This vessel illustrate how Zeus, disguised as a white bull, abducted the Phoenician princess Europa.
"The royal virgin even dares to sit on the bull’s back, not realising whom she presses on, while the god [Zeus], first from dry land and then from the shoreline, gradually slips his deceitful hooves into the waves. Then he goes further out and carries his prize over the mid-surface of the sea. She is terrified and looks back at the abandoned shore she has been stolen from and her right hand grips a horn, the other his back, her clothes fluttering, winding, behind her in the breeze."
Ovidius - Metamorphoses II
Translated by A. S. Kline
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