The first labor Eurystheus ordered Heracles to perform was to kill the Nemean lion, which was not a normal lion but a creature born from monstrous parents and brother to the famous Sphinx ofThebes. For years it had ravaged the land around Nemea in the Peloponnese, where it lived in a cave with two exits. Because its hide was invulnerable, Heracles could not harm it with his arrows. So he fashioned a club for himself, and used it to drive the lion into its cave, where he had blocked up one of the exits. He then strangled the beast with his bare hands. He used the dead lion’s own claws to flay its skin, which from then on he wore as a distinctive coat and helmet.
Eurystheus never liked Heracles, and the hero’s slaying of the Nemean lion only made him fear and loathe him more. The second labor that he imposed on Heracles was to kill the Hydra, a giant, multiheaded, snakelike creature that spewed venom from its mouth. Even the breath that
Heracles and Antaeus
Heracles encountered Antaeus on the way back to Greece from his 11th labor in the garden of the Hesperides, which was situated in the far west of the known world. Antaeus, a son of the earth goddess Gaia, was a giant who challenged every traveler he met to a wrestling contest. He had never lost a fight, and he had killed all his previous adversaries.
When Heracles and Antaeus came to grips, the hero soon discovered that, no matter how many times he threw Antaeus off and tossed him to the ground, he derived no advantage from his opponent's falls. On the contrary, the giant appeared to draw even greater strength from every throw. Heracles eventually deduced that the giant derived his power from contact with the earth, which was his mother, so he held Antaeus aloft until all his power had drained away, and then strangled him.
After Heracles had disposed of Antaeus, he proceeded safely back to his taskmaster and cousin, King Eurystheus of Argos, to receive instructions for his final labor.
Right: This painting by Antonio Pollaiuolo (c.1431—1498) depicts Heracles grappling with the giant Antaeus. Heracles defeated his opponent by lifting him from the ground and strangling him.
Issued from it while it slept was poisonous enough to kill anyone nearby. The Hydra lived in Lerna, a swampy area of the Peloponnese. When he confronted the monster,
Heracles discovered that every time he cut off one of the Hydra’s heads, two would grow back in its place. He ordered his nephew, Iolaus, to sear the neck-stumps whenever he cut off a head, so that new ones would not be able to grow back. After successfully beheading the monster of its many heads, Heracles discovered that the middle head was immortal. He took a huge rock and buried the head beneath it, after which he dipped his arrows into the Hydra’s venomous blood. Because Heracles used the services of his nephew lolaus, this labor did not count toward the 10 that he needed to complete.
Heracles’ third labor involved capturing the goldenhorned stag of Ceryneia. This creature was extremely swift, though it was larger than a bull. The collar that it wore around its neck bore a legend saying that it was dedicated to Artemis, meaning that it would be an act of great impiety to hunt it. As in the case of the boar, deer often symbolize the rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. Heracles chased the stag for a full year until finally he was able to get close enough to wound it, then catch it. As Heracles returned to Argos, Artemis and her brother Apollo stopped him and tried to wrestle the animal away from him. They relented only after Heracles explained to them that he was merely following the orders of Eurystheus and that he would not harm the deer.
Next, as a fourth labor, Eurystheus ordered Heracles to bring back alive the monstrous Erymanthion boar. The creature haunted the slopes of Mount Erymanthus and was causing considerable havoc in the countryside. (Boars in myth often symbolize the passage of young boys into
Manhood.) Heracles managed to drive the Erymanthian boar into deep snow, throw a net over it, and carry it back to Eurystheus. The king, terrified by the sight of the boar, hid in a huge pot in the ground.
As a fifth labor, Eurystheus ordered Heracles to clean the stables ofAugeas, the king of Elis in the western Peloponnese. Augeas’s father had given him great herds of cattle, but Augeas had failed to clean up their dung. As a result, the countryside was being deprived of fertilizer and therefore becoming infertile. Heracles went to Augeas and arranged a deal by which he would be paid for cleaning out all the dung. He then diverted a nearby river to run through the stable and thereby cleaned it thoroughly. When Heracles went back to Augeas for his money, Augeas refused to pay him on the grounds that the river had done the work, not Heracles. Eurystheus was unwilling to count this as one of the original 10 labors, since Heracles had asked for money. Later, Heracles returned to punish Augeas, whom he eventually killed. During that adventure, near Elis at Olympia, Heracles founded the Olympian Games.
The sixth labor that Eurystheus imposed on Heracles was to rid Lake Stymphalus of a huge flock of birds that were devouring everything in sight and making excessive noise.
Some ancient authors say that their droppings were acidic and that they would shoot their metal-tipped feathers at
Passersby. Heracles used castanets to drive the birds from hiding and then downed them with his arrows, the tips of which were steeped in Hydra venom.
For his seventh labor, Heracles was ordered to bring back alive the bull of Crete. This was the white bull that Poseidon had sent to King Minos but which Minos had failed to sacrifice to him in return. Heracles captured the bull and swam with it from Crete to mainland Greece.
After showing it to Eurystheus, he tried to dedicate it to Hera, but the goddess, still angry, refused the gift.
Eurystheus then told Heracles that, for his eighth labor, he must capture the mares of Diomedes, king of the savage Thracians, and bring them back alive to him. The four horses were unique in that they lived on human flesh. Heracles was able to tame the animals by feeding Diomedes himself to them. After they had eaten their fill, it was no problem to lead them back to Argos. By overcoming Minos and Diomedes, Heracles had subdued the closest and most fearsome leaders of the Greeks’ rivals.
It was during the eighth labor that Heracles visited the town of Pherae in Thessaly. There he met Admetus on the very day that his wife, Alcestis, had died. When Heracles discovered that the couple had entered a compact by which the wife would die in her husband’s place, the hero wrestled Thanatos (Death) and stole Alcestis back, returning her to the selfish and now embarrassed Admetus.
The ninth labor of Heracles involved stealing the girdle or belt of Hippolyte, the queen of the Amazons. The Amazons were a tribe of women warriors who lived on the southern shore of the Black Sea. Although Hippolyte willingly agreed to give Heracles the girdle, the vengeful Hera caused a misunderstanding between them, and Heracles slew Hippolyte. The Amazons
Attacked, but during the battle, Heracles took so many hostages that the Amazons were forced to trade the belt for them. For his 10th labor, Heracles was sent to retrieve the cattle of Geryon, a three-bodied giant, from a distant island either in the far reaches of the Mediterranean Sea or in the Atlantic Ocean. In order to traverse the vast ocean, Heracles borrowed from Helios, the
Left: This Etruscan bronze sculpture of the fifth century BCE shows Heracles subduing the carnivorous horses of Diomedes.
Sun god, the cup in which he returned to the east after sunset every evening. When Heracles reached the island, he struck down Orthus, Geryon’s two-headed guard dog, with a single blow of his club, then slew the giant with his arrows. After returning to Europe in Helios’s cup, Heracles then drove the cattle all the way through Spain, Gaul (modern France), Italy, and on to Greece.
World History
