Eurystheus rubbed his chin and thought hard. If he were to command his unruly relative and set him to useful work, he might as well begin at home. Eurystheus ruled not just Mycenae, but – thanks to Zeus’s rash promise – all of Argolis, much of which was afflicted by terrifying wild beasts.fn2
The most obviously terrifying was a lion that preyed on the people of Nemea in the northeast of the kingdom, not far from the Isthmus of Corinth. Fear of this terrible animal was deterring mainland travellers and merchants from trading with the Argolid and the rest of the Peloponnese. Offspring of the monstrous CHIMERAfn3, this was no ordinary lion. Its golden hide was so thick that spears and arrows bounced off it as though they were straws. Its claws were razor sharp and could tear through armour as though it were paper. Its powerful jaws could crunch rock as though it were celery. Many warriors had already perished trying to subdue it.
‘Go to Nemea,’ Eurystheus said to Heracles, ‘and kill the lion that is laying waste the countryside.’
Shame really, Eurystheus thought to himself with a giggle. I shan’t get ten years out of him. This first task will kill him. Oh well.
‘Just kill it?’ said Heracles. ‘You don’t want it brought back?’
‘No, I don’t want it brought back. What would I do with a lion?’
To gales of obedient laughter from his courtiers, Eurystheus tapped the side of his head as Heracles straightened, bowed and left the throne-room.
‘Arms the size of an oak tree, brain the size of an acorn,’ said the king with a snort.
Heracles spent months stalking the creature, as he had done years before with the Thespian Lion. He knew that his weapons, of formidable and divine providence as they were, would be of no use against the animal’s impregnable pelt. He would have to rely on his bare hands, and so he spent these months in training. He took to uprooting trees and raising boulders above his head until his raw strength, mighty as it had always been, was now greater than ever.
When he knew that he was ready, Heracles tracked the lion to its lair. He fell on the immense monster and threw it to the ground. Never had anyone dared to attack the beast in this way. Grappling tight, Heracles gave it no chance to pull back and strike with claws or jaws. What use was its impenetrable hide against the iron grip of Heracles’ hands around its throat? For hours they rolled in the dust until the life was at last throttled from it and the great Nemean Lion breathed no more.
Heracles stood by its body and bowed his head. ‘It was a fair fight,’ he said. ‘And I hope you didn’t suffer. I hope you will forgive me if I now flay the hide from you.’
Such respect for an enemy, even a dumb brute, was typical of Heracles. When an adversary was alive he knew no mercy, but the moment they were gone he did his best, where possible, to send them to the next world with honour and ceremony. He could not be sure that animals had souls or the expectation of an afterlife, even those descended from primordial entities like Echidna and Typhon, but he behaved as if they did. The greater the fight they put up, the deeper and more reverent his funeral prayers.
He had been stung by Eurystheus’s contemptuous dismissal of him. He wanted to skin his kill and take the pelt in triumph back to Mycenae, which is why he asked permission of the lion’s corpse. But Heracles found his sharpest knives and swords could not make so much as a scratch on that impenetrable hide. He hit, at last, on the idea of pulling out the lion’s razor-like claws. These were sharp enough, and Heracles skinned off one great piece, snarling head included. He strung the deadly claws into a necklace and in an excess of frenzied joy he pulled up the greatest oak tree he could find and stripped it of its branches to form a mighty club.
With the necklace of claws around his neck, the indestructible pelt over his shoulders, the open jaws and glaring eyes of the lion on top of his head, and the mighty club swinging by his side, Heracles had found his look.
Eurystheus had not expected Heracles to come back alive at all, certainly not dressed like some wild, untamed brigand of the mountains. The king, however, was crafty enough to hide his dismay.
‘Yes … that was to be expected,’ he said, stifling a yawn. ‘An aged lion is no test. Now, for your next task. Do you know Lake Lerna, not that far from here? It is terrorised by the Hydra, which guards the gate there to the underworld. I wouldn’t dream of interfering were it not that the creature has taken to attacking and killing innocent men, women and children who venture near. I am too busy to deal with it myself, so I send you, Heracles, to rid us of this nuisance.’
‘As you wish,’ said Heracles, nodding a bow of assent which caused the head of the Nemean Lion to snap its jaws violently shut. Eurystheus could not help but leap in alarm. With an ill-concealed grin of contempt, Heracles turned and left.
The goddess Hera had prepared Lake Lerna with malicious relish. Not only were its waters infested by the Hydra, a huge water serpent with nine heads (one of which was immortal), each capable of spraying jets of the deadliest poison known in the world, but she had hidden in the lake’s depths a ferocious giant crab too.
The Hydra reared up at Heracles’ approach, every one of its vicious heads spitting venom.fn4 Confidently enough he lunged forward and sliced one of the heads clean off. Instantly two new heads grew up out of the stump.
This was going to be difficult. Every time Heracles sliced or clubbed a head two more sprang up in its place. To make matters worse the crab was now jumping up out of the water and making a frenzied attack. Its giant pincers came at him again and again, trying to slice him open and gut him. Leaping to one side, Heracles brought his club down with all his might and shattered the shell into thousands of fragments. The squelched creature inside reared its slimy body in the air, quivered and fell back dead. Hera placed her favourite crustacean in the stars where it shines today as the constellation Cancer, the Crab. But she was content. Her beloved Hydra was wreaking her revenge. Already it had twenty-four heads, each spraying a lethal poison.
Heracles made a tactical withdrawal. As he sat at a safe distance, pondering what to do next, his nephew IOLAUS, son of Heracles’ twin brother Iphicles, came out from behind some trees.
‘Uncle,’ he said, ‘I’ve watched the whole thing. If Eurystheus is allowed to encumber you with an extra trial, then I should be allowed to assist you. Let me be your squire.’
In truth, the intrusion of the crab had annoyed Heracles greatly. One quest at a time, that was what he had agreed to. The addition of a second, unannounced danger struck him as unfair. He accepted his nephew’s offer and between them they came up with a new plan of attack. I am inclined to believe that the scheme was more likely to have emerged from the mind of Iolaus than that of Heracles, who was a man of action, a man of passions and a man of limitless courage, but not a man of ideas.
The plan was to approach the Hydra systematically: Heracles would advance and lop off a head, then Iolaus would step smartly in with a burning torch and sear the fresh stump, preventing any new heads from erupting in its place. Slice, cauterise, slice, that was the system they came up with – and it worked.
After hours of exhausting and disgusting effort there was only one head left, the immortal head, the head that could not die. At last Heracles hacked this off too and buried it far underground. To this day the Hydra’s poisonous vapours breathe up their sulphurous gas in the drained malarial swamp where Lake Lerna once stood.
‘Thank you,’ said Heracles to Iolaus. ‘Now you get home. And not a word to your father.’ Heracles knew that his twin would be angered if he heard that his son had been in such danger.
Heracles felt no need to pay his respects to the Hydra. After all, the immortal head was still alive and belching hate underground. He knelt beside the twitching body not in reverence, but to coat the tips of his arrows with its congealing blood. The envenomed arrows would prove to be immeasurably useful – and immeasurably tragic.
Their use would change the world.
Eurystheus now turned cunning. A water serpent was one thing, but not even Heracles could match an Olympian.
‘Bring me the golden hind of Ceryneiafn5,’ he said.
He felt confident that this Third Labour must surely be Heracles’ last, for success would mean certain death, or at the very least eternal torment.
The golden-horned, brass-footed Ceryneian Hind could do no harm to anyone. A deer fleeter than any hound or arrow, she presented a challenge to huntsmen, but not a danger. But the hind was sacred to Artemis, and this was where the threat lay. The savagery with which the goddess protected her own and punished any sacrilege against her or those who followed her was well known. She would never allow harm to befall her beloved hind.fn6 Heracles would either fail in his task or be struck down by Artemis for presumption. Either way, Eurystheus was confident that his pestilential cousin would not return.
For almost a year Heracles pursued his quarry over hill and – one supposes – dale. Finally he succeeded in netting and subduing the animal.
He had no wish to harm so shy and beautiful a creature. He slung the hind gently over his shoulders and whispered to her as he walked back to Mycenae.
As he passed through a wood, Artemis emerged from the shadows.
‘You dare?’ she hissed, raising her silver bow.
‘Goddess, goddess, I throw myself on your mercy.’ Heracles, went down on one knee.
‘Mercy? I do not know the word. Prepare to die.’
As Artemis took aim her twin Apollo stepped out of the wood and pushed the bow down. ‘Now, sister,’ he said. ‘Don’t you know this is Heracles?’
‘If it was our father, the Storm Bringer himself, I would shoot him for daring to take my hind.’
‘I understand,’ said Heracles in his meekest voice. ‘It is a terrible sacrilege, but I am bound to King Eurystheus and it was he who commanded me to take the animal. It is Hera’s will that I obey him.’
‘Hera’s will?’
Apollo and Artemis conferred. The Queen of Heaven had at best a stiff and formal relationship with Zeus’s children by other womenfn7 and had never made the twins’ lives easy. It amused them to assist her enemy.
Artemis turned to Heracles. ‘You may continue on your way,’ she said. ‘But when you have shown my hind to the court in Mycenae you must return her to the wild.’
‘You are as wise as you are beautiful,’ said Heracles.
‘Dear me,’ said Apollo. ‘That sort of flattery is not the way to my sister’s heart. On your way.’
Eurystheus was astonished to see Heracles return with the glorious creature, which he announced he would make the prize exhibit in his private menagerie. Mindful of his promise to Artemis, however, Heracles replied:
‘Certainly, my king. Come forward, she is yours to claim.’
Just as Eurystheus approached, Heracles, under the cover of his lion-skin cloak, gave the hind a sharp pinch on the rump. Eurystheus leapt to catch her as she reared up, but she galloped away with a bark, her bronze hooves setting up sparks from the palace flagstones.
‘You failed in your task!’ snarled Eurystheus.
‘Majesty, I brought you the hind as agreed,’ said Heracles. ‘It’s a pity you weren’t quick enough to hold her and keep her, but I cannot be held responsible for that.’ He turned to the court. ‘Surely I did everything that was asked of me?’
A murmur of sympathetic agreement from his courtiers held Eurystheus back from venting his true feelings.
Sometimes, Heracles could display something approaching real cunning.
Heracles’ next task was to bring back alive a giant boar that was ravaging the area around Mount Erymanthus, in Arcadia.
The Labour itself was not the greatest challenge Heracles faced and would hardly be worth retelling were it not for one episode. It not only reveals our hero at his clumsiest and least appealing but might also be considered to have set in motion the circumstances that were to lead to his terrible death.
Heracles went to seek advice about the boar’s habits from a friend of his who lived nearby, a centaur named PHOLUS. The offspring of IXION and the cloud goddess NEPHELE,fn8 centaurs were a hybrid breed. From the head to the waist they were human, but the rest was pure horse. Expert archers, they made fierce and brave warriors, but often became ill-natured, violent and licentious when in drink. The great exceptions were CHIRON, master of the healing arts and the wise tutor of ASCLEPIUSfn9 and, later, of JASON and Achilles, and Heracles’ friend Pholus. Chiron was the immortal offspring of Kronos and the oceanid philyra, while the mortal Pholus was sired by silenus, the pot-bellied companion of Dionysus and one of the Meliae, the nymphs of the ash-tree. His advice to Heracles was not to think of capturing the Erymanthian Boar until winter came.
‘Trap him in a snow drift, that’s the best way,’ he said. ‘Otherwise he’ll run you ragged. Meanwhile, why don’t you stay with me here in my cave?’
Heracles was only too happy to avail himself of the invitation. One night after dinner, he helped himself to a stone jar of wine. He had no reason to know that it was the common property of the whole centaur tribe. The smell of the wine attracted the other centaurs and they trotted up to demand their share. Heracles’ short temper was piqued by this (perhaps his own inebriation didn’t help) and an ill-mannered argument broke out. The row became a fight and the fight soon degenerated into slaughter as Heracles unloosed a volley of arrows, which were tipped, you will recall, with fatally venomous Hydra blood.fn10 Even poor Pholus died when he dropped an arrow on his foot, piercing the skin above the hoof and sending enough of the Hydra’s venom into his bloodstream to kill him. A few of the Arcadian centaurs did survive. Amongst them was one called NESSUS, who would in time – as we shall see – revenge these deaths in the most terrible manner.
Meanwhile, a mortified and remorseful Heracles helped bury the dead before turning his mind to the business in hand, the capture of the boar. With snow now blanketing the higher slopes of the mountain, he easily tracked and trapped the animal in a deep drift, hoisted it over his shoulders and trudged back to Mycenae.
When Heracles returned with a boar that was still very much alive, Eurystheus was so terrified by the enormous beast that he leapt into a great stone jar and cowered there.
‘What do you want me to do with it?’
‘Take it away.’
‘Don’t you want to examine it? It’s got lovely bristles.’
‘Take it away now!’
Eurystheus’s voice echoed around the interior of the jar.
This scene was a favourite amongst Greek pot painters who loved to depict the frightened Eurystheus cringing in his pithos while Heracles threatens to drop an enormous squirming pig down on top of him.
Halfway through – or so Heracles thought, we will cross that painful bridge when we come to it – and Eurystheus really believed that this time, this time, he had set Heracles a problem that he could never solve. Even if the task didn’t kill him it would, the king told himself with malicious glee, deprive him of everlasting life. After all, the oracle had told Heracles that the completion of the tasks would guarantee Heracles immortality, merely attempting them was not good enough. As Yoda had expressed it a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: ‘Do. Or do not. There is no try.’
King AUGEAS of Elis, a son of Helios the sun god, was possessed of a herd of three thousand cattle. The animals were immortal and had consequently produced, over the years, a far greater than ordinary quantity of dung.fn11 The stables in which they were quartered had not been cleaned for thirty years.
‘You will go to Elis,’ Eurystheus told Heracles, ‘and thoroughly clean out the stables of King Augeas in one day.’
Arriving in Elis, Heracles sought an audience with the king and struck a deal: if he did manage to clean the stables between sun up and sun down the next day, Augeas would give him one tenth of his herd.
If I have given the impression that Heracles was a brainless lummox, a boneheaded oaf, a he-man of minimal intelligence, I have slightly misled you. He was direct – that is the quality I would associate most with him. We are perhaps too used to thinking that indirect, subtle, contrived tactics are more intelligent and effective than uncomplicated assaults, but sometimes that is not so. I do not imagine that either the clever Theseus or the cunning Odysseus would ever have come up with so simple and splendid a plan as the diverting of the two local rivers, the Peneus and the Alpheus. Of course, enormous strength was required to hammer openings into the stable walls and gouge out the rivers’ courses, but the idea was beautiful in its simplicity. Just as Heracles had planned, the waters poured through the stables and sluiced out the accumulated muck of thirty years. The manure-rich torrents swept down into the plains and fields of Elis and fertilised the land for miles around.
A triumphant Heracles applied to Augeas for his reward of three hundred head of cattle, but the king, who loved his herd more than anything in the world, refused to pay up.
‘Eurystheus had sent you to cleanse my stables as his slave,’ he said, ‘so any reward would be unnecessary and wrong. Besides, I never struck such a bargain in the first place.’
‘Oh, but you did!’ cried Augeas’s son, PHYLEUS, who admired Heracles and was shocked to see his father behave so meanly to his hero. ‘I heard you distinctly.’
The king angrily banished both from his kingdom. Phyleus was exiled to Dulichium, an island in the Ionian Seafn12, while Heracles made his way back to Mycenae, simmering with rage. He swore that one day he would return and have his revenge on Augeas.
The people of Elis, however, cheered Heracles as he passed through their kingdom on his way back to Tiryns. The newly fertilised fields, enriched with all that manure, would bring prosperity to their whole region. He had made Nemea safe, and Lernea and Mount Erymanthia too. Heracles was no longer just a hero for kings and warriors. He was a people’s champion.
Heracles presented himself at the palace of Tiryns to hear what Eurystheus had in store for him next. Without speaking, the king sat on his throne and stroked his beard.
‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘Your next task is to rid Lake Stymphalia of its infestation of birds.’
When it comes to the Stymphalian Birds, there is disagreement amongst the sources we usually rely upon for details of Heracles and his Labours. It is generally accepted now that these were fearsome man-eating creatures the size of cranes with beaks of iron, talons of brass and foul, toxic droppings. Sacred to ARES, the god of war, they infested the tree-lined shores of Lake Stymphalia, causing havoc and distress to the farmers and villages of northeastern Arcadia and rendering the countryside for miles around entirely uninhabitable.
The ground beneath the trees in which the birds nested was fetid swampland. When Heracles tried to approach, he sank up to his shoulders in the miasmic filth. Observing his plight Athena provided him with a great bronze rattle, manufactured in Hephaestus’s forge. Its ear-splitting rapid-fire clacking flushed the birds from their roosts in panic and fright and Heracles was able to shoot them down in enough numbers to cause the remainder to fly away – we will encounter their deadly menace once again on another occasion.
‘The Cretan Bull?’ repeated Heracles.
‘Yes,’ said Eurystheus testily. ‘Do I have to tell you everything twice? The Cretan Bull. Ox. Steer. Male Cow. Crete. Island. Fetch.’
Many years ago, a great white bull had charged out of the sea onto the shores of Crete. It had been sent by the god Poseidon in answer to the prayers of King MINOS, who wished to awe his subjects with a sign that his rule was divinely sanctioned. The idea had been to sacrifice the bull to Poseidon once his brothers accepted this proof, but both Minos and his wife PASIPHAE were so enchanted by the creature’s beauty that they hadn’t the heart to slaughter it. Indeed, Pasiphae went so far as to mate with it. She bore it a son ASTERION, half man half bull, known as the Minotaur, who lived trapped in a cunning labyrinth built to house it by Minos’s architect, inventor and designer, the great DAEDALUS.
The bull, meanwhile, rampaged around Crete, savage, untameable and terrifying. As a favour to Minos, Eurystheus sent Heracles there to subdue it and bring it to Tiryns – alive.
Heracles, so different in approach, as we shall see, from his younger cousin Theseus, had no technique other than confidence in his own strength and inexhaustible stamina. He found the bull, shouted at it, maddened it and planted himself in its way. When it charged, he simply grabbed its hornsfn13 and wrenched. The bull resisted with all its strength. Gradually Heracles pulled it to the ground, rolling around with it, much as he had the Nemean Lion and the Erymanthian Boar. Never letting go of the horns he roared in the bull’s ear, slapped it, punched it, tweaked it, thwacked it and bit it. Finally, the battered and exhausted beast lay down in the dust beneath him and submitted its will to his. Mounting the creature, Heracles rode it over the waves from which it had been born all the way back to the Peloponnese. He led it into the palace of Eurystheus, who once more sought refuge in his stone jar.
‘All right, damn you, just get rid of it, will you?’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to tickle its ear?’
‘Get rid of the damned thing!’
If Eurystheus had called out from the jar ‘Sacrifice it to the gods’, the whole history of the world might be different. As it was, Heracles obediently released the bull into the countryside. Once free of its master, it bucked and galloped for miles and miles, finally making its home all the way over on the east of mainland Greece, on the Plain of Marathon, where it tormented and harassed the local people until another great hero, as we shall see, finally came to face it down and end its extraordinary life.
‘So you’ve dealt with the bull,’ said Eurystheus, pulling at his beard. ‘Very clever, I’m sure. But one bull is hardly a test, is it?’
Heracles said nothing. He stood awaiting his instructions.
‘Right. I’d like you to bring me the four mares of DIOMEDES.’
‘Diomedes?’
‘Do you know nothing? He’s the King of Thrace. Mares are female horses. Horses are quadrupeds with manes and hoofs. There are four of them. Four is a number between three and five. Now go – and don’t come back without them, understood?’
On his way north to Thrace, Heracles dropped in at Pherae to stay with his friends King ADMETUS of Pherae and his queen ALCESTIS, a couple whose story is well worth hearing.
Many years earlier Zeus had been forced to kill Apollo’s son Asclepius, the master of medicine and the healing arts.fn14 Ares and Hades had complained about Asclepius’s habit of bringing mortals back to life, making a nonsense of war and death. Zeus had accepted their arguments and struck Asclepius down with a thunderbolt. Apollo stormed up to Hephaestus’s forge in a fit of rage and confronted the three CYCLOPES, who were responsible for the manufacture of Zeus’s thunderbolts. Apollo couldn’t punish the king of the gods for the death of Asclepius, but he could punish the Cyclopes: ARGES, STEROPES and BRONTES. He shot all three with arrows. Such insurrection was not to be tolerated and Zeus banished Apollo from Olympus, sentencing him to labour in bondage to a mortal. Being famed for his hospitality (always a sure way to Zeus’s heart), the Thessalian king Admetus was the mortal Zeus selected, sending Apollo to serve as his herdsman for a year and a day.
The punishment turned out to be anything but a penance for Apollo. From the first he and Admetus got along wonderfully. Admetus, who had just inherited his throne and was not yet married, was charming, hospitable, warm-hearted and physically attractive. Far from being Apollo’s master, the young king became his lover. Apollo enjoyed being a herdsman and made sure that all of Admetus’s cows gave birth to twins, greatly increasing the value of the royal herd. Ownership of cattle in those times – as it is around much of the world today – was a great marker of wealth and status. Admetus prospered and Apollo’s period of servitude passed in a flash. The two remained friends and the god even helped his favourite win Alcestis, one of the nine daughters of King PELIAS of Iolcosfn15. Alcestis was so beautiful that princes and nobles from all over Greece were clamouring for her hand. Her father ruled that he would give her in marriage to the first suitor who proved able to harness a boar and a lion to a chariot. Yoking together two such incompatible wild beasts had proved impossible for all comers thus far, but with Apollo’s help Admetus managed it. He drove the chariot up to Pelias and won his bride.
The god came to his friend’s aid again when, what with the excitements of wooing and winning Alcestis, Admetus fell short in his devotions to Apollo’s twin Artemis, who was perhaps more sensitive to slights real and imaginary than any other Olympian. She punished Admetus for this neglect by sending snakes into the bridal chamber, putting something of a damper on the couple’s first night together. Apollo, however, helped Admetus by instructing him in which prayers and sacrifices would best mollify his prickly sister. The snakes vanished and the honeymoon proceeded. The ecstasy of the bridal chamber translated into perfect marital bliss and the marriage of Admetus and Alcestis proved to be as happy as any in Greece.
So fond of Admetus was Apollo that he could not bear the idea of his beloved friend dying. Rather than begging Zeus to bestow immortality upon his favourite, as Selene and Eos had each done for a mortal lover,fn16 Apollo approached the problem differently. He invited the MOIRAI – the three Fates, CLOTHO, LACHESIS and ATROPOS – up to Olympus and got them very drunk.
‘Darling Moirai,’ he said to them, staggering slightly and slurring his speech to give the impression that he was as intoxicated as they were, ‘I love you.’
‘Bloody love you too,’ said Atropos.
‘You’re the … hup … best,’ hiccupped Clotho.
‘Always said so,’ gulped Lachesis, wiping a tear from her eye.
‘I’ll take out anyone who says different and I’ll do them.’
‘Damn right.’
‘They’re dead.’
‘So if I were to ask you ladies a favour …’ said Apollo.
‘Name it.’
‘Condunder it sid – consider it done.’
‘Only got to ask.’
‘My friend Admetus. Lovely man. A prince.’
‘I thought he was a king?’
‘Well yes, he is a king,’ admitted Apollo. ‘But he’s a prince of a man.’
‘Sort of makes sense,’ conceded Atropos. ‘Prince of a king.’
‘But not king of a prince?’
‘The point is,’ said Apollo, not wishing to be sidetracked, ‘I’d like to ask your help in ensuring that his life doesn’t get cut off.’
‘The cutting off, that’s my job,’ said Atropos.
‘I know,’ said Apollo.
‘You want me not to cut the thread of his life?’
‘I’d esteem it the greatest of favours.’
‘You want him to live for ever?’
‘If it could be managed.’
‘Ooh, that’s quite an ask. Cutting the thread of life is what I do. Not cutting it … well, that’s a whole other thing. What say you, sisters?’
Apollo refilled their cups. ‘Have another drink while you think about it.’
The Moirai put their heads together.
‘Because we love you,’ said Clotho at last.
‘Lots …’ added Lachesis.
‘Because we love you lots, we will allow it. Just this one time. If your friend … What was his name?’
‘Admetus. Admetus, King of Pherae.’
‘If Admetus, King of Pherae, can find someone else willing to die in his place …’
‘… then we don’t see any reason why we need to thread his cut …’
‘Cut his thread …’
‘What she said.’
This then was the bargain Apollo explained to Admetus.
‘You will never be taken down to the underworld so long as you can find someone, anyone, who’ll agree to take your place.’
Admetus went to his parents. They’ve already seen the best of life, he reasoned, and one of them will surely agree to be taken early if it means my immortality.
‘You begot me,’ he said to his father PHERES, ‘it must be your duty then to ensure that I keep living.’
To Admetus’s surprise and mortification, Pheres was entirely unwilling to cooperate.
‘Yes, I begot you, and I raised you to rule over this land, but I don’t see that I’m bound to die for you. There’s no law of our ancestors and no Greek law that says fathers should die for their children. You were born to live your own life, whether it’s a happy one or a wretched one. I have given you all I need give you. I don’t expect you to die for me, and you shouldn’t expect me to die for you. So, you love the light of day. What makes you think your father hates it? Know this: we are a long time dead. Life may be short, but it is sweet.’fn17
‘Yes, but you’ve lived your life and I …’
‘I have lived my life when my life comes naturally to its end, not when you say so.’
Rebuffed by his own flesh and blood, Admetus cast the net wider. He had never considered immortality before, but once Apollo had told him how it was possible, the idea became an obsession with him. He now believed it was his right. He had thought that it would be a simple matter to find someone, anyone, to do this simple thing for him and die. It turned out that everybody seemed, like his father, unreasonably anxious to hang on to their lives. Eventually it was his loyal and loving wife Alcestis who came to his rescue. She announced that she would be content to die in her husband’s place.
‘You mean it?’
‘Yes, my darling,’ she said, calmly patting his hand.
‘You’re honestly happy to do this for me?’
‘Quite happy, if it makes you happy.’
A fine marble tomb was constructed and Alcestis prepared herself for the allotted time of Admetus’s decease, which would now mark her own. But when the day came, Admetus had a radical change of heart. He realised how much he loved Alcestis and how much less of a life he would have without her. In fact, he now saw that a long and endless existence alone would be worse than death. He begged her not to go. But her declaration of intent to take his place had been heard and recorded by the Fates. Die she must – and die she did.
It was at exactly this moment, with a devastated Admetus trying to come to terms with what he had done, that Heracles called in at the palace.
So mindful of his obligations as a host was Admetus that he could not countenance turning a guest away. He did his best to hide his sorrow and entertain his guest with all the warmth and generosity for which he was famous. Nonetheless, Heracles couldn’t but notice that his old friend was dressed in black.
‘Well, as a matter of fact, we have had a death in the palace.’
‘I’ll leave you then. I can always come another time.’
‘No, no. Please, come in. I insist.’
Heracles was still unsure. Hosts have obligations, but so do guests. ‘Who died? No one close to you?’
Admetus had no wish to burden his friend with his woes. ‘No blood relation, I promise …’ which was technically true. ‘A woman of the household, that’s all.’
‘Oh well, in that case …’ Heracles came through into the great hall. His eyes fell greedily on the table where the funeral banquet had been laid out. ‘Always said you served the best wine and cakes,’ he said, helping himself to lavish quantities of both.
‘You are too kind,’ said Admetus. ‘I’ll leave you for a moment but please, make yourself entirely at home.’
Heracles tucked cheerfully in. He finished all the wine on the table and yelled out for more. The chief steward of the household came, grim faced. He was a servant of the old school. Not even the risk of igniting the notorious temper of the strongest man in the world would make him swerve from his duty.
‘Have you no shame?’ he hissed. ‘How can you eat and drink like this with the house in such bitter mourning?’
‘Why the hell shouldn’t I? Who’s dead? Only some serving woman or other.’
‘Listen to him, gods! Our dear queen has been taken from us and you dare call her “some serving woman”?’
‘Alcestis? But Admetus told me …’
‘His majesty is even now in the garden sobbing his noble heart out.’
‘Oh, what a fool I am!’
Heracles now succumbed to one of his periodic bouts of guilt and violent self-abasement. He beat his breast and called himself the most insensitive buffoon that ever lived, unworthy to be a guest in any man’s house, an arse, a clown an oaf and the lowest of the low. Then he came to his senses and realised what he had to do.
‘I shall go down to the underworld,’ he said to himself, ‘and I shall fight anyone who stops me from bringing Alcestis back up. I swear I shall.’
As luck would have it, such a drastic course was not necessary. Before setting off, Heracles went to pay his respects at Alcestis’s brand-new tomb. There he found THANATOS, the god of death, just as he was taking her soul.
‘Let go!’ bellowed Heracles.
‘You have no business here,’ said Thanatos. ‘I command you to –’
With a roar Heracles was on him, wrestling the helpless Thanatos to the ground and pounding him with his fists.
Some time later Admetus left off his weeping in the garden and went back into the palace. ‘Where’s Heracles?’ he asked.
‘Oh, him,’ sniffed the steward. ‘He left as soon as he found out that the queen was dead. Good riddance, I say.’
Just then Heracles burst in. ‘I’m back,’ he said, slapping Admetus on the shoulder, ‘and I’ve brought a friend.’ He turned to the doorway and called. ‘You can come in now.’
Alcestis entered the room and stood before her disbelieving husband, a shy smile on her lips.
‘I wrestled Death himself to the ground to bring her back to you,’ said Heracles, ‘so make sure you bloody well keep her this time.’
Admetus did not seem to hear him. He had eyes only for his wife.
‘Yes. Well. I’ll leave you to it, then. Due in Thrace. Got to fetch some horses.’
In sending Heracles for the four mares of Diomedes, Eurystheus had neglected to furnish him with any further details. However, the horses’ names are known to us. They were PODARGOS, the ‘flashing-footed’; XANTHUS, the ‘yellow horse’;fn18 LAMPON, the ‘shining one’; and DINOS, the ‘terrible’.fn19 More pertinently, Heracles was unaware that, due to the depraved king’s habit of feeding them human flesh, all four had turned quite untameably mad and were kept chained with iron shackles to bronze mangers, a danger to all who approached.fn20
When Heracles arrived at Diomedes’ palace in Thrace, he was accompanied by his young friend and lover ABDERUS, a son of Hermes.fn21 Leaving Abderus to watch over the horses, Heracles set off to negotiate with the king.
His curiosity getting the better of him, the boy drew too close to the mares. One of them caught his hand between her teeth dragged him into the stalls. He was torn apart and devoured in minutes.
Heracles buried the mangled remains and founded a city around the tomb, which he called Abdera in honour of his lost beloved.fn22 The distraught and maddened hero now turned the full force of his wrath on Diomedes, slaughtering his palace guard, snatching up the king and throwing him to his own horses. The unpleasant taste of their one-time master caused the mares to lose their appetite for human flesh so that Heracles was able safely to harness them to a chariot and drive them all the way back to Mycenae. Eurystheus, who must surely have been getting used to the disappointment of seeing Heracles return unscathed by now, dedicated the mares to Hera and bred them for his own thoroughbreds. Later Greeks believed that it was from this line that Alexander the Great’s famous mount, Bucephalus, was descended.
‘Far to the east, along the banks of the Thermodon, lives the race of Amazons!’ said ADMETE, breathless with excitement.
Heracles bowed. Eurystheus’s daughter was being ‘given’ a Labour of Heracles as a coming of age present.
‘Set him to do anything you want, my darling,’ Eurystheus had told her. ‘The more difficult and dangerous, the better. Heracles has had it too easy.’
Admete had known straight away what she would demand of the hero. Like many young Greek girls, she worshipped this band of strong, independent and fiercely unapologetic women and had long dreamed of being an Amazon.
‘The daughters of Ares and the nymph HARMONIA,’ she told Heracles, ‘the Amazons dedicate themselves to fighting and to each other.’
‘So I have heard,’ said Heracles.
‘Their queen …’ Admete was flushed with excitement now, ‘is HIPPOLYTA. Hippolyta the brave, Hippolyta, the beautiful, Hippolyta the entirely fierce. No man can conquer her.’
‘That too have I heard.’
‘She wears a belt, a most marvellous jewelled girdle, given her by her father Ares. I want it.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You are to bring me the girdle of Hippolyta.’
‘And if she would rather keep it?’
‘Don’t toy with my daughter, Heracles. Obey her.’
So it was that Heracles found himself sailing east towards the land of the Amazons. The fame of these proud female warriors had spread throughout the ancient world.fn23 Riding on horseback – the first warriors in the world to do so – the Amazons had defeated all the tribes they had encountered in battle. When they conquered and subdued a people they took home the males that they judged would father the best daughters and bred with them. When the men had done their duty by them they were killed, like the males of many species of spider, mantis and fish. They put to death any male babies they bore, raising only girls to join their band. If they were accused of cruelty, they pointed out how many girl-children around the ‘civilised’ world were left exposed on mountainsides to diefn24 and how many women were used as childbearing livestock and given no other purpose in life than to serve, please and obey.
By no means did Heracles underestimate the magnitude of the task facing him. But when his ship reached Pontus, on the southern coast of the Black Sea, he was surprised to be met by a friendly welcoming party including Queen Hippolyta herself. The Amazons and their queen were not the only heroic fighters to have achieved a reputation across the ancient world. For more than eight years Heracles had uncomplainingly achieved the impossible, and the news of his strength, courage and fortitude against such stacked and unjust odds had travelled far and wide. He had rid the world of much menace and terror. He had met magic and monstrosity with valour and dignity. Only the churlish or envious could fail to admire him. The Amazons’ admiration for valour, dignity and strength had overcome their instinctive distrust and dislike of men enough for them to welcome him and his crew with warmth and respect.
Heracles and his crew were garlanded with flowers and feasted on the banks of the Thermodon.fn25
Heracles was deeply attracted by Hippolyta. She had poise, wit and a natural air of command that was rare in the world. She never raised her voice or seemed to expect attention or adoration, and yet Heracles found himself attending to no one else and felt closer to veneration for her than for any other woman, or indeed man, he had known.
She seemed to like him equally. If there was a trace of a smile on her face when she saw that her hands together were nowhere near meeting around the muscles of his upper arm, it was a smile not so much of mockery as of amusement at the freakish wonder of such a specimen living in the world.
‘This will do it,’ she said, unbuckling her belt.
She was right, her waist and Heracles’ biceps had the same dimensions. Fixing the clasp, she announced that it improved his appearance greatly.
‘That horrible lion’s head and pelt, the ugly club … no doubt they’re useful for frightening fools and cowards, but a man should be never be afraid to show a little colour and sparkle.’
She smiled again as Heracles examined the jewelled belt around his arm. She noticed that his face was clouded with a frown.
‘Don’t tell me that you are afraid that such a bangle does not consort with your great masculinity? I thought better of you than that.’
‘No, no,’ said Heracles. ‘It isn’t that …’
‘What then?’
‘You say that you have heard of the tasks my cousin Eurystheus has set me?’
‘All the world knows of the Labours of Heracles.’
‘Is that what they call them?’
‘Even if we allow for some natural exaggeration of your feats as the tales are passed mouth to ear, it seems you have done miraculous things.’
‘I’m sure most of the stories are nonsense.’
‘Well, is it true that when you carried the Erymanthian Boar into Eurystheus’s throne room he was so frightened that he dived headfirst into a stone jar?’
‘That, yes, that is true,’ Heracles conceded.
‘And that you fed Diomedes to his own horses?’
Again Heracles nodded.
‘So tell me, great hero, what it is that can trouble you now?’
‘Well, you see, I’m on the ninth of these tasks, these “Labours” as you call them. That is the reason I am here.’
Hippolyta stiffened. ‘I hope it is not to drag Hippolyta in chains before that vile tyrant?’
‘No, no … not that. It’s this girdle …’ He looked down at the belt circling his arm. ‘His daughter, Admete, sent me to fetch it. But now that I have met you I cannot find it in my heart to …’
‘Is that all? It is yours, Heracles. Accept it gladly as my gift to you. One warrior to another.’
‘But it was a gift from your father, Ares the god.’
‘And now it is a gift from your lover Hippolyta the woman.’
‘They say that its wearer is invincible in battle. Can this be true?’
‘I have worn it since I was fourteen and I have never been defeated.’
‘Then I have no right …’
‘Please. I insist. Now, let me see if all your dimensions are in proportion …’
We will leave Heracles and Hippolyta locked together in a fierce embrace in her royal tent on the banks of the Thermodon.
You might be thinking that this Ninth Labour had come all too easily to Heracles. Certainly the goddess Hera believed just that. The hatred she bore him had not diminished over the years. If anything it grew more intense each time he triumphed over yet another adversity. His popularity enraged her. She had set out to humiliate and destroy him. Instead there were children and even towns being named after him and songs being composed about him praising his strength, courage and lack of self-pity. She would show the world they had chosen the wrong man to celebrate.
In the form of an Amazon warrior Hera walked the riverbank sowing confusion, doubt and distrust.
‘Heracles cannot be trusted … he is here to kidnap our queen … I have heard that even now his men are preparing to take us prisoner, rape us and sell us as slaves in the markets of Argolis … We should kill him before he gets a chance to destroy us all …’
In the tent Heracles sat up, suddenly alert.
‘What is that noise?’
‘Just my women celebrating with your crew, no doubt,’ said Hippolyta sleepily.
‘I can hear horses.’
Heracles leaned across Hippolyta’s prone form and lifted a flap of canvas. Amazons on horseback were firing arrows at his men! A party of them was galloping towards the tent. At once the blood throbbed in his temples and a red mist closed all around him. The smiles and hospitality had been a trap. Hippolyta had tried to make a fool of him.
‘Traitor! he cried. ‘You … deceitful … witch!’
He took her head in his hands and with the last raging word he twisted her neck round so that it snapped like the dry branch of a tree.
He snatched up his club and ran out of the tent. He swung and dismounted three of the Amazons riding towards him with one sweeping blow. The others saw Hippolyta’s belt around his arm, the symbol of her authority and her invincibility. The fight went out of them. Heracles’ men, heartened by the sight of their leader with his blood up and roaring like a lion, rallied. In a short time the banks of the river were littered with the bodies of dead Amazons.
Heracles and his men broke the long return journey back to Mycenae by putting in at Troy. It was ruled at this time by LAOMEDON, grandson of the king TROS who gave Troy and Trojans their names, and the son of King ILOS, who gave the city its other name, Ilium, as in Homer’s great epic, the Iliad.
Troy was a fine city, the construction of its walls had recently been completed by the gods Apollo and Poseidon. But the greedy, duplicitous and foolish Laomedon refused to pay them for their work. In revenge Apollo fired plague arrows into the city, while Poseidon flooded the plain of Ilium and sent a sea monster there to harry and devour such Trojans as tried to escape their disease-ridden city.
The priests and oracles of Troy told Laomedon that the only way to save Troy from disease, famine and disaster was to chain his daughter HESIONE naked to a rock in the floodplain, for the sea monster to feast uponfn26.
This was the situation when Heracles arrived. He promised to free Hesione if he could have the horses that had been bred from Zeus’s gift to Tros.fn27 Laomedon agreed and Heracles promptly killed the monster and rescued Hesione. Once more Laomedon reneged on a deal. He refused to honour the agreement and give up his horses.
There wasn’t time for Heracles to put this right. His year was nearly up and he needed to get to Eurystheus and be sent on his Tenth Labour. Vowing to return and have his revenge on Laomedon, he made his way back to Mycenae.
‘There!’ Heracles flung the belt at Admete’s feet. ‘I hope it brings you luck.fn28 Now, mighty king, my tenth and final quest, if you please.’
Eurystheus shifted uncomfortably on his throne. He was sure a number of courtiers had tittered at the epithet ‘mighty king’.
‘Very well, Heracles,’ he said. ‘You will go to Erytheia and bring me back GERYON’s cattle. The entire herd.’fn29
You will remember that, when Perseus sliced off the head of the Gorgon, Medusa, two unborn children from her liaison with Poseidon flew from the gaping wound. One was the flying horse PEGASUS, the other Chrysaor, the young man with the golden sword. Chrysaor (by his union with CALLIRRHOË, the ‘sweet-flowing’ daughter of the sea Titans Oceanus and Tethys) had fathered the three-headed Geryon, a most terrible monster who fiercely protected an enormous herd of red cattle in the western island of Erytheia.fn30 To help him guard this rare and valuable breed, he had the giant EURYTION, a son of Ares, and a ferocious two-headed dog, brother to CERBERUS, called ORTHRUS.
Erytheia lay so deep into the unexplored western reaches of the world that to reach it Heracles had to go further than he had ever travelled before. He became so hot and bothered while toiling across the Libyan desert that he shouted up in rage at the glaring sun and threatened to shoot Helios down from his chariot with his arrows. Helios may have been of the immortal Titan race but he still feared the terrible damage Heracles’ arrows could do him.
‘Don’t shoot, Heracles, son of Zeus,’ he yelled, in some panic.
‘Then help me!’ Heracles shouted back.
Helios agreed not to fly so close to the land if only the hero promised not to shoot. What’s more, to help make the journey westwards easier he offered to lend Heracles his great Cup. Each day Helios would ride his sun-chariot from the lands of the distant eastfn31 across the sky until he settled in the far kingdom of Oceanusfn32. There he would spend the night reposing in his western palace, before setting out eastwards again in an enormous cup or bowl borne along Oceanus’ fast flowing current. This ‘River of Ocean’ circling the earth returned Helios to his eastern palace where he could prepare his horses and set out for another day.
Heracles gratefully accepted the loan of the Cup, a seaworthy bowlfn33 in which he sat, knees up, in perfect comfort zooming towards Erytheia. At one point, the waters on which he was carried grew choppy and he threatened to turn his arrows on Oceanus. I think it is not that Heracles was arrogant in assuming he could best a god, more that he regarded all living things, divine or mortal, as his equals. In any case the threat alarmed Oceanus who, as frightened of those terrible arrows as his nephew Helios had been, quelled the waters. Heracles arrived on the island of Erytheia safe and dry in no time at all.
He was welcomed on shore by the savage barking of Orthrus, the two-headed dog.
‘Orthrus!’ cried Heracles. ‘You, like so many of the world’s ugliest creatures, are a son of Typhon and Echidna. Don’t you know that the time is up for your kind? I have already killed your sister, the Lernaean Hydra, and your son, the Nemean Lion. Now it is your turn to be cleansed from the earth.’
With a roar from each throat the creature hurled itself at Heracles, who raised his club and smashed it down on one of the heads. The other turned with a startled yelp to look at its ruined companion, now dangling lifeless from the common neck. Before the second head had time to mourn, the club crashed down, ending the dog’s life.
The herdsman Eurytion heard the commotion and approached, brandishing his own mighty club.
‘You will pay,’ he snarled. ‘I loved that dog.’
‘Then join him!’ cried Heracles loosing an arrow into his throat. The Hydra’s venom did its work and Eurytion was dead before his body hit the ground.
Heracles now set about trying to herd the cattle. Before long Geryon himself lumbered into view.
So few mortals ever saw Geryon and lived to tell the tale that reports of his physical appearance are varied. All concurred that this son of Chrysaor and Callirrhoë had three heads. Most described him as having three distinct torsos too, although one source maintains the three heads sprang from a single neck and single torso. Where the disagreement is strongest is in how those torsos were connected to the ground. Some asserted that they tapered into one waist and that the giant therefore had one pair of legs; others, however, were sure that he had three sets. I tend to the two legs but three torsos and heads variant. What is beyond doubt is that Geryon was huge, tricephalous and possessed a vicious temper.
‘Who dares steal my cattle?’ roared the left head.
‘Heracles dares.’
‘Then Heracles dies,’ said the middle head.
‘Slowly and in agony,’ said the right head.
‘When you die,’ Heracles replied, ‘it will be three times more painful than any death that has gone before.’
So saying he loosed an arrow right into Geryon’s navel. The Hydra poison made its way up each torso, up through the three necks and into the three heads, scalding and corroding as it went.
‘It burns!’
‘It burns!’
‘It burns!’
The screams were terrible.
Quite how Heracles got the cattle across the sea is not recorded. We must assume he ferried as many as would fit with him in the Cup of Helios, shuttling back and forth until the whole herd stood on the North African shore. As a memorial of his great trip, he erected two vast pillars of stone, one on the northern, Iberian, side of the straits that open from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, the other on the southern, Moroccan, side. To this day the Pillars of Hercules greet travellers who pass through the straits. The African pillar is called Ceuta, the Iberian is known as the Rock of Gibraltar.
It took Heracles an inordinately long time to get the cattle back to Eurystheus. He drove them up through Spain, and the Basque Country, across southern France and northern Italy and down the Dalmatian coast before the welcome mountains and valleys of Greece told him that he was nearing home. But Hera in her spite sent down clouds of gadflies whose painful stings caused the herd to buck, stampede and scatter all over mainland Greece.fn34 Heracles managed to retrieve most of them, but it was a weary and travel-stained Heracles who led the herd through the gates of Tiryns and into the palace courtyard of King Eurystheus.
‘Oh, dear me,’ said Eurystheus, stroking his beard. ‘Is this all? I had understood that Geryon’s herd numbered more than a thousand, and yet even to my untrained eye there seem to be no more than five or six hundred here.’
‘It is all that remain,’ said Heracles. ‘And now, my service to you is over. I have accomplished all that you have asked of me, and more. It is time for you to release me from my bondage and allow me to go home a free man, expiated of my crime.’
Eurystheus gave a vicious crack of laughter. ‘Oh no. I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘No, no. You still owe me two more tasks.’
‘You said ten tasks, and ten tasks have I performed.’
‘Ah, but the Second Labour,’ said Eurystheus. ‘Your nephew Iolaus helped you defeat the Hydra. Without his searing the wounds of each severed head you would never have succeeded. The agreement was that you would complete each task alone and unaided. So we cannot count the Hydra.’
‘That is outrageous!’
‘Tsk tsk, hold that famous temper of yours, Heracles. You know what happened to Megara and your children.’
Eurystheus was enjoying this. He licked his lips as Heracles relapsed into a shamed silence. ‘Then there is the matter of those stables in Elis. You accepted a reward from King Augeas, did you not?’
‘Well, yes, but …’
‘That means you did not perform the duty as a part of your penance to me, but as a hired hand. It cannot possibly count.’
‘He never paid me!’
‘That is beside the point. By demanding payment you violated the terms of our agreement. Your Ten Labours have now become Twelve.’
Of course it had been Hera, through one of her priestesses, who had whispered these cruel technicalities into Eurystheus’s ear.
Heracles dropped his head. He knew that if he lost his temper and lashed out or stalked away in a sulk, then all the effort and pain of the last ten years would have been for nothing. The immortality promised him by the Delphic oracle could only be his if he was cleansed of his guilt and only his coward relative Eurystheus, this grinning despot, this cruel vessel of Hera, could do it. Immortality as such did not interest him, but as an immortal he could surely go down to the underworld and bring up Megara and his children.
‘Given the feeble number of cattle you’ve managed to bring me today, you’re lucky I don’t make it three more,’ said Eurystheus. ‘In reality I should, but luckily for you I’m triskaidekaphobic. So, if you’ve finished whining and complaining, I shall name your eleventh task. Bring me the Golden Apples of the Hesperides.’
The Hesperides, nymphs of the evening, were the three beautiful daughters of NYX, the goddess of Night and EREBUS, the god of darkness, who first sprang from formless Chaos. It was known that the Hesperides tended a garden in which grew an appletree whose golden apples conferred immortality on whomever might be lucky enough to eat one. Gaia herself, the earth goddess and mother of all, had presented some of the fruit to Zeus and Hera for their wedding feast, and now Hera had set another ghastly child of Typhon and Echidna, the hundred-headed dragon LADON, to guard the tree.
The overwhelming problem that confronted Heracles was not the dragon coiled round the tree – such obstacles were incidental to him – it was that no one had the least idea where the Garden of the Hesperides was. Some said far north of the Mediterranean, in the icy realm of the Hyperboreans, others maintained that it lay to the west of Libya.
In northern Europe Heracles encountered the nymphs of the river Eridanus.fn35 They urged him to seek the advice of NEREUS, one of the Old Men of the Sea.fn36
‘If you can hold onto him, he will tell you all he knows,’ they chorused.
As with most divinities of water, Nereus was capable of changing his shape at will. His knowledge was immense and, like all those blessed with the gift of prophecy, he always told the truth … But seldom the whole truth, and even more rarely a clear, uncomplicated and unvarnished truth.
I don’t know how long it took Heracles to track Nereus down, but he did locate him at last on some remote shore, curled up asleep on the sand. The moment Heracles laid a hand on his shoulder Nereus transformed himself into a fat walrus. Heracles hugged him tight. Now Nereus was an otter. Heracles fell to the sand but still managed to clutch on to him. In rapid succession he found himself grappling a horseshoe crab, a manatee, a sea cucumber and a tunny fish. No matter what shape Nereus shifted into, Heracles held fast and refused to let go. At last Nereus gave up and turned himself into a bearded old fisherman – perhaps the closest to his real shape he ever came.
‘You must circle the mother sea,’ Nereus said, ‘until you find the one who calls out your name from a high place. You will help them and they will help you in return.’
Not a word more could Heracles get from Nereus, so he relaxed his grip and watched him soar away into the sky as a gliding seagull.
Beginning with the coast of Africa, Heracles roamed the outer fringes of the known world, seeking clues. Along the way, being Heracles, he despatched a number of nuisances. In the lands between today’s Morocco and Libyafn37 he encountered the half-giant ANTAEUS, a son of Gaia and Poseidon whose major amusement in life was to challenge passers-by to wrestling matches. Whoever lost the bout had to die, and Antaeus had raised a temple to his father on the seashore constructed entirely from the skulls and bones of his innumerable victims. News had reached Heracles that his younger cousin Theseus had defeated King CERCYON on the road to Athens by using the new art of pankration, which combined the traditional close grappling, chopping, kicking and throwing with feinting, dodging and the use of the opponent’s weight and strength against himself. Heracles was used to sheer muscle being the only weapon he needed in weaponless fighting, but he had nonetheless trained himself in Theseus’s art and felt that a lumbering bully like Antaeus could present no threat, however fine a fighter he might be. Heracles made his way to the temple and called out his challenge.
‘Ho!’ cried Antaeus, with a roar of delight. ‘So I am to be the great one who lives on in history as the champion who defeated and killed the people’s hero Heracles? Let it be so!’
They stripped down in accordance with custom and faced each other, feet pawing the sand like bulls squaring up to charge. Heracles was the first to move in, bodychecking Antaeus, putting him in a choking headlock, then pivoting him over his hips and slamming him down with such force that the ground shook. The force of the throw would have killed or certainly incapacitated most of the opponents Heracles had ever fought. But to Heracles’ surprise, Antaeus leapt up and rushed at him as if nothing had happened. This was strange.
For the Greeks the aim in wrestling was to throw your opponent and pin him to the ground until he submitted. Heracles managed easily to pin Antaeus down again and again, but instead of weakening and submitting he seemed to grow stronger and stronger each time. Heracles realised that he was the one tiring. He could not understand it. He had the full measure of his opponent. He swept his legs from under him and slammed him to the ground time and time again. Yet when he did, Antaeus merely sprang with renewed vigour as if nothing had happened. It was almost as if – of course!
The truth dawned on Heracles. Antaeus was a son of Gaia. Every time he made contact with the ground he was able to draw strength from his mother Earth.
Heracles knew what he must do. With a final grunt of effort he wrapped his arms around Antaeus in a bear hug and, squatting down to let his legs do the final push, lifted him bodily off the ground. He held him high over his head until he felt the strength start to drain from the giant’s frame. With a final heave he snapped his spine and threw him dead on the ground. Gaia’s touch could not bring her son back to life. His broad skull, Heracles found, made a fine centrepiece to the pediment of Poseidon’s temple.
Resuming his journey eastwards, Heracles now encountered BUSIRIS, one of the fifty sons of Aegyptusfn38. The Greeks felt distaste for the human sacrifices performed by the priests of OSIRIS, from whom Busiris got his name. In order to put a stop to the vile practice, Heracles allowed himself to be captured and chained up as the next sacrificial victim. As the knife was descending on his chest, he burst his manacles and killed Busiris, along with all the priests of his order. Heracles renamed the town of Busiris in honour of the city of his birth, Thebes – which is why, from that moment on, geographers and historians have always needed to distinguish between Thebes, Greece and Thebes, Egypt.fn39
Despite the distraction of such incidental adventures, Heracles never lost sight of his need to locate the Garden of the Hesperides.
Obeying the Old Man of the Sea’s injunction to ‘circle the mother sea’ (which he correctly took to mean circumnavigate the Mediterraneanfn40), Heracles arrived at last in the lands between the Black and Caspian seas. It was here, when he reached the Caucasus Mountains that, just as Nereus had prophesied, he was hailed by a voice from high above.
‘Welcome, Heracles. I have been expecting you.’
Heracles looked up and shaded his eyes against the sun. A figure was chained to the rock.
‘Prometheus?’
Who else could it be? Zeus had shackled the Titan to the side of a vast mountain and daily sent an eaglefn41 to tear out and devour the Titan’s liver. Each night, Prometheus being immortal, the liver grew back and the following day the torture began anew. Countless generations of the race of men and women had risen, fallen and risen since their creator and champion had been made to endure these agonies.
Heracles knew who this figure chained to the rocks was, of course. Everybody did. But only Heracles dared to raise his bow and shoot down Zeus’s avenging eagle as it soared out of the sun towards them.
‘I can’t pretend that I am sorry to see him go,’ said Prometheus watching it plunge to its death. ‘He was only doing the Sky Father’s bidding, but I have to confess I had learned to hate that bird.’
It did not take Heracles long to shatter Prometheus’s manacles with a blow of his club.
‘Thank you, Heracles,’ said the Titan rubbing his shins. ‘You have no idea how much I have been looking forward to this moment.’
‘I am not sure that my father will be so grateful.’
‘Zeus? Don’t be so sure. You are his vessel in the race of men. I have heard of your feats. The voices of birds inform me of the goings on in the world and visions come to me in my dreams. I know that you, as your cousin Theseus is doing, are ridding the world of its foulest beasts, its dragons, serpents and many-headed monsters. Through the work of heroes like you the gods are clearing the world of the old order of beings.’
‘Why would Zeus want to do that?’
‘He is as subject to the laws of Anankefn42 as the rest of us. He knows that it is necessary for the world to be made safe for humankind to flourish. The day will come when even benign creatures will vanish from mortal sight – the nymphs, fauns and spirits of the woods, waters, mountains and seas; they will become no more than rumours. Yes, us Titans too. Even the gods on high Olympus will fade from man’s memory. I see it, yes, but it is yet a distant future. There is more to be done in the meantime. Soon you will be called upon to rescue Zeus and the gods from a great and urgent threat, the threat of the giants, who even now are preparing to rise up and conquer Olympus. It is why you were born.’
Heracles frowned. ‘Are you telling me that I am nothing but an instrument of the gods’ will? Have I no say myself?’
‘Fate, Doom, Necessity, Destiny. These are real. But so are your mind, will and spirit, Heracles. You can walk away from it all. Find a beautiful companion with whom to spend the rest of your life in peace, tending your flocks, raising children and living a life of tranquil contemplation, love and ease. Forget Zeus’s plans for you. Forget Hera and Eurystheus. Forget their cruel exploitation of your remorse. You have more than paid. Do it. Go. You are free.’
‘I would … I would like such a life. Oh, how I would …’ said Heracles. ‘Yet I know that is not what I was put on this earth to do or be. Not because you or the oracles have told me, but because I feel it. I know what I am capable of. To deny it would be a betrayal. I would end my days hating myself.’
‘You see?’ said Prometheus. ‘It is your fate to be Heracles the hero, burdened with labours, yet it is also your choice. You choose to submit to it. Such is the paradox of living. We willingly accept that we have no will.’
This was all a touch too profound for Heracles. He saw, but did not see. In this he shared the same bemusement on the subject of free will and destiny that befuddles us all. ‘Yes, well, never mind all that, I have a job to do.’
‘Ah yes. The eleventh of these tests that your cousin is setting you. The Golden Apples. You will not be able to pick them from the tree, no mortal can. My brother Atlas holds up the sky there. That was his punishment for his part in the war of the Titans against the Olympians.fn43 You must persuade Atlas to help you. The Garden of the Hesperides lies in the far west. You have a long journey ahead of you. Plenty of time to dream up a plan of action. Now …’ The Titan stood and stretched his legs. ‘I think I should go and find Zeus. I shall bow my head and beg his forgiveness. I am confident that he has softened in his anger against me. He may even realise that he needs me.’
‘But you see the future, you know what happens next.’
‘I think ahead. I consider and I imagine. It is not entirely the same thing. Go well, Heracles, and accept my blessing.’
As Heracles was making his way to the Hesperides, Prometheus turned his feet towards Olympus and Zeus’s throne.
‘Remind me,’ said Zeus. ‘Prothemus? Promedes? It’s Pro-something, I’m sure of it.’
‘Funny,’ said Prometheus. ‘Very, very funny.’
‘Your betrayal tore my heart out every day. A liver grows back more easily than a heart. I never loved a friend as much as I loved you.’
‘I know that,’ said Prometheus, ‘and I’m sorry. Necessity is a hard …’
‘Oh yes. Hide behind Necessity.’
‘I’m not hiding behind anything, Zeus. I’m standing before your throne and offering my services.’
‘Your services? I already have a cupbearer.’
Athena had been listening and came forward from behind a rock. ‘Come on, father. Let’s get this over with. Embrace him.’
There was a silence. Zeus stood up with a sigh.
The pair edged towards each other. Prometheus opened his arms.
‘You’ve lost weight,’ said Zeus.
‘I wonder why. Is that a flash of white I see in that beard of yours?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Athena, ‘get on with it.’
‘Athena, as ever, is wise,’ said Prometheus as the two extricated themselves from an unbearably awkward, unbearably male hug. ‘Never was the phrase “for heaven’s sake” more apt. The Giants are coming. You know they are coming?’
Zeus nodded.
Some say Heracles, as he crossed the Black Sea and Mediterranean, once again sailed in the Cup of Helios. Whichever means of travel he chose, he did at last find the Garden of the Hesperides.
Peering over the wall, he saw the tree with its gleaming crop of golden apples. Around its trunk was coiled the great serpent dragon Ladon. At the sight of a mortal peeping over the wall it raised its head and hissed.
Heracles fired his arrow, the dragon screamed in pain and the coils slid slowly down the trunk. Another child of Echidna and Typhon lay dead.
Heracles climbed over the wall and went to the trees. He found, as Prometheus had warned him, that being mortal he could not pick the apples. It was not that he lacked the strength, it was that every time he reached out to touch one it would vanish.
After an hour of trying and failing, he left the garden and made towards the coast in search of Atlas.
‘The attempt,’ said Heracles to himself, with a rare stab at wit, ‘was fruitless.’
He found Atlas hunched, bunched and straining in the heat of the noonday sun.
‘Go away, sir. Go away. I hate being stared at.’
The sight of that great figure carrying such a burden on his shoulders was worth looking at. You will have seen versions of it in early maps of the world, which took the name of ‘atlas’ from him. The sea to the west of him, too, is still known as the ‘Atlantic’ Ocean in his honour.
‘I do apologise,’ said Heracles. ‘I send greetings from your brother Prometheus.’
‘Ha!’ grunted Atlas. ‘That fool. He has learned the bitter lesson that to be a friend of Zeus is even more dangerous than to be his enemy.’
‘He has told me that you could secure for me the golden apples that grow in the Garden of the Hesperides.’
‘Go and fetch them yourselves, see where it gets you.’
‘There was a dragon, but I killed it.’
‘My, aren’t you clever? So why haven’t you got the apples?’
‘Every time I tried to pick one, it disappeared.’
‘Ha! That was the Hesperides. They are only visible in the evenings. They are my friends. They come and talk to me. They bathe my brow in the heat of the afternoon. Why should I help you steal from them? What would you do for me in return?’
Heracles explained the nature of his quest. ‘See, if I don’t return to Tiryns with those apples for my relative Eurystheus, I will never be washed clean of my terrible crime. So your assistance would be of the greatest possible value to me. But I can do something for you too. For generations you have groaned under the weight of the heavens. I could relieve you of that burden while you fetch me the apples. I would have what I need and you would experience a blessed interlude without the sky bearing down upon you.’
‘You? Carry the sky? But you’re a mortal. A well-muscled one, I grant you,’ he added, looking Heracles up and down.
‘Oh, I’m strong enough, I’m sure of it.’
Atlas considered. ‘Very well. If you think that you can hold up the heavens without being crushed, come alongside me and let’s give it a try.’
Heracles had performed many feats of superhuman strength in his time, but nothing to match this. When Atlas transferred the sky to his shoulders he staggered and fought for balance.
‘For heaven’s sake, man, do you want to cripple yourself? Your legs should take the weight, not your back. Don’t you know anything about lifting?’
Heracles did as he was told and let his thighs take the incredible strain.
‘I’ve got it,’ he gasped, ‘I’ve got it!’
‘Not bad,’ said Atlas. He straightened himself up and arched his back. ‘Never thought I’d stand upright ever again. All the apples?’
‘Bring me the Apples of the … Hesperides’ … that is what … I was … told …’ said Heracles. ‘So … yes, I suppose … all …’
‘And the dragon is dead?’
‘Couldn’t be deader.’
‘Right. Well. Back in a tick.’
Atlas departed and Heracles concentrated on his breathing. Whatever happens, he told himself, I will be able to tell my children that I once carried the sky on my back. When he thought of his children, it was not the scores of sons and daughters he had fathered all round the world over many years which came to mind, but only the two that he had killed when under Hera’s spell. Having the weight of the heavens on your back, he thought, is nothing like so terrible a burden as having the blood of your children on your hands.
What a long time Atlas was taking.
Helios passed low overhead, dipping down into the redness of his western palace.
Finally Atlas arrived carrying a basket crammed with golden apples.
‘Thank you, Atlas! Thank you. You are good and kind to do this.’
‘Not at all,’ said Atlas, a crafty look coming into his eye. ‘It’s a pleasure to be of assistance. In fact, I can help you further by going to Tiryns and giving these to your relative Eurystheus for you myself. Wouldn’t be any trouble at all …’
Heracles knew exactly what was in the Titan’s mind. But Heracles, as we have discovered, while not the subtlest man in the world, was far from a fool. He preferred to be direct and uncomplicated in his dealings but had learned over the years the hard lesson that simulation and deceit can be greater weapons than honest strength and raw courage.
‘Really?’ he said, in a tone of grateful excitement. ‘That would be most marvellously kind. But you will come back?’
‘Of course, of course,’ Atlas assured him. ‘I’ll deliver the apples to Eurystheus and return directly – without so much as staying a single night at his palace. How’s that?’
‘I can’t thank you enough! But before you go, I really need some padding for my neck … If you just take the weight for a second time, I can fold up my cloak and put it across my shoulders.’
‘Yes, really can chafe around the upper back, can’t it?’ said Atlas, cheerfully relieving Heracles of the burden. ‘Even my calluses have got calluses … Wait! Where are you going? Come back! You traitor! Cheat! Liar! I’ll kill you! I’ll grind you into a thousand pieces! I’ll … I’ll …’
It was a full night and day before Heracles no longer heard the roaring, howling and cursing Titan. Many years later, when the days of the gods were coming to an end, Zeus relented and turned Atlas into the mountains that still bear his name. They shoulder the sky in Morocco to this day.
Eurystheus knew that he could not keep the apples. The priestesses of Hera and of Athena all insisted they be returned. They were left in Athena’s temple overnight and in the morning they were gone. Athena herself restored them to the Garden of the Hesperides.
But desirable golden apples had not yet finished with human history.
Meanwhile, an unpleasant smile was curling on Eurystheus’s lips as he considered what the twelfth and final task should be. The twelfth and very final task.
‘Bring me … now, let me see … yes. Bring me …’
Eurystheus relished the tense silence that fell over the court as he stretched out his dramatic pause.
‘Bring me …’ he said, inspecting his fingernails, ‘bring me Cerberus.’
The gasp from his courtiers exceeded his expectations.
Trust Heracles to ruin the moment. ‘Oh, Cerberus?’ he said, and if he had added ‘Is that all?’ he could hardly have punctured the drama of Eurystheus’s big reveal more completely. ‘Very well. Loose, or on a leash?’
‘Either will suffice!’ snapped Eurystheus. Then, with a curt flick of the hand, ‘Now, out of my sight.’
In truth Heracles’ insouciance had been a show of bravado. When he heard what Eurystheus was demanding of him, his heart leapt and banged against his ribs like a polecat trapped in a cage. Cerberus, the hound of hell, was yet another of the grotesque abominations bred from the union of Typhon and Echidna. Heracles had killed Cerberus’s sister the Hydra and brothers, Orthrus and Ladon. Perhaps Cerberus did not know this. Perhaps these monsters felt no affection for their siblings. Heracles did not doubt that he could subdue the savage three-headed dog, but getting him out of Hades’ realm was another matter. The King of the Dead would place insuperable obstacles before him.
As he trudged away from Eurystheus’s palace a nebulous plan formed in Heracles’ mind. If he were safely to leave the underworld with Cerberus, he had better placate Hades. The nearest way to what counted as Hades’ heart was through his wife PERSEPHONE. For six months of the year she ruled by his side as Queen of the Underworld. In the world above, her mother Demeter, the goddess of fertility, mourned the loss of her beloved daughter and all the growth and life that were Demeter’s responsibility and gift to the world slowly withered into the dry death of autumn and the barren chill of winter. When, after six months below, Persephone ascended from the realm of the dead, the new life and buds of spring broke out, followed by full fertile fecund fruitful summer, until it was time for Persephone to return to the underworld and for the whole cycle to begin again.
Over the years the Greeks had learned to celebrate this annual rhythm of death and renewal in the ritual known as the Eleusinian Mysteries, a dramatic and ceremonial playing out of the seizing of Persephone by Hades and her descent into his kingdom, the desperate search by Demeter for her daughter and finally her return to the upper world. Heracles believed that if he were initiated into this ritual it would endear him to the Queen of the Underworld and that through her he might win Hades’ permission to lead his favourite pet out into the light of day.
The priests, priestesses and hierophants of Eleusis, led by Eumolpus, the founding celebrant of the order, granted Heracles’ request and duly inducted him into the mysteries of their cult of growth, death and regrowth.fn44
Heracles now journeyed to Cape Tainaron in the Peloponnese, the southernmost point of all Greece,fn45 where could be found a cave that formed one of the entrances to the underworld. Here he was met by the arch-psychopomp, the chief conductor of dead souls, Hermes himself, who offered to accompany him. No one knew their way about the caverns, passageways, galleries and halls of Hades better than he.
It was on his way to the throne room of Hades and Persephone that Heracles happened upon his cousin Theseus locked in the Chair of Forgetfulness next to his friend PIRITHOUS. Unlike the other spectral shapes that flitted around they were not spirits, not incorporeal ghosts, but living men. Muted by the enchantment of Persephone and bound fast by two giant snakes that coiled around them, they held out their hands in a silent plea. Heracles extricated Theseus, who scrambled up to the daylight above, babbling thanks; but when he tried to do the same for Pirithous, the earth beneath them shook. His crime, after all, the attempted abduction of Persephone herself, was too great to allow forgiveness.fn46
As he progressed deeper into hell’s interior, Heracles saw the shade of Medusa. Revolted by her hideous appearance and the writhing of the snakes on her head, he drew his sword. Hermes stayed his hand. ‘She’s just a shade, a phantom and can do no harm to anyone now.’
Further along he saw the shade of his old friend MELEAGER, the prince who had led the Calydonian Hunt. Heracles had been one of the few heroes not to take part in that epic adventure, so Mealeager told him the tale – how it had resulted in his sad and agonizing end. How his mother, driven mad with rage at his actions, had cast onto the fire the log whose burning through meant his own death.fn47
‘But your feats of heroism have reached even these sad caverns,’ said Meleager. ‘It does my heart good to know that there is one such as you in the world of the living. If I were alive I would invite you to join your bloodline to my own.’
‘Why not?’ said Heracles, greatly moved. ‘Do you have a sister or daughter I could marry?’
‘My sister DEIANIRA is a great beauty.’
‘Then, when I am freed of the burden of these Labours, I shall take her as my wife,’ promised Heracles. Meleager smiled a ghostly smile of thanks and floated away.
At last Hermes opened the gates to the throne room and announced to the King and Queen of the Underworld that they had a visitor.
Persephone, flattered by Heracles’ pious submission to the Eleusinian Mysteries, welcomed her half-brother cordially. Her husband Hades was more grudging.
‘Why should I give you my dog?’
Heracles spread his hands. ‘Eurystheus has sent me for him, mighty PLOUTONfn48.’
‘You’ll bring him back?’
‘Once I am freed from my servitude, I will undertake to do so. You have my solemn oath.’
‘I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.’
‘No, I can understand that,’ said Heracles. ‘Hera feels the same.’
‘What’s that?’ said Hades, sharply.
‘It is Hera who has set me these tasks. She wants me to fail.’
‘Are you saying that if I let you borrow my dog, Hera will be upset?’
‘Upset? She’ll be furious,’ said Heracles.
‘Take him, he’s yours.’
‘You mean that?’
‘So long as you promise to bring him back. You’ll have to subdue him, of course. You can’t use any weapons. Not down here. No sword, no club, none of your famed poison arrows. Is that understood?’
Heracles bowed his assent.
‘Hermes here will take your arms from you, accompany you and ensure that you do not play foul. You are dismissed.’
On his way out Hermes nudged him. ‘And they say you’re an idiot. How did you know the way to get Hades to do something is to tell him Hera would hate it?’
‘Who says I’m an idiot?’
‘Never mind that, hand over your weapons and follow me. “Hera will be furious!” – you wait till I tell Zeus. He’ll love it.’
The fight with Cerberus was marvellous to behold. Hermes clapped his hands like an enchanted child and rose up in the air on fluttering heels, so entertained was he by the spectacle of Heracles, his Nemean Lion skin tightly wound about him, groping for a choke-hold around the three necks of the savagely furious hound, while all the time its serpent tail reared, spat and struck, trying to find open skin to pierce with its razor fangs.
In the end Heracles’ sheer persistence paid off and the great hound fell back, exhausted. Heracles, who like many Greek heroes knew and loved dogs, knelt by his side and whispered in his ear. ‘You’re coming with me, Cerberus. All the children of Echidna and Typhon are gone now, save you, for you have a purpose and a role to play in the great mystery of death. But first I need your help in the world above.’
Cerberus put out his tongues and pulled a paw across Heracles’ arm.
‘You’re ready to come, then? You’re tired. I’ll carry you.’
Hermes’ amusement turned to astonished admiration when he saw Heracles pick Cerberus up and place him across his shoulders.
‘With no more effort than if he were a woollen scarf,’ Hermes said to nobody in particular.
When Heracles strode into the throne room with Cerberus padding beside him, Eurystheus had occasion once more to jump into the stone pithos.
‘Take him back down, take him back down!’ his terrified voice echoed inside the jar.
‘Really?’ said Heracles. ‘You don’t want to say hello? See him do his tricks?’
‘Go away!’
‘Am I free of you? Have I done enough?’
‘Yes’
‘Louder, so the whole court can hear.’
‘YES, damn you. You’re free. You have done all that was asked. I release you.’
Bestowing a kick to the jar which must have set Eurystheus’s ears ringing for a week, Heracles departed with Cerberus. They said farewell at the gates of hell.fn49
‘Goodbye, you terrible brute,’ said Heracles affectionately. ‘The gods alone know what I shall do now.’
‘No they don’t,’ said Hermes, stepping forward from the shadows with Heracles’ weapons. ‘It is for you to decide. All our father Zeus knows is that you will do many great things, perhaps even save Olympus.’
The first thing Heracles did, freed of his servitude to Eurystheus, was search for a wife.fn50 Word reached him that King Eurytus of Oechaliafn51 was holding an archery competition, the winner to claim the hand of his beautiful daughter IOLE in marriage. Heracles couldn’t have been more pleased. Eurytus was the very man who had taught him how to string a bow and shoot when he was a child and would make a delightful father-in-law.
He entered the competition and (not using his Hydra-venom-tipped arrows, for once) he easily set about putting up the best scores. When Eurytus saw this, he disbarred Heracles from the competition.
‘But why?’ Heracles was downcast. ‘I thought you’d be proud of your pupil and happy to have me as a son-in-law.’
‘After what you did to Megara and your own children?’ said Eurytus. ‘My beloved daughter Iole married to a wife-murderer? An infanticide? Never.’
Eurytus’s son IPHITUS admired Heracles and pleaded with his father on his behalf, but the king would have none of it. Heracles stormed off, promising to wreak a terrible revenge. He may, or may not, have taken some of Eurytus’s prize cattle with him. Certainly twelve of the herd went missing around that time. Iphitus came to Tiryns to stay with Heracles and negotiate for their return, but under the influence of another of his horrible fits, Heracles hurled the young man to his death from the city walls.fn52
The gods punished this crime against xenia, or ‘guest friendship’, by infecting Heracles with a disease.fn53 Once again in search of purification and atonement, Heracles visited king NELEUS of Pylos and asked him to perform the necessary rites, as anointed kings had the power to do.fn54 But Neleus was an old friend of Eurytus. Iphitus had been like a second son to him, and he pointblank refused to cleanse Heracles of the murder. Our hero left Pylos vowing revenge on Neleus, too.
Heracles had marked up two new grudges. They were added to his old beef (literally) with Augeas, who had refused the promised payment of cattle for sluicing out his filthy stables; nor had Heracles forgotten how Laomedon of Troy had failed to stump up when he had rescued his daughter Hesione from the sea monster sent by Poseidon.
‘Eurytus, Neleus, Augeas and Laomedon,’ he muttered to himself as he made his way to Delphi. ‘They will all pay.’
He knelt before the oracle. ‘I need to be cleansed. Tell me what I must do.’
‘You are impure,’ said the priestess, whose name was XENOCLEA.fn55 ‘You murdered a guest. We can say nothing to you until you are purified.’
‘That’s why I’ve come to you. To tell me how I can be purified.’
Not a word more would Xenoclea say.
At this point Heracles lost his famous temper and snatched the sacred tripod from her hands.
‘Damn you,’ he yelled. ‘I’ll go and set up my own oracle.’
Apollo came down from Olympus to restore order to his shrine. But before long Heracles was snarling at the god and spoiling for a fight. Only Heracles would have dared.
Zeus split the pair apart with a thunderbolt. Reluctantly the half-brothers shook hands. Heracles returned the tripod and Xenoclea, at Apollo’s command, gave Heracles the advice he sought.
‘The only way you may be cleansed of Iphitus’s murder is by entering into slavery,’ she said. ‘For three years you must serve another without question. The wages you would have earned will go to Eurytus in compensation for the loss of his son.’
Would this never end? Twelve years he had been in bondage to Eurystheus and now he was sentenced to another three? One might say Heracles brought it all upon himself by killing Megara and his children and hurling the harmless Iphitus over a wall. Equally one might reply, in his defence, that he acted under the influence of delusions sent to him by the spiteful Hera. Or one might suggest that he was a man born with an illness of some kind that made him susceptible to fits and hallucinations. One could add that his remorse always drove him to seek honourable expiation. But however disposed one might be to forgive Heracles, one also has to accept that, fits or no fits, delusions or no delusions, remorse or no remorse, he was still capable of nursing the most implacable grudges. This new punishment only strengthened his vengeful resolve. Eurytus, Neleus, Augeas and Laomedon would all pay.
But first Heracles had to submit to this fresh period of subjugation. Xenoclea’s arrangement was that he would become the property of Queen OMPHALE of Lydia,fn56 who had ruled her kingdom alone since the death of her husband, the mountain king TMOLUS.fn57 She seemed to take a perverse delight in humiliating her new slave. Above all, she enjoyed sporting both the great club and the pelt and head of the Nemean Lion that had long been Heracles’ signature costume. What’s more, she commanded that Heracles was to dress himself only in female attire while in her service. Despite this humiliation or – who knows? because of it – Heracles fell in love with Omphale, obediently wore women’s clothes, protected the kingdom of Lydia from such brigands and monsters as threatened its peace and even fathered a son by her.fn58
When the three years were up Omphale took the wages Heracles would otherwise have earned for his services and offered them, as instructed by Xenoclea, to Eurytus. He refused them with scorn. ‘I have lost a son and twelve cattle and you offer me three year’s wages?’
Free at last to pursue his vendettas, Heracles gathered an army and sailed off to exact his vengeance on the enemy who was nearest at hand: King Laomedon of Troy. He was accompanied by his old friends the brothers TELAMON and PELEUS, who had been present when Laomedon had refused to honour his debt to Heracles. They sacked the city and slaughtered the king and all the royal household save Hesione, who was given to Telamon as a bride.fn59 Heracles also spared the youngest of Laomedon’s sons, Prince PRIAM, who was left in charge of the smouldering ruins of a once fine city.fn60
Heracles now sailed back to Greece and gathered more allies for the invasion of Augeas’s kingdom of Elis. Augeas got wind of this and mustered his own force under the command of the conjoined twins, EURYTUS fn61 and CTEATUS.fn62. Fused together at the hip they might have been, but their combined strength and divine paternity made them a formidable enemy. They killed Heracles’ own brother Iphicles, the beloved twin with whom he had shared the cot to which Hera sent the snakes when they were newborns. This fully roused Heracles into one of the raging furies that turned him into a cyclone of unrelenting savagery. He split Eurytus and Cteatus apart with his sword and stamped on their dying bodies. Next he killed Augeas and all his children save one, the son Phyleus who had spoken up for Heracles when he had claimed payment for cleansing the stables and who had paid for his filial disobedience with banishment on the island of Dulichium. Heracles summoned him back from his exile to rule in his dead father’s place.
It was here, in Elis, that Heracles now established athletic competitions to be held every four years, in honour of his father Zeus. He called them, after the name of his father’s mountaintop abode, the Olympic Games.
Heracles next turned his attentions to Neleus of Pylos, who had refused to conduct his propitiation for the murder of Iphitus. He attacked the kingdomfn63 and once again he found and slaughtered all the members of an entire royal house. Except one. As in the case of Augeas, there was a single surviving son to take over the throne. Young Prince NESTOR had had the good fortune to be away at the time of Heracles’ onslaught. He returned to a devastated Pylos that, in time, he built into a peaceful and prosperous kingdom,fn64 earning himself a reputation as one of the wisest kings in the history of the Greek world. Nestor was famed not only for his sound judgement but also, in his later years, for his distinguished service during the quest for the Golden Fleece and as the valued counsellor and brave ally of AGAMEMNON in the Trojan War.
Nestor’s father Neleus had been aided in his defence of Pylos by his ally HIPPOCOÖN, the King of Sparta. The unrelenting Heracles now attacked this king, too. Although such an assault may seem nothing more than a mean-spirited and vindictive temper tantrum, the attack on Sparta was to have consequences that would sound down through history.
Heracles killed the king and his sons, installing on the throne his older brother TYNDAREUS, the rightful King of Sparta, whom Hippocoön had ousted years earlier. This detail is worth mentioning since Tyndareus and his wife Leda were to have such a vital part to play in the story of the Trojan War. Without Heracles placing Tyndareus on the throne of Sparta, it is doubtful there ever would have been a Trojan War.
It may seem that all Heracles did was go about the place slaying and deposing, but in truth – as I have noted before – he was instrumental not only in clearing the natural world of ancient and savage threats but also in establishing new regimes and dynasties in the political sphere that were to be play crucial roles in Hellenic history. If Cadmus was the founder hero of Thebes and Theseus the founder hero of Athens, Heracles has a claim to be considered the founder hero of Greece.
It began, like many Greek stories, with some cattle rustling.fn65 The sun god Helios was jealous of his fine herd of cattle.fn66 Their theft by the giant ALCYONEUS proved the final provocation, the spark that lit the fuse in what the Greeks were to call the Gigantomachy – the War of the Giants.
The giants, you might recall, sprang out of the earth in the earliest times from the blood that poured from the severed genitals of the primordial sky god Ouranos.fn67 This made them the generation of Gaia, the ‘Gaia-gen’, which over time became GIGANTES and, in our language, ‘giants’.fn68
Gaia had heard of Hera’s dream, the prophetic vision which forecast the rise of her gigantic children against the Olympian gods and their defeat at the hands of a mortal man. She tirelessly watched the exploits of the human heroes for a sign that the fatal individual had been born and the moment of the prophecy was nigh.
Realising that the theft of Helios’s cattle heralded war, Gaia began to search for a rare medicinal herbfn69 that would protect her giants from any harm this human hero might do them. Zeus, however, was ahead of her: he told Selene and Helios not to drive their chariots of the moon and sun by night or day, and while the world was plunged into darkness he gathered the entire store of the herb for himself.
The first manoeuvre over, Zeus summoned the twelve Olympians and Prometheus, with whom he had now been reconciled, for a council of war.
‘We must prepare ourselves for imminent attack,’ said Zeus. ‘Hera dreamt of this moment. Athena, go down and bring Heracles to us. We need him now.’
The violence started when the cattle thief Alcyoneus scaled Olympus, pushed the gods aside and forced himself on Hera. Heracles arrived in time to pull him off her and shoot him with one of his poisoned arrows. Alcyoneus fell, but raised himself up and rejoined the fray as if nothing had happened. No matter what Heracles did, Alcyoneus seemed always able to recover. Athena pulled Heracles aside.
‘Alcyoneus draws strength from his native soil. You can never kill him while he is in contact with it.’
‘Ah, I fought someone like that once before,’ said Heracles, remembering his encounter with the wrestler Antaeus. He hurled Alcyoneus one more time to the ground and dragged him from Greece to Italy. There, at last, the power drained from him and Heracles buried him under Vesuvius, where he lies grumbling to this day, waiting to burst back up and spew his hot rage over the world of men.
Now the other giants began to assail Olympus. How many fought isn’t agreed upon – from the large quantity of ceramics, sculptures, relief carvings and other representations it seems safe to suggest that there was a more or less equal number of gods and giants in the struggle. The earth all around the Mediterranean shook as Heracles, Prometheus and the gods fought long and hard to protect Olympus and especially Hera, whom the Giants forced themselves upon one after the other. After Alcyoneus, first EURYMEDON, the King of the Giants, tried to assault her, then PORPHYRION, the ‘purple one’. The giants seemed to believe that if they got her with child the offspring would be their great champion. Or perhaps they more brutishly hoped that her rape would so disgrace the gods that they would surrender in shame.
At all events Heracles saved Hera from wave after wave of attacks. Never for a moment did he think of all the pain and suffering she had visited on him throughout his life.
Zeus’s thunderbolts, as Hera had foretold, could not blast the giants, but they could at least stun them. As the battle raged, Zeus smote them one by one and Heracles took advantage of their dazed state to finish them off with his poisoned arrows.
When it was all over, the most powerful giant of all, ENCELADUS, still steaming and smoking with fury, was imprisoned by Athena under Etna. His brothers lay dead. The giants would never rise again.
Hera’s dream had seen it all. A mortal hero from the line of Perseus would arise to save the gods. Her hatred turned to grateful love and her enmity to amity. No more would she visit monstrous fits or delusions upon him. Heracles could live the rest of his life free from her curse.
Exactly as he did at the end of his Labours, Heracles now turned his thoughts to marriage. This time he called to mind his encounter in the kingdom of Hades with the shade of Meleager and the promise he had made to wed his old friend’s sister Deianira.fn70
Accordingly, he made his way to Deianira’s home of Calydon to win her hand, only to discover that she was being wooed, against her will, by the river god ACHELOUS. He had presented himself to her in three different guises:fn71 a bull, a snake and a creature that was half bull and half man. Achelous might have thought this a seductive courting ritual and one guaranteed to win a girl’s heart, but it filled Deianira with dread and disgust.fn72 Next to this shape-shifting river monster Heracles seemed a sweet, normal and eligible candidate for marriage and she welcomed his suit with relief. But to win her Heracles had first to defeat his rival.
Achelous was immortal, of course, so Heracles couldn’t kill him, but he easily wrestled him into submission, breaking off one of the god’s horns in the process. To get it back, the defeated Achelous offered in exchange the fabled Horn of Plenty, which the Romans called the CORNUCOPIA. The young Zeus had accidentally snapped this off the head of his beloved AMALTHEA, the nanny-goat who suckled him during his infancy and childhood on Crete. fn73 To compensate, Zeus had magically filled it with food and drink. No matter how many times it was emptied, it always replenished itself. From then on Heracles carried it in his belt and never went hungry.
Marriage to Deianira suited him. He hadn’t been happier or calmer since his life with Megara all those years ago in Thebes. They lived together in Calydon and had four sons, HYLLUS, GLENUS, CTESIPPUSfn74 and ONITES, and a daughter, MACARIA. All would have been harmony and bliss had not Heracles once again lost his temper with fatal results. One night, at a feast, the cupbearer of his father-in-law OENEUS accidentally spilled wine all down Heracles and he lashed out at the unfortunate youth, knocking him dead to the ground with one blow of his fist.
Despairing at his own clumsiness Heracles decided to leave Calydon for a spell. Along with Deianira he headed for Trachis, which was ruled over by his friend CEYX and his wife ALCYONE.fn75
It was while they were on their way there that something happened which would, in the end, cause Heracles to die a terrible death.
To reach Trachis, Heracles and Deianira had to cross the fast-flowing waters of the River Euinos. As they approached, they saw a centaur in a bright purple shirt standing on the near bank who kindly offered to ferry Deianira across. Heracles did not recognise him, but he recognised Heracles. For the centaur was Nessus, one of the herd Heracles had attacked while staying in the cave of Pholus on his way to hunt the Erymanthian Boar.
Nessus and Deianira were halfway over when he attempted to molest her. Heracles heard her cries, saw what was happening and fired one of his arrows into the centaur’s back. It staggered through the water to the riverbank and deposited Deianira on the grass.
Nessus had evaded the lethal arrows before, but now their poison was spreading through him. Even in his mortal agony, the outlines of a diabolical plan of revenge came to him. He did not admit to Deianira that he knew Heracles. Tender-hearted and compassionate, she was horrified that her husband had reacted so violently. She knelt by Nessus’s side, stroking his flanks and begging forgiveness.
‘No, no …’ he panted. ‘It was all my fault … I was just so captivated by your beauty. Your husband was right to punish me … Now listen … if I were married to you I would never leave your side, but you know what men are like. Take my shirt from me; it is charmed. Keep it with you always. Should the day come when you feel your husband has started to grow weary of you, make him wear it … You will find that his love for you will come flooding back …’
‘Oh, you sweet thing!’ cried Deianira, filled with sympathy and very touched by his compliments.
‘So … little … time … Quick, take the shirt …’
She tenderly removed it from Nessus’s back, sodden with blood as it was, folded it up and was just tucking it into her satchel when Heracles came splashing across the river to join her. He aimed a kick at the dying centaur.
‘Damned brute. Laying hands on you like that.’
Deianira and Heracles settled at the court of King Ceyx, but after a year or so Heracles marched out to Oechalia to settle his final grudge. Despite his happy marriage to Deianira he had still not forgiven his old archery tutor Eurytus for denying him the right to compete for the hand of his daughter Iole. An insult was an insult and had to be paid for. He laid waste to Oechalia, slaughtered Eurytus and all his family save Iole, whom he decided to keep as a slave. He dragged her off home in triumph to Trachis along with the rest of his booty. When Deianira caught sight of her she was overcome with fear and jealousy.
‘This is the girl he always wanted to wed. She is so much younger and more beautiful than me. What chance do I have?’
She thought of the enchanted shirt that Nessus had given her. That was the way to win back Heracles’ affection.
‘Welcome home, my darling,’ she cried embracing him fondly. ‘You won another great battle, I hear?’
‘Oh, you know. It was nothing really.’
‘I have a present for you. A reward for your famous victory.’
‘Really? What is it?’ Heracles loved presents.
‘Something for you to wear this evening. A shirt.’
‘A shirt? Oh. A shirt. Thank you.’ Heracles tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
‘I’ll send Lichas to your room with it. You promise to come down to dinner wearing it?’
‘If it pleases you,’ said Heracles, tickling her under the chin. Women were so funny. The smallest things upset them and the littlest things gave them pleasure.
Half an hour later, Heracles’ servant Lichas came to his room carrying the shirt and helped him into it. For perhaps five or six seconds Heracles felt nothing. Then the skin on his back started to tingle and he idly scratched it. The tingling turned to fire and he leapt, twisting and bucking, as he tried to pull the shirt off. But the Hydra poison in the dried blood had been reactivated by his body heat and was already beginning to eat into his flesh and bones, burning and corroding as it went.
No one had ever heard Heracles scream before. No one who heard him now would ever forget the sound. He lashed out in fury at Lichas, killing him instantly. His son Hyllus ran in.
‘Deianira … her shirt …’ yelled Heracles, tears streaming from his eyes as he stamped and threw himself around the room before staggering out into the garden and running around like a wild animal.
Hyllus watched in horror as his father, all the while yelling in mortal pain, now started to uproot trees. Heracles’ nephew Iolaus and dozens of other friends and followers dashed outside, drawn by the appalling shrieks. They had all seen Heracles lose his temper before, they had witnessed his fits and foaming tantrums, but this was something new. Deianira too now rushed from the house and added her own screams. What had she done?
The uprooting of the trees seemed to everyone to be a sign of madness, but even in his death agony Heracles was undertaking a labour. It became apparent that he was constructing a funeral pyre.
He clambered on top of it and lay back. ‘Light it!’ he screamed. ‘Light it!’
No one moved. No one wanted to be remembered by history as the one who set fire to Heracles.
‘I’m begging you!’
Finally Philoctetes, trusted friend and comrade on many adventures, took a torch from its bracket on the wall of the house and stepped forward.
‘Do it, old friend,’ gasped Heracles.
Philoctetes was weeping.
‘If you love me, do it for me.’
‘But …’
‘It’s my time. I know it.’
Philoctetes touched the flames of the torch to the pyre.
‘Now quickly,’ said Heracles, ‘take my bow and my arrows.’
Philoctetes took them and bowed his head.
‘They are … powerful’ panted Heracles. ‘Guard them with your life.’fn76
He arched his back as another spasm of pain went through him. The flames rose up.
‘The fire …’ he whispered, as they all came forward to make their farewells, ‘is not as painful as the poison … In fact … it is a blessed relief …’
‘Oh, my friend …’
‘Oh, my uncle …’
‘Oh, my father …’
‘Oh, my husband …’
With a shudder and a sigh the soul fled from Heracles. The great hero was finally at peace, freed from his life of almost unendurable torment and toil.
Hyllus turned on his mother with a snarl. ‘You killed him. How could you do it? How?’
Deianira ran wailing back into the house and stabbed herself to death.
Zeus remembered his promise and drew the soul of Heracles up to Olympus.fn77 In a touching ceremony it was clothed in flesh formed from the robes of Hera – once his bitterest enemy, now his loving friend and stepmother – and reborn.
Here, amongst gods and goddesses with whom he shared Zeus as a father, Heracles himself achieved immortality and divine status. As a mark of her deep affection, Hera bestowed the hand of her cupbearer, the goddess Hebe, on him as his final and eternal wife.fn78
And, at the last, Zeus raised his favourite human son into the firmament as the constellation Hercules, the fifth largest in our night sky.
Back down on earth, the sons of Heracles – the HERACLIDES – eventually raised an army that defeated the tyrannical Eurystheus, who still ruled in Tiryns; Hyllus himself hunted down the fleeing king and beheaded him. They seized control of the Argolid, before installing ATREUS, son of Pelops, on the throne of Mycenae. For a while, a time of peace and prosperity descended upon the Peloponnese.
For most Greeks and others across the Mediterranean world, Heracles was the greatest of the heroes, the ne plus ultra, the nonpareil, the paradigm, model and pattern of what a hero should be. The Athenians would come to prefer his kinsman Theseus, who, as we shall see, exhibited not just the strength and valour expected of a great hero, but intelligence, wit, insight and wisdom too – qualities that the Athenians (much to the contempt of their neighbours) believed uniquely exemplified their character and culture.fn79
Yet Heracles was the strongest man who ever lived. No human, and almost no immortal creature, ever subdued him physically. With uncomplaining patience he bore the trials and catastrophes that were heaped upon him in his turbulent lifetime. With his strength came, as we have seen, a clumsiness which, allied to his apocalyptic bursts of temper, could cause death or injury to anyone who got in the way. Where others were cunning and clever, he was direct and simple. Where they planned ahead he blundered in, swinging his club and roaring like a bull. Mostly these shortcomings were more endearing than alienating. He was not, as the duping of Atlas and the manipulation of Hades showed, entirely without that quality of sense, gumption and practical imagination that the Greeks called nous. He possessed saving graces that more than made up for his exasperating faults. His sympathy for others and willingness to help those in distress was bottomless, as were the sorrow and shame that overcame him when he made mistakes and people got hurt. He proved himself prepared to sacrifice his own happiness for years at a stretch in order to make amends for the (usually unintentional) harm he caused. His childishness, therefore, was offset by a childlike lack of guile or pretence as well as a quality that is often overlooked when we catalogue the virtues: fortitude – the capacity to endure without complaint. For all his life he was persecuted, plagued and tormented by a cruel, malicious and remorseless deity pursuing a vendetta which punished him for a crime for which he could be in no way held responsible – his birth. No labour was more Heraclean than the labour of being Heracles. In his uncomplaining life of pain and persistence, in his compassion and desire to do the right thing, he showed, as the American classicist and mythographer Edith Hamilton put it, ‘greatness of soul’.
Heracles may not have possessed the pert agility and charm of Perseus and Bellerophon, the intellect of Oedipus, the talent for leadership of Jason or the wit and imagination of Theseus, but he had a feeling heart that was stronger and warmer than any of theirs.