved desires?
Daedalus: Um. Perhaps. You see, your desires are the reason I have toiled in recent weeks to fashion this wooden cow.
Pasiphaë: I do not understand, craftsman. Do you mean to provide me with some sort of diversion for my bestial affections?
Daedalus: Not exactly, your majesty.
Pasiphaë: Well, what then? Out with it! My loins are a scorching conflagration! Such blazing loins may befit me as a daughter of Helios, who shepherds daily the orb of the sun across the sky; but still, the agony! Alas, my loins!
Daedalus: Okey dokey. Well, that is why I have crafted this beautiful beast, your majesty. It is hollow, so you can situate yourself inside and line up your, ahem, loins, right where this enticing cow’s would be. Then, you could have your servants wheel my contraption into the field. I assure you that you would catch the eye of your beloved bull, and probably more. In fact, I can guarantee that the bull would do to you something very similar to what my young apprentice there in the corner is doing…
Pasiphaë: What are suggesting, you deviant? Though I am undoubtedly afflicted by the brutal whims of some malicious Olympian, I will resist such profligacy to the bitter end! Get out of my sight! You are fortunate you are so skilled and useful or I would force you to occupy your vulgar contrivance yourself!
Daedalus: My deepest apologies, your majesty. Clearly, I misjudged the situation. I will depart. And, as for my perverted apparatus…
Pasiphaë: Leave the cow.
(Settecami Painter, Pasiphaë and the Infant Minotaur, 340-320 BCE; tondo from the interior of an Attic red-figure kylix; Paris, Cabinet des Medailles.)
(Published originally on November 16th, 2011.)
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