Pop Culture References in Wizard101: Empyrea – Cretan Bull

Cretan Bull – The Cretan Bull from Greek Mythology
https://wiki.wizard101central.com/wiki/NPC:Cretan_Bull
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretan_Bull

Leader of the local Blue Oxen, the Cretan Bull was recently attacked by an unknown assailant from Port Aero, putting that town’s non-aggression pact with him in jeopardy.

All your wizard can understand him to say is, “Mooo.” Thankfully Erasmus the Interpreter is there to help you understand.

Minos was king in Crete. In order to confirm his right to rule, rather than any of his brothers, he prayed Poseidon send him a snow-white bull as a sign. Poseidon sent Minos the bull, with the understanding that the bull would be sacrificed to the god. Deciding that Poseidon’s bull was too fine of a specimen to kill, Minos sent the bull to his herds and substituted another, inferior bull for sacrifice. Enraged, Poseidon had Aphrodite curse Pasiphaë, the wife of Minos, causing her to fall in love with the bull. She subsequently gave birth to the half-man, half-bull, Minotaur. Poseidon passed on his rage to the bull, causing him to lay waste to the land.

Hercules was sent to capture the bull by Eurystheus as his seventh task. He sailed to Crete, whereupon Minos gave Hercules permission to take the bull away as he had been wreaking havoc on Crete by uprooting crops and leveling orchard walls. Hercules captured the bull, and then shipped him to Eurystheus in Tiryns.

The current list of all the (known) Empyrea references can be found here.

Although I am well versed in Pop Culture references but I do not claim to have caught them all. Let me know your favorites in the comments and if I’ve missed one you caught, let me know so I can add it to the list.

Text for this article is excerpted from the linked wiki pages

Cretan Bull image is from Wizard101, and is copyright of KingsIsle Entertainment.

Hercules and the Cretan Bull image is borrowed from the Greek Myth Wiki. It is shared under the CC-BY-SA Creative Commons license.

Image usage qualifies as fair use under US copyright law.