Herakles, the most famous of all Greek heroes, was the common property of the entire race, although he may have been a Tirynthian and Thebes claimed to be his native city; the old idea that he was specifically Dorian is now exploded. His name (Glory of Hera; the Germanic equivalent would be Frobert) shows that he was no god, for no Greek god has a name compounded of another’s; but it is likely enough that gods as well as other heroes have been laid under contribution to form his manifold legend. For some reason, he caught the popular imagination, and is consistently represented as having just those virtues which the generality of mankind most admires: strength, valour, good nature, generosity, pity for the distressed, love of adventure, and hardiness; with those vices which are most readily pardoned: a hot temper, insatiable gluttony, and a lust as boundless as his strength. By stressing one side of his character, he was made the comic Herakles of the Attic stage, a sort of Ralph Roister Doister; by emphasizing the other, he is still more grotesquely transformed, especially by the later Cynics and Stoics, into a strutting, ranting moralist, who goes about looking for painful situations in which to show his fortitude. The most glaring examples of this are to be found in Seneca’s Hercules Furens, and in the Hercules Oetaeus, a work somewhat after his style but too foolish and ill-written even for him.
While properly associated with Tiryns, Herakles is claimed by Thebes, where, according to the usual legend, he was born. Elektryon, king of Mycenae, had a quarrel with the sons of Pterelaos, who was the son of Taphios, son of Poseidon and Hippothoe, a descendant of Pelops on her mother’s side, and king of the Teleboans. In the fighting, all the sons of Elektryon save one, Likymnios, and all the sons of Pterelaos except Eueres, were killed; Elektryon, as Likymnios was still a child, handed over his kingdom to Amphitryon, son of Alkaios, who was betrothed to his daughter Alkmene. But by an unfortunate accident, Amphitryon killed Elektryon, and had therefore to leave the country and take refuge in Thebes. Alkmene bore him no malice, but insisted that he should avenge the quarrel of her father and brothers before she would live with him. Amphitryon therefore asked Kreon, who was then king of Thebes, to give him an army to attack the Teleboans; Kreon consented, if Amphitryon would first rid the country of a monstrous fox, which was fated never to be caught by any pursuer. Amphitryon collected volunteers, to whom he promised a share of the booty expected from the Teleboans. One of those who responded was Kephalos of Athens, who brought with him the marvellous hound given to his wife Prokris by Minos; this was fated to catch whatever it chased. The hunt began, and Zeus solved the riddle of the uncatchable fox pursued by the invariably successful hound by turning both into stone.
Now began the campaign against the Teleboans, in which the forces of Amphitryon were hampered by the immortality of King Pterelaos. This was a gift conferred upon him by his ancestor Poseidon, and it depended upon a single golden hair which grew in his head. His daughter Komaitho fell desperately in love with Amphitryon, however, and pulled out the fatal hair. Now Pterelaos was killed and the island of Taphos, where he lived, subjected, together with the other islands (the Echinades) of the same group. Amphitryon put Komaitho to death for her treachery, and returned in trumph to Thebes.
But meanwhile, the beauty of Alkmene had attracted Zeus. Taking the form of Anphitryon, he visited her on the very night of her husband’s return, which he made three times the usual length. Later in the night, the real Amphitryon came to her, and she conceived twin children. One, Amphitryon’s son, Iphikles or Iphiklos, was an ordinary child, not destined to any very distinguished career; the other was Herakles. In this story we have a very widespread belief, firstly that twins are apt to be in some way remarkable, or that one of themis, and secondly that one of the two is the child of a god or spirit of some kind, not of the mother’s mortal consort.
Hera, who knew to what glory her husband’s bastard was destined, was furious and did everything in her power to kill or at least hamper him; to her machinations, in the story as we have it, nearly all his misfortunes and trials are due. Before his birth, she robbed him of his true inheritance; for Zeus had meant him to be lord of the surrounding peoples. But on the day when his birth was expected, he mentioned this, and Hera tricked him into an ambiguous oath: ‘Verily, he that this day is born of a woman, of the race that boasts my blood, shall be lord of all that dwell around him.’ Now Menippe, the wife of Sthenelos, was seven months gone with child; as her husband was of the blood of Perseus, the son of Zeus and Danae, the conditions would be fulfilled if she that day bore a son. Hera sent the Eileithyai to delay the birth of Alkmene’s children and bring Menippe’s into the world before his time. She bore Eurystheus, who thus got the benefit of the oath of Zeus.
Ovid has an amusing tale on this subject. Eileithyia, to prevent Alkmene from being delivered, sat seven days and nights with her hands clasped on her knees, a well-known magical gesture to bind anything. But Alkmene had a clever waiting-maid, Galanthis, who noticed the attitude of the goddess and recognized her and her intentions. She ran hastily out from the house and cried to Eileithyia, ‘Give my mistress your congratulations; she is safely delivered!’ Eileithyia, in astonishment, sprang up and raised her hands; at once the charm was undone, and Alkmene suddenly found herself a happy mother. Galanthis, however, was seized by Eileithyia and turned into a lizard, which still runs about houses.
Hera then sent two serpents to attack Herakles and his brother in their cradle; Herakles clutched their necks in his hands and choked them to death.
Apollodoros records, from Pherkydes, a variant which may be a piece of genuine tradition, or may be the result of some attempt to rationalize. The serpents were not sent by Hera, but put into the cradle by Amphitryon himself. When Herakles faced them and Iphikles ran away, Amphitryon recognized that the former was the child of Zeus. The age of Herakles at the time is variously given; in Plautus he is just born, in Apollodoros he is eight months old.
The hero’s infancy was uneventful after this; his education was of course traditionally entrusted to all the most celebrated experts. Linos was his music-master; Eurytos of Oichalia taught him to use the bow (he was the grandson of Apollo, and all the family were mighty archers, like their divine ancestor). In one form of his legend, indeed, Eurytos was killed by Apollo because he had the audacity to challenge him to a contest in shooting. Autolykos taught him to wrestle; so great a trickster was no doubt a past-master of all the wiles of the ring. Amphitryon taught him to drive a chariot, and his fencing-master was Polydeukes himself. After Linos’ death (read the file about Linos and his song), Herakles, who escaped prosecution by pleading self-defence and quoted a law of Rhadamanthys in support of his plea, was sent off to the cattle pastures by Amphitryon, where, according to Apollodoros ke grew to a good height, six feet; but Pindar has an older tradition that he was a smallish man.
On Mt. Kithairon, at the age of eighteen, he killed a lion, which was preying not only on the herds of Amphitryon but on those of Thespios, king and eponym of the town Thespiai. Thespios entertained him hospitably; on the way back from his visit and from the hunt of the lion, he fell in with messengers from Erginos, king of the Minyai of Orchomenos, coming to collect the tribute from Thebes. It was a fairly recent quarrel; Klymenos, king of the Minyai, had been fatally wounded by Perieres, the charioteer of Menoikeus, Kreon’s father; being carried home to die, he left the blood-feud to his son, who after a successful campaign compromised by making the Thebans pay him tribute. Herakles cut off the noses and ears of the messengers, hung them around their necks, and told them they might take those to their king by way of tribute. Erginos naturally attacked Thebes at once, but Herakles, armed by Athena and backed by the Theban army, routed him and made the Orchomenians pay double tribute to the Thebans in future. Kreon rewarded Herakles by giving him his daughter Megara in marriage; his younger daughter married Iphikles, who was already the father of a son, Iolaos, by Automedusa daughter of Alkathus.
A further incident of Herakles’ entertainment by Thespios is common folktale. The latter had fifty daughters, and was desirous that some at least of them should bear children to his mighty guest. He there- fore arranged that on every one of the fifty nights which Herakles passed with him, one of them should share his couch. There is another version reflecting typical folktale multiformity: Herakles enjoyed the favours of all fifty in one night, or in seven nights; or, one of the fifty would have nothing to do with him, and he therefore assigned her as a maiden priestess to his temple at Thespiai. But regardless of the variation, this episode has no necessary connexion with the business of the lion of Kithairon; Diodoros tells it as a separate story. Most accounts say that all the daughters bore sons (the eldest and the youngest each had twin boys, according to some); later they or some of them colonized Sardinia.
Alkathus was a Peloponnesian, son of Pelops and Hippodameia. A fairly well-supported tale makes him, and not Herakles, the slayer of the lion. It had killed Euhippos, son of Megareus king of Megara, and the bereaved father acted as kings in folktales usually do, promising the hand of his daughter and the succession to his kingdom to whomever should kill the lion. Alkathus accepted, and became king of Megara, where, Pausanias says, he rebuilt the walls which had been destroyed by Minos. A variant is that he fell in with the lion after being obliged to leave Megara suddenly, because he had killed his brother Chrysippos. In any case, this Elean or Megarian hero seems misplaced in a tale supposed to be Boiotian.
Herakles’ nephew Iolaos proved a faithful comrade to him on many of his adventures. His own marriage had a horrible ending. After he had lived with Megara happily for some years and several children had been born to them, Hera again began to persecute him, this time by sending on him a fit of furious homicidal madness. In this state he imagined Megara and her children to be enemies, and killed them all. As to when this terrible thing happened, authorities differ; what may perhaps be regarded as the orthodox story, that in Apollodoros, says that it was the cause of his servitude to Eurystheus. Herakles went into voluntary exile; Thespios performed on him the formal rites of purification demanded by Greek religion for any bloodshed; but he was not satisfied, and went to Delphoi to seek advice. The prophetess for the first tiine called him Herakles—he had previously been known as Alkeides, in commemoration of his reputed father’s father—and bade him go to Tiryns, there to serve Eurystheus for twelve years. If he performed the tasks Eurystheus should set him, he would be immortal. The Euripidean version, however, puts the madness after the performance of the last of the Twelve Labours.
The death of the children (Apollodoros adds the burning, in the same fit of insanity, of two children of Iphikles; in his version, Megara escaped and later married Iolaos) has this much connexion with religious observance, namely that in there were at Thebes, in conjunction with the festival called the Iolaeia, certain rites known or supposed to be commemorative of dead persons, and these were explained as being in honour of the children of Herakles. Iolaos is a Theban hero, and his legendary connexion with Herakles may have something to do with the origin of the whole story. Some said that the children were killed, not by Herakles, but by certain strangers. As to the chronological difficulty, it is typical of oral narrative tradition.
Herakles married again, this time Deianeira, daughter of Oineus of Kalydon; for her he had to fight the river-god Acheloos. Acheloos had, like Proteus in the Odyssey, the power of taking various shapes, such as those of a bull and a serpent; Herakles, however, was too much for him, and not only mastered him in wrestling but broke off one of his horns. The hero then departed, taking Deianeira with him. On the way they cane to a flooded river, the Euenos, which she cauld not cross; a centaur, Nessos, offered to carry her over, while Herakles shifted for himself. Herakles agreed, but Nessos tried to assault Deianeira, for which Herakles promptly shot him. As he lay dying, Nessos gave her the apparently friendly advice to take some of the blood from his wound and keep it safely, for if ever Herakles became indifferent to her, she could win back his love by smearing some of the blood on a garment and giving it to him to wear. She therefore kept the supposed charm in a safe place. The marriage lasted for years, and Deianeira bore Herakles several sons, the eldest being Hyllos, and a daughter, Makaria.
Ovid has a characteristically Alexandrian piece of prettiness here; Acheloos’ broken horn was picked up by the Naiads, who filled it with fruits and flowers, it thus became the Horn of Plenty (cornu Copiae) so familiar from ancient and modern art alike. Pherekydes has a somewhat different version; Herakles gave Acheloos his horn again, receiving in return the Horn of Amaltheia (Greek does not talk of a goddess called Plenty, being rather less fond of deified abstractions than Latin). Amaltheia had a bull’s horn, which would fill itself with any sort of meat or drink its owner liked to ask for, in unlimited quantities.
Quite early in the history of Herakles’ legend someone, it is not known who, made a sort of canonical list of twelve exploits, supposed to have been performed in the service of Eurystheus, which are known as the athloi, a word generally rendered by labores in Latin, labours in English; but both translations are rather inadequate. The Greek name, though probably not the cycle, is as old as Homer, who also knows that Herakles served Eurystheus, who sent him his commands through his herald Kopreus, and that Athena many times helped him. We are quite in the dark as to why this number in particular was chosen; of course the older mythologists, who made Herakles into a solar hero, saw in it a reference to the twelve signs of the Zodiac; but this idea is no better founded than the rest of the discredited solar hypothesis. In general, this much may be said: firstly, that the ‘labours’ which seem to be the oldest take place, where indeed we should expect them to, in the northern Peloponnesos; secondly, that the ultimate object of the series seems to have been the attainment of immortality, which is, in the tradition as we have it, won three times in a disguised form, first in the carrying off of the apples of the Hesperides (probably no other than the fruit of a Greek Tree of Life), second in the carrying away of Kerberos, which is apparently another form of Homer’s story, namely how Herakles strove with and vanquished Hades himself (a Harrowing of Hell, in other words; the incident is not an uncommon one in the lives of mythological heroes); and lastly, in the famous but comparatively late incident of the pyre on Mt. Oite.
Two other categories of exploits were drawn up by some fairly early author, perhaps Pherekydes; these are the praxeis, or Deeds, i.e., the things (such as the war against Pylos) which Herakles did on his own account, without orders from anyone, and the parerga, or Incidentals, the adventures into which he fell while performing the Labours. It is convenient to follow this ancient classification, although it is largely artificial. Again, it must be remembered that many of the exploits had originally nothing whatever to do with Herakles, but were transferred to him from other, less remembered heroes or half-forgotten gods. All manner of reasons are given buy the ancients as to why Eurystheus was Herakles’ master, when admittedly he was not nearly so valiant or strong; but that it was so is the nearly invariable tradition. Combining it with what we gather from Homer, that Herakles was no underling, but a great lord of Argolis with a palace of his own, many who have known these legends from the classical age onward have supposed that there was at some time a real Herakles, who was indeed a lord in his own right in the Mycenaean era, though a vassal of the greater lord of Argos or of Mycenae.
The Twelve Labours, then, in what is more or less their canonical order, are as follows.
1. The Nemean Lion. This creature was the offspring either of Orthros and Echidna, or of Selene, and was brought on the scene by Hera, for the usual reason, that she wished to trouble and endanger Herakles. It was an especially formidable beast, because it was invulnerable. Herakles therefore could of course make no impression on it with his bow or other weapons; but his club served him in better stead. Having battered the lion, he closed with it and choked it in his arms. The next business was to skin it, which according to the Theokritean account he managed at length to do by using its own claws. Henceforth its skin was his invariable garment, if we may believe our literary sources, though it is anything but certain that artists of the earliest periods knew the hero as having either lion-skin or club.
Plenty of fanciful details are to be found in various authors. Apollodoros for instance says that Eurystheus was much alarmed when Herakles returned with the lion’s skin on his shoulders, and forbade him in future to enter the city. For further security, the cowardly king used to crawl into a bronze pot which he had had buried in the earth whenever Herakles came anywhere near with his latest capture, such as Kerberos. Considerable ingenuity expended exercised in determining where he cut the club; the rest of his armament was attributed to various deities, Hermes, according to Apollodoros, giving him a sword, Apollo a bow and arrows, Hephaistos a golden cuirass, Athena a mantle. We should waste no time on these silly subtleties of the ancient grammarians, who needed the sage precept of Quintilian, that part of a a good scholar’s business is not to know some things; a rather more respectable myth is that the lion was catasterized as the constellation Leo.
2. The Hydra. This was a serpent, the offspring of Typhon and Echidna, and lived in the swamps of Lerna. The name means simply ‘water-snake,’ but from quite early times (not, however, in Hesiod), the creature was represented as having numerous heads, anywhere from five to a hundred; nine is a favourite number. Most authors add that as fast as a head was cut off, another (or two more) grew up in its place, as might a weed. To make matters worse, Hera sent the Hydra an ally in the shape of a great crab, which however Herakles smashed under his foot. But, as a favourite proverb had it in later times, ‘even Herakles could not fight two,’ and as the crab had helped the Hydra, he called in Iolaos to help him. The latter brought firebrands, and whenever Herakles cut off a head, Iolaos cauterized the stump, thus preventing any more growing up there. In the end the monster was killed. Herakles dipped his arrows in its blood, thus making any wound from them deadly. But as in modern warfare, so to in this ancient legend: toxicological weaponry may in the event be as perilous to him who employs it as to that against which it is employed; it was to be this same Hydran venom that ultimately brought down Herakles himself.
Again there are elaborations aplenty. The Hydra had one immortal head, which Herakles cut off and buried alive. The crab (cancer) became the constellation of that name.
3. The Erymanthian Boar. This is perhaps the most uninteresting of all the adventures, although sixth-century vase painters loved to show Herakles returning with this prey, while Eurystheus cowers in his bronze jar and peeps anxiously out at the beast. It was to be caught alive; Herakles therefore frightened it out of its lair by shouting, chased it into deep snow, and there netted it and so carried it off on his shoulders.
4. The Hind of Keryneia. According to most accounts, this was sacred to Artemis; Euripides represents it as a dangerous creature and says that Herakles killed it, but that is apparently his own invention, certainly contrary to all other tradition. Being sacred, it might not, of course, be hurt; but caught it might be. Herakles pursued it for a whole year, and finally ran it down, or came upon it while it slept, and made off with it. Then Artemis met him, escorted by Apollo, and claimed her property. Herakles threw the blame on his employer, and was allowed to carry the hind back to Argos, where he let it go.
The hind, despite her sex, contrived to have antlers, which were of gold; her hooves were of bronze, according at least to Vergil. As to where she led him in the long chase which ended in her capture, accounts differed; roughly speaking, they vied from the ends of the Peloponnesos to the ends of the earth.
5. The Stymphalian Birds. Stymphalos in Arkadia had a lake thickly wooded on its shores, which had become a perfect sanctuary for birds. These Herakles was commissioned to drive out. After some thought, he made a bronze rattle, or got one from Athena, of Hephaistos’ manufacture, and with this frightened them out of their coverts; he is generally represented as having then shot them. As to why anyone should want them shot, answers vary widely; they were so numerous that they destroyed the crops (Diodoros; but this sounds suspiciously like rationalizing); or they had feathers as sharp as arrows, which wounded those who came near; or, they were man-eaters.
6. The Stables of Augeias. Augeias, son of Helios and king of Elis, had, like his father, great herds of cattle. As their stables were never cleaned, the amount of dirt that had accumulated was enormous; Herakles was set to cleanse them, which he did in a single day; a common explanation of how he managed it was, that he turned the course of a river (Alpheios or some other, real or imaginary) through the stables.
7. The Cretan Bull. This, according to Akusilaos, was the one on which Europe arrived in the island (clearly, to him, her mournt was not Zeus in disguise); but most people said it was Pasiphae’s bull. In any case Herakles caught it alive, showed it to Euystheus, and then let it go; it wandered about for some time, finally taking up residence at Marathon.
8. Horses of Diomedes. This Diomedes was a son of Ares and Kyrene, and king of the Bistonians. His horses were accustomed to be fed with human flesh. Herakles gathered a volunteer force and set out to bring them to Eurystheus; or, according to the form of the story followed by Euripides and probably older, he went alone. Diomedes was either killed in battle, or else fed to his own steeds; this latter procedure made them quite tame, and they were safely brought to Argos, where Herakles dedicated them to Hera, as some say he had the bull.
In his army, if he had one, was a youth called Abderos; the horses, which he was set to guard while the rest beat off an attempt to get them back on the part of Diomedes and his people, killed him, and the city of Abdera was founded in memory of him (or had already been founded by him before his death).
9. Girdle of the Amazon. Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons, had a girdle which for some reason was a very desirable object. When one considers that the Amazons are inhabitants of that never-never land which stretches away from the borders of the known world, and that the girdle, or any other article of clothing commonly worn, retains a good deal of the personal qualities of its owner, it is obvious that such an article as this was a very natural thing for Eurystheus to want, and there is no need for such explanations as that of Apollo- doros, that his daughter had a fancy to have it for an ornament, or even for his statement that Ares (the father of the Amazons) had given it her as a sign of her superiority over all other women. The story is connected with a relic which was shown in the temple of Hera at Argos in classicaI times as being the very girdle itself. Herakles set out, with or without an army, and defeated the Amazons, capturing Melanippe, their general; the girdle paid the price of her freedom. Or, Hippolyte herself fell and the girdle was taken from her dead body.
10. Geryon. Chrysaor, ‘He of the Golden Sword,’ whom Poseidon sired and who sprang from the Medusa when Perseus slew her, became by the Oceanid Kallirhoe (‘Fair-Flowing’) father of Geryoneus, Geryones, or Geryon, a three-headed monster who lived, with his herdsman Eurytion and his dog Orthos (another child of Typhon and Echidna), on the island of Erytheie (‘Red Island’) in the stream of Ocean. [‘Red Island,’ as the name implies, is another never-never land, one lost in the distant glow of sunset. Later, when the Greeks came to know of Spain, they located Geryon there, although there is a tradition, probably earlier in origin, which put his home some place in Ambrakia, which being on the west coast of Greece was doubtless once the region of the sunset for the Hellenes.] Geryon was rich in cattle until Herakles came to slay him and rieve them. Living in the farthest West, and having as his attendant the formidable dog Orthros or Orthos, he has more than a little likeness to Hades himself, particularly as Hades also has cattle in one form of the adventure with Kerberos, and Herakles throws their herdsman Menoites, sparing his life at Persephone’s entreaty.
However, to the ancient mythologists, Geryon was a monster living somewhere towards the sunset, to reach whom Herakles had to take a very long journey. The oldest account is, that he sailed the stream of Okeanos in the golden cup of the Sun, which he got from Okeanos, or from Helios himself; in either case, he drew his bow against the god, and forced him to give up the goblet. He killed Orthros, the herdsman Eurytion, and finally Geryon himself, and put the cattle on board the cup, in which he sailed back.
Later forms of the legend make his return a much harder business. Herakles, having got to the farthest west, set up a monument of his presence there, the famous Pillars of Herakles, somewhere on the Straits of Gibraltar, although the ancient geographers were not agreed as to what or where exactly they were. Now he was obliged to make his way back through Spain, France, and Italy, in constant danger from robbers, who were tempted by his booty. In particular, the Ligyes (Ligurians) of Southern France made a very determined attack on him, somewhere near Arles. He spent all his arrows upon them, and as they still came on, prayed Zeus to help him; the god sent him great plenty of stones (a waste, stony region in that neighbourhood was shown as the very spot where the miracle took place) and with these the hero repulsed the Ligyes.
Another version, quite early, brings him to the neighbourhood of the Black Sea; here he fell in with a monstrous woman, half a serpent, whom he asked if she had seen his horses (what he was doing with horses does not appear). She demanded his love in exchange for her information, and bore him three sons, Agathyrsos, Gelonos, and Skythes, of whom the youngest, Skythes, was able when he grew up to draw a bow which Herakles left behind, and put on a girdle of his.
Their mother then drove away the other two; Skythes became king of the land. He and his brothers are of course the eponyms or legendary ancestors of the Gelonoi, Agathyrsoi, and Scythians; some native legend probably lies behind the Greek one. Or again, Herakles, after wandering through all Italy, got to Sicily, where Eryx, the legendary king of the mountain that bore the same name, a son of Aphrodite, challenged him to wrestle; he won, and killed his opponent. These are but samples of his adventures, connected of course with his wide-spread cult, particularly in Sicily and Southern Italy. Finally he reached home safely.
11. Kerberos. Here, more plainily than in any other adventure, we find Herakles doing as many heroes do, harrying Hell. It was the most terrible of all his tasks, and he could not have accomplished it, but that Athena and Hermes guided and befriended him. The tale, which is as old as Homer, represents him simply as going down to the nether regions and bringing Kerberos back with him. But Homer has heard of an older tale yet, in which Herakles fought with and wounded Hades in person, ‘in the Gate, among the dead.’ But to later ages reasons had to be given for such a prodigious venture. Accordingly, one fairly popular later version is that originally the Labours were to be only ten in number, but Eurystheus would not count the Hydra or the Stables of Augeias, because in the one case Herakles was helped by Iolaos, and in the other he used the river. So he set him this task, which he no doubt hoped would make an end even of him. But Herakles made his way down, by the Hell-mouth at Tainaron (or elsewhere; there were of course local variants), and, according at least to an Orphic tradition, frightened Charon into taking him over the Styx, for which the god was put in chains for a year. He captured Kerberos, brought him up into the light, showed him to Eurystheus, and then fetched him back into the underworld again.
There were numerous fantastic glosses to this story; for instance, that the plant aconite sprang from the gall which Kerberos spewed, or that he broke away from Herakles on the road from Mycenae and the Temple of Hera, whence a spring in that neighbourhood was known as the Water of Freedom (eleutherion hudor) and freedmen used to drink of it, or that his terrible aspect produced sad effects on those who happened to see him. Among other incidents, Herakles met the ghost of Meleagros, who told him of his own end, and, on Herakles offering to marry his sister, if he had one still alive, named Deianeira.
12. The Hesperides. Finally, Eurystheus sent Herakles to bring the golden apples of the Hesperides. Hesiod, or some early interpolator of him, declares that Nyx (Night) was the mother of the Hesperides. As their name (‘Daughters-of-Evening’) implies, they are thought of as living far to the west, their occupation being to guard a wonderful tree, growing golden fruit, which was given by Ge (Gaia) to Hera at her marriage with Zeus. Their recreation was singing, and they were aided in their watch over the golden apples by a formidable dragon, the offspring of Phorkys and Keto. Their names are given by some authors as Aigle, Erytheia, Arethusa and Hespere (Hesperia, or Hesperethusa). Generally their garden is located in northwestern Africa, somewhere near the Atlas mountains; as the name Atlas is found also applied to an Arkadian mountain, it has been conjectured that Arkadia was their original home, before the western end of the Mediterranean became known, even vaguely, to the Greeks. This would explain also why their dragon is named Ladon, which is the name of an Arkadian river. Apollodorus (apud Pherekydes) tells how Herakles forced Nereus to show him the way to the Hesperides; having arrived at or near the garden, he either slew the dragon, or somehow put it to sleep. Another form of the story is, that he got Atlas to pluck the apples for him,and to enable him to do this, held up the sky for Atlas meanwhile. This led to complications, however; Atlas eiither would not give up the apples, or would not resume his carrying of the sky, until Herakles, by force or fraud, made him do so.
There is a story that the apples themselves went back to the garden by the hand of Athena, since they were too holy to stay in the world. This and other such tales are but embroideries of the original legend.
Parerga. These can be briefly told, for the most part. During the chase of the Boar, Herakles was received by the Centaur Pholos; who set roast meat before him, but hesitated to give him wine, since the wine-jar he had was the common property of all the Centaurs. Herakles insisted, however, and the rest of the Centaurs arrived, attracted by the smell, as soon as the jar was opened. A fierce fight began, but Herakles soon killed or drove off his assailants. One, Elatos, took refuge with Cheiron, who was accidentally struck by an arrow which had gone through Elatos. Cheiron could not be healed of his wound, since the arrow was dipped in the Hydra’s venom, and was glad to give up his immortality to Prometheus and die to be rid of his pain. Pholos himself got his death-wound by curiously examining one of the arrows, which by ill-luck he dropped on his own foot.
A minor encounter with a Centaur was the slaying of Eurytion; this Centaur had tried to violate the daughter of king Dexamenos (‘The Hospitable’), who had received him under his roof, and the girl was rescued by Herakles, who in some accounts was in love with her himself. The story is variously localized. A comic adventure was with the Kerkopes, ape-like but human creatures, whose mother had warned them to beware the black-rumped man. They tried to steal Herakles’ weapons as he lay asleep, but he awoke, caught them, and hung them upside down from a pole held across his shoulders. They thus got an excellent view of his lower parts, and so amused him with their jokes at his hairiness that he let them go. They came to a bad end, being transformed into monkeys, or into stones, for trying to trick Zeus. They also are variable in place and names.
On various occasions, Herakles met and fought a number of formidable persons, whom he overcame; these include a sea-monster, often called Triton, with whom the pediment of the archaic temple of Athena at Athens, the Hekatompedon, represents him as wrestling; Kyknos son of Ares, who robbed Apollo of the victims for sacrifice that came to Delphoi; another son of Ares, a full brother of Kyknos, called Lykaon, who challenged him to fight as he was on his way to the Hesperides; Busiris (i.e., Per-Usire, House of Osiris, a city in the Nile delta), king of Egypt, who used to sacrifice strangers to Zeus. He had been advised to do this, in order to avert drought, by a seer, Phrasios or Thrasios, whom he made the first victim. When te tried to sacifice Herakles, the latter made short work of him and his servants. A giant, Alkyoneus (not the one he killed in the battle of the Gods and Giants) attacked him as he returned from Erytheia by way of the Isthmus of Corinth; Herakles struck the stone Alkyoneus threw at him with such force that it flew back and killed the thrower.
Syleus (? ‘the Robber’) had Herakles for his servant, for some reason, but regretted it, for Herakles’ enormous strength resulted in spoiling everything in his master’s vineyard. Later, Syleus becomes a wicked man whom Herakles kills and gives his land to his good brother Dikaios (‘the Just’).
Praxeis. Here are deliberately omitted a number of campaigns which Herakles is said by sundry authors to have undertaken, either because they are mere callow rationalizations, and/or are late in origin, or contain nothing that has been much remembered. Suffice it to say that Herakles is represented as having conquered a great part of the known world, founding numerous cities, and so forth, all stock features of the conception, especially in Hellenistic times, of how any great hero of former times must have behaved. Other adventures, however, have more interest, and are, briefy, as follows (in Apollodoros’ order).
Either before or after his marriage with Deianeira, Herakles fell violently in love with Iole, daughter of Eurytos king of Oichalia. Her father and brothers, however, (remembering the sad case of Megara) would not let him have her, and to make matters worse, Herakles in a fit of madness hurled one of them, Iphitos, from the walls of Tiryns, whither he had come to look for some lost cattle which Herakles was suspected of having stolen. He sought purification at the hands of Neleus, king of Pylos, who would not grant it him; for which reason he afterwards made an expedition against Pylos and killed Neleus and all his sons, save one, Nestor. The Delphic oracle bade him go into servitude for a year (or three years), although even this advice was not given until he had fought Apollo for his holy tripod, the fray being stopped only by Zeus’ casting a thunderbolt between the combatants. Hermes accordingly sold him to Omphale’ queen of Lydia, who set him to do women’s work. Having completed his term of serfdom, he was freed from his guilt.
Next, he set out against Troy. At an earlier date (generally it is put at the time of his abortive attempt to accompany the Argouauts) he had saved Troy from a sea-monster. King Laomedon had cheated Poseidon and Apollo of their pay for building the walls; Poseidon sent a huge sea-beast (a Keto), which could be appeased only if Laomedon’s daughter Hesione was given him to devour (this detail is not in the earliest accounts, and may have been added on the analogy of the story of Andromeda). Herakles undertook to slay the monster, and for a reward was to have Laomedon’s marvellous horses. But again Laomedon cheated, after Herakles had performed his part, incidentally being swallowed by the beast and killing it from inside. Therefore Herakles, when opportunity offered, raised an army—conspicuous among whose members was Telamon, father of the greater Aias—captured the city, and gave Hesione to Telamon, to whom she bore Teukros.
A similar expedition was that against Augeias, who had promised him part of his cattle for cleaning the stables. This was successful only after a hard struggle, for the twin sons of Molione, Eurytos and Kteatos, children of Poseidon, fought against him. An equally furious fight took place against the sons of Hippokoon, ruler of Sparta, who had sided with the Pylians against him, and further had killed the son of his kinsman Likymnios in a quarrel over a dog. Here again he was successful in the end, but his brother Iphikles was killed.
Another campaign, undertaken in aid of Aigimios, king of the Dorians, against his neighbours the Lapithai, seems to represent an early effort of the Dorian race to make Herakles their peculiar hero, an attempt which has met with more success than it deserves in modern times.
Finally, he set out against and took Oichalia, and carried off Iole; with this exploit his career ended tragically, in the story as we have it now, although in all probability this is no original part of the saga. Deianeira heard of his love for Iole, and to win him back, tried Nessos’ charm. But the Centaur’s blood, mixed as it was with the poison of the Hydra, was deadly poison, and the robe on which she smeared it clung to Herakles’ flesh and burned him unendurably. He therefore had himself conveyed to the summit of Mt. Oite, and set on a great pyre of wood; this he induced Poias, the father of Philoktetes, to light (when no one else would) by promising him his bow and arrows. The mortal part of him was burned away; the rest ascended to heaven, was married to Hebe, and at last was reconciled to Hera. Such, in brief and with many omissions, is the traditional life and death of this most notable of Greek heroes.
