Relief of Hercules and the Cretan Bull

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The marble relief shows Hercules confronting the Cretan Bull head-on. As his seventh labor, he was tasked with killing this massive creature by King Eurystheus. He boarded a ship and set sail for Crete, where Minos granted him permission to take the bull away due to its destructive behavior - it had been uprooting crops and knocking over orchard walls throughout the island. Hercules successfully captured the bull and transported it to Tiryns, where he handed it over to Eurystheus. Unfortunately, the bull managed to break free and wandered into Marathon, earning it the nickname "Marathonian Bull." With the bull safely back in his possession, Eurystheus then assigned Heracles his next mission: capturing the man-eating Mares of Diomedes.