Electryon, king of Mycenae and son of Perseus and Andromeda, went to war with the Teleboans, who had killed his sons and stolen his cattle. While he was away, he left Amphitryon in charge of Mycenae, and signaled his trust in his young nephew by giving him his daughter Alcmene, who was so beautiful that men thought they were in the presence of Aphrodite herself, the subduer of men. But Electryon told Amphitryon that he was to leave Alcmene a virgin until after he returned from his expedition, and Alcmene agreed: no sex until her dead brothers had been avenged.
But a terrible accident occurred. Electryon found the missing cattle before he had avenged himself on the Teleboans. He sent for Amphitryon and together they began to drive the herd back to Mycenae. But during the drive one of the cows ran amok. Amphitryon hurled his club at the creature’s head, but it bounced off the horns and struck Electryon instead, killing him instantly. When Amphitryon got back to Mycenae, the priests told him he had to leave, in case his blood-guilt polluted the city, and he chose to go to Thebes.
So Amphitryon went to Thebes for purification, taking his wife with him. But Alcmene still refused to let Amphitryon into her bed until her brothers had been avenged. A homeless exile, Amphitryon was not up to the task alone: he needed the help of his host, Creon of Thebes. But Creon was preoccupied by a deadly fox that was devastating the countryside. Each month one young man was sent out after the fox, and was never seen again. To make matters worse, everyone knew that the fox was destined never to be caught. Creon promised help, but only once the fox had been dealt with.
Just then, Cephalus arrived in Thebes. The Athenian needed purification from blood guilt as well, after accidentally killing his wife with his infallible javelin. Tainted by its deadly deed, the javelin had been left behind, a dedication in a temple, but Cephalus still had his hound. They set out after the fox—the infallible hound against the fox that could not be caught. An impossible situation developed, a paradox: the hound was bound to catch the fox, but the fox could not be caught. But Father Zeus grew bored of watching the endless chase. He resolved the riddle by turning both fox and hound to stone, and they stand there still.
Creon was now free to help Amphitryon and together they marched out against the Teleboans. The chief problem was that the Teleboans could not be conquered as long as their king, Pterelaus, was alive, and he could not be killed. He sported a magical lock of golden hair which kept him alive. But it didn’t require Zeus to solve this riddle. Pterelaus’ daughter fell in love with Amphitryon and betrayed her father. She cut off the golden lock and he immediately died. The city fell, and Amphitryon punished the Teleboans for killing Alcmene’s brothers.
When Amphitryon returned victorious to Thebes, he was at last allowed to lie with his wife, but there was something he didn’t know. Alcmene had just been honored by a long and fulfilling visit from Zeus. The great god had appeared to her as Amphitryon and slept with her, before revealing himself to her and giving her a golden goblet as a gift. Not only had he slept with her, but he had persuaded Helios, the sun-god, to rein in his stallions so that the sun would not rise in the morning, and the night would be prolonged to three times its normal length. So much potency did Zeus want to sow in fair Alcmene.
Helios held back his shining team and chariot to prolong Zeus’ night of love with Alcmene.[51]
Now, Zeus’ nocturnal visit took place on the same night as Amphitryon’s return, and Amphitryon too slept with his wife. In due course of time, then, Alcmene bore twins: Heracles and Iphicles, begotten respectively by Zeus and Amphitryon. It was a hard birth, but Hera, the goddess of childbirth, showed no pity. Zeus, knowing that his son was due to be born, announced that whoever was born on that day should rule all those around him. Hera saw an opportunity: “Do you swear to that?” she said. “Whoever is born today shall rule his neighbors?” And Zeus, failing to perceive his wife’s trick, nodded his head in solemn assent.
Straight away, Hera left Olympus for earth. She did two things. First, she delayed Heracles’ birth, but accelerated that of his cousin, Eurystheus of Tiryns, so that Eurystheus should rule Heracles and not the other way around. And so it turned out. Second, furious with Zeus for yet another affair, no sooner had Heracles been born than she sent two slithering vipers into Alcmene’s chamber, intending their poisonous fangs to make short work of her husband’s bastard baby. But the mighty infant grasped a snake in each of his chubby hands and squeezed them to death.
Alcmene was frightened now, and dared not suckle the baby in case she aroused Hera’s wrath. She took the baby out of the palace and abandoned it in the maquis, most likely to die. But Zeus sent Hermes to bring the infant secretly to Olympus and ensure that he sucked at the breast of Hera herself, so that, despite being mortal, Heracles should attain godhood. But the baby bit the great goddess’s nipple and she thrust him away in pain, and Hermes brought the baby back to Alcmene and persuaded her to raise him herself. “Be of good cheer,” he reassured her. “Your child shall know greatness.”
When baby Heracles strangled Hera’s vipers, Alcmene knew he was Zeus’ son.[52]
Heracles grew like a young sapling in an orchard. As a youth, he had the best teachers for everything: Linus for music, the son of Apollo and Psamathe; Eurytus for archery; Amphitryon for chariot-driving; and Autolycus, the father of Anticlea, for wrestling. But in a fit of anger Heracles killed Linus. The teacher struck the student, as teachers will, for a mistake—and Heracles picked up the stool on which he was sitting and struck him back. The young hero was banished from Thebes to the slopes and gorges of a nearby mountain, where he killed a lion that was preying on the cattle of Thespius, the king of Thespiae. In gratitude, Thespius let the young man sleep with all his daughters, and there were fifty of them, each more fair than her sisters. Thespius could recognize a hero when he saw one, and wanted his grandchildren to inherit something of that spirit.
Heracles engineered his return to Thebes by offering to do Creon an immense favor. Thebes at the time was subject to Orchomenus, and paid the king of Orchomenus one hundred oxen every year, a heavy burden. But Heracles led the Theban army out into the field and inflicted a decisive defeat on the people of Orchomenus, though Amphitryon died in the battle. Creon gave Heracles his daughter Megara to wed, and she proved to be a loyal wife and sensible mother.
The years passed in peace. Heracles grew in strength and Megara bore him fine children, who were the delight of their parents. But heroes are not destined for peace. Hera hadn’t finished persecuting the son of Zeus—she would never finish, until his death—and from high Olympus she sent a fit of madness down into the home of Heracles and Megara. Suddenly, the house seemed strange to Heracles, as though it were the home of some enemy. It was filled with foes, and he hunted them from room to room, slaughtering as he went.
When Athena saw what was going on, she raced down from Olympus and hurled a stone at Heracles’ head. He dropped unconscious and sprawled on the floor, blood matting his thick-curled hair and beard. When he came to his senses, he found that the corpses that littered the rooms were not those of hostile strangers. Megara and his children lay on the floor, their lives ripped from them with appalling savagery.
Horror-struck, Heracles went weeping to Delphi to seek the advice of Apollo. The god told him that he had to serve his cousin Eurystheus, king of Tiryns, for twelve years, and carry out whatever tasks he should set him. And the gods had Eurystheus set him hard labors, well nigh impossible, for Heracles was a man of great power and had to be tested greatly. But Apollo also declared, though not to Heracles himself, that at the end of this time Heracles should become immortal, not just for ridding the world of many evils, but especially for having aided the gods in their battle against the Giants.
The first batch of Heracles’ labors all took place in the Peloponnese. At the time, it was a wild and unruly place, as was much of the world, but Eurystheus seized the opportunity to make it safe, with Heracles as his heroic agent. For the first labor, Eurystheus demanded the skin of a lion that was ruining men’s livelihoods in the hills around nearby Nemea. Now, this lion, the offspring of the Chimera, had been raised by Hera specifically to be a trial for Heracles. Sword blades bent on its impenetrable hide, and clubs, such as the one Heracles carried, simply bounced off. When Heracles drew close to its lair, the lion sprang at him from a dark thicket. Its claws and fangs ripped Heracles’ flesh, but he flung aside his weapons, knowing how useless they were, and wrestled the creature with his bare hands. The fight was fierce, but brief, as Heracles locked his arms around the lion’s neck and strangled it to death.
After staunching his wounds, he used the creature’s own razor-sharp claws to flay the otherwise uncuttable hide. And ever after Heracles wore the lionskin as his armor, with the jaws agape over his head as a helmet, the mane falling around his neck, and the rest of the pelt draping his powerful shoulders. He is known to all by his lionskin, his bow, and his club—a brigand’s attire. For Heracles tamed the world, but he was not tame himself.
For the second labor, Heracles was sent to kill the Hydra, a serpentine water monster living in the marshes of Lerna, near Argos. Again, Hera had nurtured this vile offspring of Typhoeus, hoping that it would end the life of her husband’s bastard favorite. The creature writhed out of the turbid water to meet him, its nine heads hissing and snapping and spitting deadly poison. Eight of the heads were mortal, but one was immortal. Heracles confidently crushed one of the Hydra’s heads with his club, and slime and scum and blood sprayed in all directions—but then two heads, equally ghastly and dangerous, sprang up in place of the one he had crushed. And a gigantic crab emerged from the swamp, another of Hera’s pets, whose enormous, snapping claws threatened to disembowel the hero.
Ducking beneath the Hydra’s hissing mouths as they snaked toward him, Heracles first smashed his club down onto the crab’s shell. No one but he could have even cracked the adamantine carapace, but one blow left the monster twitching feebly in the shallows, its dying claws snapping feebly at thin air. Hera was so fond of it that she translated it into the heavens as the constellation Cancer.
Meanwhile, Heracles was struggling with the Hydra. Its body was entirely invulnerable, and its heads multiplied themselves if attacked. He clearly couldn’t manage alone, and he summoned his loyal companion Iolaus, the son of his twin brother Iphicles, from their camp. If Hera could cheat by sending two monsters at once, he was allowed an ally. Hera was desperate for the hero to fail: if he failed at any one of the labors set him by Eurystheus, even Zeus could not allow him to become immortal.
Each time Heracles crushed one of the Hydra’s heads, two grew back in its place.[53]
Heracles and Iolaus danced around the Hydra, nimbly dodging the gouts of poison that spewed from its mouths. Every time Heracles’ club struck off or crushed one of the Hydra’s heads, Iolaus immediately seared the stump with a blazing torch, to prevent another two heads from sprouting up.
Finally, Heracles was left with only the immortal head. He struck it off with his club and buried it forever under an enormous rock. The monster’s corpse lay jerking spasmodically in the turbulent water, oozing deadly poison from the cauterized stumps of its necks, and as it died it seemed as though scores of snake-like vapors wriggled through the waters of the marsh away from the corpse. But with an eye to the future—an unseeing eye, as it turned out—Heracles dipped the heads of his arrows in the venom.
For the third labor, Eurystheus asked Heracles to bring him a hind that lived on Mount Cerynea in Arcadia. This was a marvelous creature, with golden horns, despite being female. The hind was harmless, but the task was still peculiarly difficult, for the gentle animal was sacred to Artemis. Anyone who harmed it would incur the wrath of the goddess, and she had proved with Actaeon and others just how terrible her wrath could be. For month after month, Heracles chased the hind over hill and dale, looking for an opportunity to capture it.
Many times he could have killed it from a distance with an arrow, but every time he crept up on it, the wary creature bounded away, and it was incredibly swift. In the end, he gave up trying to capture it with just his bare hands. It was impossible; he might as well try to make rope from sand. He took careful aim and barely grazed the hind with an arrow—just enough to slow it down—and then captured it and slung it across his shoulders to carry back to Tiryns. Artemis intercepted him and demanded to know what he was doing with her hind, but Heracles, thinking quickly, explained that he was on a mission for Eurystheus, as commanded by Artemis’ brother Apollo.
For the fourth labor, Heracles had to round up an enormous boar that was devastating the land around Mount Erymanthus in northwest Arcadia. Not a root or blade of grass or ear of grain remained, and the monster was as big as a bull, but Heracles had to bring it back alive. He tracked the ferocious animal to its den and enticed it out. For days, they parried each other’s attacks, but the boar was always too swift and too strong for Heracles to trap in his nets. Eventually, high in the mountains of Arcadia, he found the solution. He drove the monstrous beast into a snowdrift, which halted it in its tracks long enough for Heracles to stun it with his club. Then he wrapped it in his nets, hauled it up onto his shoulders, and made his way back to Tiryns. The boar was so hideous and menacing, even when muffled in Heracles’ net, that when the hero entered Eurystheus’ palace, the king promptly scurried off and took refuge inside a large storage jar! Heracles despised him for his lack of spirit, and held the boar snout first above the mouth of the jar, so that the cowardly king got a good look at the fearsome beast. “And yet you are my master,” sneered the hero.
On his way to Mount Erymanthus, Heracles happened upon another adventure—and a further sign that he was a man of destiny. He stopped for the night at the cave of the Centaur Pholus, and it turned out that this was a fated as well as a fateful visit. Dozens of years earlier, Dionysus himself had given Pholus a large jar of wine, with instructions that it was not to be opened until Heracles paid a visit. Pholus sank the jar into the ground for safe keeping and forgot about it; now, as a good host, he opened it. But the fragrant aroma attracted all the rest of the Centaurs from his tribe, and they stormed Pholus’ cave in their mad greed for the sweet wine. Heracles successfully defended the cave mouth and drove them off with flaming brands and arrows, and then set out in pursuit of the rest.
Some of the Centaurs he tracked all the way to Thessaly, where they took refuge in the cave of their wise cousin Cheiron. Heracles attacked them there, and in the course of the siege Cheiron himself was wounded by one of Heracles’ poison-tipped arrows. This was the last thing Heracles wanted, and what made it worse was that Cheiron was immortal, the son of Philyra, one of the daughters of Ocean, and Cronus in the form of a horse. He could not die, only suffer unimaginable torment as the poison spread and seared his whole body from inside. In his agony, he appealed to Zeus for relief. Even Zeus couldn’t just cancel Cheiron’s immortality, but he banked it for Heracles in the future. So Cheiron could die and be free at last of pain.
After attending sorrowfully to the Centaur’s burial, Heracles returned to Pholus’s cave in the Peloponnese, where further horror awaited him. While the hero was away, the Centaur had busied himself burying his slaughtered fellow tribesmen, consigning them to the worms and the gods. He then set about tidying the cave and collecting all Heracles’ spent arrows. He held one shaft lightly between thumb and forefinger, turning it this way and that, marveling that something so slight and slender could fell something as great as a Centaur. But in the course of his musing, he accidentally dropped the arrow, point first, onto the fleshy spot just above his hoof. Before long the Hydra’s venom had done its lethal work. The two Centaurs who were the best and noblest of their kind were dead, innocent victims of their race’s weakness for wine.
For the fifth labor, Heracles traveled to Elis, in the northwest of the Peloponnese, where Augeas was king. Augeas was rich in cattle and owned huge numbers of them—but their stables had never been cleaned out and were deep in accumulated ordure. Heracles’ job was to muck out the stables within a single day. This was an impossible task, and Eurystheus fully expected Heracles to fail. But the canny hero found a solution to the messy problem: he diverted two rivers through the stables, and their rushing waters did the job for him with daylight to spare.
Now, Augeas had also promised Heracles a tithe of all his cattle if he should succeed, but he reneged on his promise and drove out of Elis both Heracles and his own son Phyleus, who was ashamed by his father’s behavior and took Heracles’ side. They were received in the home of Dexamenus of Olympia, and in return Heracles did him a favor. His fair daughter was being harassed by the Centaur Eurytion’s unwanted attentions, but just one of Heracles’ arrows curbed the creature’s ardor forever. This was also the occasion when Heracles instituted the games at Olympia, by measuring out the length of the stadium where the footraces were to be held: he took a deep breath and sprinted until he had to draw breath again, and that was the length of the stadium.
For the sixth labor, Eurystheus sent Heracles to Stymphalus, a town in northeast Arcadia. There was a beautiful lake there, overlooked by mountains and bordered by wooded shores—but the woods had been taken over by a flock of terrible birds, which could shoot their feathers like deadly arrows. Heracles could not expect just to enter the dark forest and shoot them from their lofty perches: the foliage was dense and their camouflaged plumage hid them well. But Athena gave him a bronze rattle, which Heracles dashed repeatedly against a mountain. The clamor spooked the birds and sent them soaring from their treetop roosts, squawking in alarm. And while they were circling in the open air, too frenzied to fire their feathers, Heracles shot them down with his trusty bow.
The final six labors sent Heracles all over the world—and even under it. The seventh took him to Crete, where he had to bring back to Tiryns the gift of Poseidon that Minos had rejected: the perfect, lusty, white bull with which Pasiphae had mated. Heracles lassoed it, swam back to the Peloponnese with the bull in tow, and drove it with his club to Tiryns. After Eurystheus had seen the bull, to verify the completion of the labor, the sacred beast was set free to wander where it would. It ended up near Athens, on the plain of Marathon, where it wreaked havoc (as we have seen), until Theseus caught it, tamed it, and sacrificed it to Apollo.
For the eighth labor, Heracles traveled to Thrace, to fetch the famous mares of King Diomedes, a warlike son of Ares. On the way he lodged as a guest with King Admetus of Pherae, and this was the famous occasion when he wrestled Death to restore to life Alcestis, the king’s wife. Then he continued on to Thrace.
Heracles wrestled Death to win life for Alcestis, peerless wife of King Admetus of Pherae.[54]
Despite appearances, Diomedes’ mares were scarcely ordinary horses: their preferred food was human flesh. There were four of them, so that Heracles stood no chance against them, but he had expressly been forbidden to take his nephew Iolaus or anyone else to help him. He had to manage by himself. But he had had plenty of time to think up a plan that was simplicity itself. As soon as he arrived, he picked up Diomedes himself and flung him into the mares’ paddock. While the creatures were gorging themselves on their erstwhile master, he crept up on them and bridled them. Since it was Diomedes who had trained them in their man-eating ways, his death released them from the spell.
The horses allowed themselves to be harnessed to a chariot, but they were hardly tame, and they shot off in entirely the wrong direction, to the north instead of the south. In Scythia they encountered bitter weather. Heracles burrowed under his lionskin to rest, but while he was asleep the horses, which had been rooting around in the snow for something edible, were silently spirited away, leaving only the chariot yoke to which they had been harnessed.
The next morning, Heracles went in search of his lost horses, and came upon a cave where there lived a curious creature. The elegant form of a beautiful woman ended not in legs, but in a viper’s tail. Echidna was her name, and she confessed to hiding Heracles’ horses, but refused to part with them until he had slept with her. She conceived three boys, and before he left Heracles made her a magnificent bow. Whichever of his sons, when they grew up, could draw the bow would be the ruler of the land—and it was the youngest, Scythes, who managed the feat, and became the first king of Scythia.
Finally, Heracles drove the horses in triumph back to Tiryns, where Eurystheus dedicated them to queenly Hera and set them free.
Diomedes trained his mares as man-eaters; Heracles cured the habit by feeding them their master.[55]
For the ninth labor, Eurystheus ordered Heracles to bring him back the golden war-belt of the Amazon queen Hippolyta, as proof that he had rid the world of the barbarous troublemakers. The belt had been made for Hippolyta by the war-god Ares himself, and rendered its wearer invincible. The Amazons, warrior women who live by themselves and take in men only for pleasure and procreation, make their home in Scythia, at the northern edge of the world, and are famed for their martial prowess.
Heracles and his allies (including Peleus, Telamon, and the ever-loyal Iolaus) lay in ambush for the queen’s sister Melanippe, captured her, and then sent a message to Hippolyta, demanding the belt as ransom for their captive. Hippolyta sent the belt back with the messenger straight away, but she had no intention of giving it up, or of sacrificing her sister. The Greek heroes were about to re-embark, prize in hand, for the voyage back to Greece, when the Amazons attacked. The battle was fierce, but it was an utter defeat for the warrior women. Telamon slew Melanippe, while Heracles himself killed Hippolyta. He took the magic belt back to Tiryns, and even now it is displayed in the temple of Hera at Argos.
On his way back from Scythia with the belt, Heracles stopped at Troy—and fell into another adventure. It so happened that he found Hesione, the daughter of the Trojan king Laomedon, helplessly bound to a rock, the unwilling victim of a sea monster. In retaliation for Laomedon’s failure to pay him his due for building the walls of Troy, Poseidon had commanded the sea to rise up and flood the farmland up to the city walls; and he had sent the foul, fanged beast to devastate the remaining land and bring the king to his knees. Laomedon consulted an oracle and was told that he would have to sacrifice Hesione, but he was not resigned to this course of action alone. He also announced that whoever could save his daughter from death and free the land from the monster would receive as his reward immortal horses. These were the noble steeds that Laomedon’s grandfather Tros had been given by Zeus in compensation for the loss of his son Ganymede, whom Zeus loved and took up to Olympus.
Wise Athena and the Trojans built for Heracles a sturdy barrier close to the shoreline. Heracles hid behind it and waited for the monster to emerge from the depths of the sea. When it came, it opened wide its stinking jaws to swallow Hesione, and the fair maiden swooned from the stench. But Heracles leapt out of his hiding-place and dived into the monster’s gaping mouth. The surest way to kill it was from the inside, disgusting though the prospect was. Once he had stabbed the monster to death and hacked his way out of the horrid pile of flesh and intestines, the waters receded from the Trojan plain. Heracles freed Hesione and restored her to the arms of her parents, and sailed back home with the horses. But Laomedon cheated and gave him not the immortal mares of Tros, but ordinary horses. He would pay for it.
For the tenth labor, Heracles had to drive back to Tiryns the red cattle of Geryon. There were many obstacles. For a start, Geryon lived on the island of Erytheia, which was situated as far west as it is possible to go, where the sun sets and the entrance to Hades is located, on the far side of the river Ocean, that none dare even think of crossing. Then Geryon himself—the offspring of Chrysaor and Callirhoe, the daughter of Ocean—was a terrible creature: three huge human bodies tapered down to a single waist, from which three pairs of legs sprouted, and the whole was topped with heads of such hideous ugliness that he resembled his grandmother, the Gorgon Medusa, thrice multiplied. Finally, his cattle were tended by a gigantic cowherd and a savage two-headed dog, Orthus, another of the dread children of Typhoeus.
There was no way that Heracles could get to Erytheia without help. The island is so mysterious that many people deny its existence altogether, or consign it to the realm of myth. Helios the all-seeing sun would know of its whereabouts, so first Heracles had to travel to the far east, to catch the sun just as he rose. But when Heracles consulted him, Helios refused to help—until Heracles notched an arrow to his bow and threatened him. Then the bright shiner gave Heracles a fabulous golden cup, which would convey him to the western edge of the world.
No sooner had Heracles embarked in the cup on Ocean than the river threw up choppy waves with which to swamp the hero. This time it was Ocean’s turn to feel the force of Heracles’ dark-browed anger and the power of his threats. He promptly subsided, and conveyed Heracles in his cup from the far east to the far west. The voyage took months, or it might have been instantaneous, but once Heracles reached Erytheia, he was on familiar ground: there was only a trio of horrible monsters to deal with.
“Then the bright-shiner gave Heracles a fabulous golden cup, which would convey him to the western edge of the world.”[56]
He made short work of killing all three. He shot down the gigantic cowherd from afar with his arrows, and did the same for Orthus when it charged at him, both jaws slavering in anticipation of meat. Then he advanced on heavily armored Geryon with his sword. The first stage was the hardest: killing one of the bodies while parrying the thrusts of the other two; but once the first torso lolled back dead, like a drooping poppy, Heracles made short work of dispatching the other two.
Then he re-embarked on the Cup of Helios, taking the cattle with him, as red as the setting sun. He made land at Spain and set out for Greece, driving the cattle before him. But first, to commemorate his remarkable voyage, he set up two pillars, one on either side of the strait between the Mediterranean and the Outer Seas. What was beyond was beyond; out there, on the perimeter, there are no stars.
It was a long drive back to Greece, and Heracles had several adventures on the way. In the land of the Celts he was attacked by the local tribesmen, who came at him in such numbers that he soon ran out of ammunition. In desperation, he prayed to his father Zeus, who sent a rain of slingshot-sized stones, which Heracles used to repel his attackers. The plain near Massilia is still littered with the stones. A little further on, two lawless sons of Poseidon, Ialebion and Dercymus, tried to steal the amazing red cattle from Heracles, but succeeded only in encompassing their own deaths. Their only claim to fame is to have fallen before the might of Heracles.
Continuing south, Heracles passed with the cattle into Italy. On the future site of Rome, the fire-breathing brigand Cacus, a son of Hephaestus, stole some of the cattle while Heracles was asleep, and dragged them backward into his cave, so that their hoof prints seemed to lead in the opposite direction. Heracles was baffled, and reluctantly set out with the remaining cattle, even though returning without the full complement might not count as a completed labor. But just as he was setting off, the lowing of his cattle was answered from the depths of the cave by a bellow from one of the stolen calves. Heracles assaulted the rustler’s stronghold, throttled him, and recovered his stolen livestock.
From Italy Heracles crossed over to Sicily, where Eryx, king of the western half of the island, challenged him to a wrestling match, with the cattle as the prize. Foolish Eryx, to listen to Hera’s whispering and think he could win! Heracles threw him to the ground three times for the match, before killing him. And then at last Heracles returned to Greece. When his epic drive was over and he reached Tiryns with the cattle, Eurystheus was fully satisfied, and sacrificed them to Hera.
The eleventh labor was just as challenging. Far in the west lived the three Hesperides, the daughters of Night. Their life’s work was gardening, and they lived in bliss, singing and dancing and tending, above all, to one particular tree in their grove. This tree, the wedding gift of Earth herself to Zeus and Hera, produced golden apples whose sweet flesh gave eternal youth. But the tree was guarded by the dragon Ladon, which was coiled, ever sleepless, around its roots; and Ladon was sibling to the dreadful Gorgons.
Again, as with the island of Erytheia, Heracles’ first problem was finding the way there, since the garden of the Hesperides was situated beyond the knowledge of men. He first visited the nymphs of the river Eridanus in the far north, where the river’s waters mingle with Ocean. They didn’t know the way, but they sent him to find the sea-god Nereus, who like all his kind was both wise and a shape-shifter. He would impart the information, however, only if Heracles managed to maintain a grip on him, whatever form or forms he changed into.
Heracles tracked Nereus down to a deserted shore. The hoary old deity was easy to recognize, because he was impossible to recognize. His features and form shimmered and dissolved even as Heracles looked at him; he was never quite what he was, always in the process of becoming something else. But Heracles knew what he had to do, and grabbed hold of him. Without a moment’s hesitation, Nereus changed into a lion—but Heracles’ grip remained firm. Then in the blink of an eye he became a writhing serpent, then fire, then water—but still Heracles kept hold of him, and at last Nereus had to concede defeat, and he told Heracles where he could find the garden of the Hesperides.
It was clear from what Nereus said, however, that the task was quite beyond even Heracles’ abilities. It wasn’t just that the apples were guarded by Ladon, but that the garden itself was unreachable, hidden behind veils that were not of this world. So Heracles wandered in dejection, and his aimless feet brought him to Egypt and Libya. In both places, he continued his work of pacifying and civilizing the earth. Busiris, the king of Egypt, had the unpleasant habit of slaughtering all visitors to his land at the altar of Zeus. Heracles let himself be bound and taken, a meek prisoner, to the altar—and then exploded into action, bursting his bonds and killing Busiris and all his attendants, freeing the land from foul tyranny.
Antaeus, the king of Libya, was a giant, the son of Earth and Poseidon, and he wrestled to death any and every visitor to his realm. His mother’s merest touch made him invincible. If any opponent did manage to throw him, that only brought him into contact with the earth and renewed his energy. So many men had failed to defeat him that he had used their skulls to construct a temple to his father. Heracles began by wrestling Antaeus in the normal way, attempting to throw him to the ground, but he soon understood what was going on. It reminded him of a dream he had once had, in which he was battling the Giants on the side of the gods … He held Antaeus above his head, off the ground, and as the giant weakened, Heracles slowly crushed him to death with his bare hands.
But these adventures were mere distractions. On and on Heracles roamed, seeking advice, and at last he ended up in the Caucasus mountains, where Prometheus lay chained to the solid rock, waiting by night for the eagle to return every day to eat his liver. Heracles shot the eagle with his bow, and in gratitude Prometheus advised him to seek out his brother Atlas, whom Zeus had punished by having him support the sky on his back forever, to keep earth and sky apart. Atlas knew where the garden of the Hesperides was, and it would be easy for a Titan like him to go and get the apples.
Heracles journeyed west again until he found Atlas standing firm, with the sky resting on his head and clouds veiling his shoulders. He explained the situation to the Titan, and asked for his help in gaining the golden apples. “I can help, certainly,” said Atlas. “But what will you do for me in return?” Heracles made various offers, none of which were acceptable. But the Titan had his own suggestion. “I’ll get the apples for you,” he said, “if you shoulder my burden while I’m away.” Heracles agreed, and with a grunt took the sky on his shoulders and head, while Atlas disappeared over the horizon.
Time passed, but Heracles’ task required all his attention and he didn’t notice its passage. Eventually Atlas returned, and indeed he had the apples with him. But the liberated Titan was reluctant to take on his great burden once more. “I’ll take the apples to Eurystheus myself,” he offered enthusiastically.
“Fair enough,” said Heracles. “You’ve well and truly outsmarted me, and now I’ll have to carry the sky forever. But, first, let me get a cushion for my aching head. Just take the sky for a moment, and then I’ll take it back.” Of course, no sooner had Atlas shouldered the sky again than Heracles picked up the apples and left. Atlas fumed with helpless rage, but soon Heracles was beyond the range of his complaints. And so Eurystheus gained the far-famed apples—but they were not his for long. Athena declared that they were too sacred to be part of the dismal world of mortals, and she took them back to the faery land of the Hesperides.
The twelfth and final labor was the hardest, as Heracles’ shade admitted to Odysseus, when the much-traveled man summoned him up from Hades. He had to fetch up from the underworld three-headed, snake-tailed Cerberus, offspring of Typhoeus. Cerberus was a kind of valve for the entrance to Hades’ realm: he would greet new arrivals with canine obsequiousness, fawning on them and wagging his tail; but should any of the dead try to depart, the hell-hound turned savage and devoured the wretched ghost. But Heracles pinioned the creature and dragged him away on a triple-tied leash, though Cerberus snarled his reluctance every inch of the way. The dark lord Hades and his lady Persephone protested at the removal of their watchdog, but Hermes explained the situation and promised that Cerberus would soon resume his post. In the palace of Tiryns, Eurystheus once again took cover in his big jar, and only peeked out to confirm that Heracles had succeeded in this, his final task. And then the hero, true to his word, returned the hound to Hades.
Heracles, a living man, had entered the underworld and come back again, against all the odds. Only Orpheus and Theseus would ever match such an extraordinary feat. Before entering the underworld, Heracles had taken one of the cattle from Hades’ own herd, and sacrificed it as a blood offering to propitiate the underworld deities. Hades’ cowherd Menoetes tried to stop Heracles stealing the cow and Heracles would have killed him, had Persephone not ordered the two apart. But the vapors of the blood of the sacrifice summoned up shades with information for Heracles, and so he met the ghost of Meleager, the son of Ares and Althaea. And though it was scarcely usual for a living person to enter into a contract with one of the dead, Meleager gave Heracles his sister Deianeira, daughter of Dionysus, as a wife, to replace Megara, for whose death Heracles had now at last atoned.
Heracles’ trials had by no means finished with the end of the twelve labors and betrothal to Deianeira, his destined bride. No hero ever suffered as Heracles suffered. No body bore the scars that Heracles bore, or endured so much mental pain. For as he surpassed all others in excellence, so his life-path surpassed all others in difficulty.
One piece of unfinished business lay with Augeas. Heracles’ fifth labor had been to clean the stables of the Elean king, and Augeas had promised him, as a reward if he succeeded, a tenth of his cattle. He didn’t expect the hero to succeed, and when it came to it he refused to pay up. So when Heracles was free of his labors, and living in Argos, he returned to Elis to seek his revenge, and to install Augeas’s son, honest Phyleus, on the throne in his place.
Heracles arrived in Elis at the head of a considerable army. The battle was short but fierce. Heracles’ brother Iphicles died in the fighting, cut down by the Moliones, armored twins joined at the hip; but Heracles was close at hand and they did not long outlive their victim. The mission was a complete success: the city was taken and Augeas killed, and Phyleus assumed the throne instead. Iphicles’ funeral was suitably lavish.
This was not the only major military expedition Heracles organized in those days in the Peloponnese. He also launched an all-out attack on Sparta for the sake of a murdered kinsman. Once Oeonus, one of Heracles’ nephews, was passing the mansion of the king of Sparta, a man called Hippocoön. One of the king’s mastiffs set upon the traveler, who naturally picked up a stone and threw it at the dog to keep it at bay. But Hippocoön’s sons took this amiss. Angry words turned to fisticuffs, and then daggers were drawn. Before long Oeonus lay dead in the dust, and the mountains looked on impassively.
Once again Heracles summoned his friends and allies. At first Cepheus of Tegea was unwilling to leave his city undefended, but Heracles needed him and his twenty sons as allies. The son of Zeus called upon Athena for help and the great goddess gave him a lock of the hair of the Gorgon Medusa. One of the daughters of Cepheus was to raise this serpent lock high from the city walls three times in her hand, and this would serve as a sure shield for the city and protect it from all harm.
Then Cepheus agreed to join Heracles’ expedition, but so valiantly did his sons fight that almost all of them were killed, along with their father. Even Heracles was wounded in the hand, the sign of a rare lapse of self-confidence. But Sparta fell. Heracles killed the king and all twelve of his sons, and installed Tyndareos (descended from the Titan Atlas) on the throne in place of Hippocoön.
Meleager’s ghost had promised Heracles the hand of his sister Deianeira, but first Heracles had to win her. She had a rival suitor, no less than Achelous, the river-god, whose courtship of the girl had been persistent: he had appeared to her as a bull, a snake, and a composite creature, half bull, half man. In fact, fair-girdled Deianeira was about to give in when Heracles arrived.
For the wrestling match that would decide her future husband, Achelous chose the form of a bull. He pawed the ground and charged at Heracles, but the mighty hero stood his ground and took the force of the bull’s charge. He seized the bull’s horns and twisted with all his might to force the creature to its knees. So strong was Heracles, and so fierce the resistance of Achelous, that with a sickening crack one of the horns snapped off in Heracles’ hands. At last the scales of the fight tipped in Heracles’ favor as the bull’s strength slackened, and then it was only a matter of time.
Once Achelous had admitted defeat, he and Heracles exchanged horns. Achelous wanted his broken horn back, and in return gave Heracles the Horn of Amalthea—the very horn of plenty with which Zeus had been fed in infancy in the Cretan cave. This magical horn had the property that it never ran out of food or drink; every time it was emptied, it filled right up again with all the good things of the earth. Heracles’ household would indeed prosper.
So Heracles took his prize, his new wife, back to Argos. Along the way they were joined by the Centaur Nessus, one of the last of his kind—and, as it turned out, true to his nature. At one point, the trio had to cross a raging river. Nessus invited Deianeira to ride across on his back, and Heracles accepted the kind-seeming gesture. But as soon as they reached the far bank, while Heracles was still on the other side, the Centaur attempted to rape Deianeira.
Nessus tried to rape Deianeira, but Heracles’ sure aim brought the Centaur down.[57]
Alerted by her screams, Heracles looked up. The width of a river was nothing to such an expert marksman, and Heracles’ poison-tipped shaft took deadly effect. Nessus’s blood poured from the wound and mingled with his seed, which had spilled on the ground during the bungled rape. Before Heracles had time to wade across the river and rejoin Deianeira, the Centaur advised the naive young woman to gather some of this potent mixture. “It’s a love potion,” he gasped, as his life ebbed away. “We Centaurs know about such things. It will stop Heracles loving any other woman.” A wonder it seemed, and she collected a phial of the fatal drug, but told Heracles nothing about it. Heracles and Deianeira lived long and happily in Argos, and Deianeira bore two fine children, Hyllus and Macaria. But Heracles’ amorous nature got the better of him, and he fell in love with Iole, princess of Oechalia, daughter of King Eurytus. For it was fated that she should be the instrument of Heracles’ death and deification.
Beautiful Iole had many suitors, and Eurytus arranged an archery competition, with his daughter as the prize. The final round pitted Heracles against his old teacher, for Eurytus had taught him archery in his youth. Two stout bows were drawn back; two swift arrows were notched; and they let fly, master and pupil. Iole herself went to fetch the target and carry it back to the contestants: by a hair’s breadth, Heracles was the winner. But in a shameless display of unsportsmanlike conduct, Eurytus refused Heracles his prize, and the lionskin-clad hero returned trophy-less to Tiryns, nursing black vengeance in his heart. It was not Heracles, however, who was destined to take the life of the Oechalian king. Eurytus went on to challenge Apollo himself to a test of bowmanship, and lost both the contest and his life.
Now, after a while one of Iole’s brothers, Iphitus, came to Tiryns in pursuit of some horses, thinking that Heracles might have stolen them (as in fact he had). He had been searching all over the Peloponnese. In Messenia he had met Odysseus and had given him Eurytus’ far-famed bow as a gift, knowing that his father’s treasure was in good hands. When Iphitus came to Argos, Heracles feigned innocence. He treated the young man well and lodged him. But in the course of a drunken dinner, when Iphitus accused him of rustling the horses, Heracles picked him up and hurled him to his death from the high point of the city. Iphitus’ dying screams brought Heracles to his senses, and he realized what he had done—killed a guest, one who had done no more than speak the truth—and all guests were under the protection of Zeus. Another fit of madness had caused another change in the life of Heracles and his family.
The murder ran the risk of polluting the city, and who knew what plague or pest the gods would send in retaliation? Once again Heracles became an exile. This time he chose to take his family to Trachis, a town in central Greece, north of Delphi. On the way, the refugees were set upon by Cycnus, a son of Ares, who made his headquarters a cave near the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, and was living by stealing the sacrificial victims worshippers brought there as the price for consulting the oracle.
Heracles and Iolaus did battle with Cycnus, but Ares himself came down from Olympus to support his son, and the heroes were driven off. Before long, however, with Athena’s encouragement, they rallied and returned to the fray. Cycnus soon lay dead on the ground, while over his body Heracles and Ares fought, and the heavy silence was broken only by their grunts. They were so evenly matched that they might be fighting still, if father Zeus had not broken the contest up by hurling a thunderbolt between the two contestants. Ares limped back to Olympus; never before had a mortal held his own against the god of war. But then Heracles was on the way to becoming a god.
After leaving his family at Trachis, Heracles went to Pylos, intending to receive purification from the king, Neleus, and to stay there for the prescribed period of time, until there was no further risk of pollution from Iphitus’ death. But Neleus refused to purify him from his sin, and Heracles, brow darkened with anger, swore vengeance. The spirit of a true warrior is never broken by a mere setback. Heracles left, but only to gather an army and return.
Now, Neleus had twelve sons by Chloris, the only surviving child of Niobe, and one of these sons was Periclymenus, the shape-shifter. It had been foretold that Pylos would never fall as long as Periclymenus was alive. One by one Neleus’ sons were cut down in the battle, but Periclymenus’ constant changes kept him alive, and he wreaked terrible slaughter among Heracles’ allies. Finally, he changed himself into the form of a bee, and rested on the yoke of Heracles’ chariot; but even from afar Heracles recognized the bee as Periclymenus, and shot it—a superhuman feat of bowmanship.
A full-scale battle developed, with some of the gods involved as well: Athena and Zeus fought alongside Heracles, while Hera, Hades, and Poseidon supported the other side. And Heracles, whose achievements were rapidly becoming more and more remarkable, more and more godlike, succeeded in the course of the fight in wounding Hera in the right breast and Hades in the shoulder. The poison from his arrows caused them great pain, but of course they could not be killed. They made their way back to Olympus, where they were tended by Apollo.
And in the end Neleus was defeated and killed, and the only surviving son, Nestor, inherited the throne of sandy Pylos and his father’s hatred of Heracles. It is said that Nestor lived to such a great age because Apollo gave him the years that had been allotted to his brothers, before Heracles cut them down.
But still Heracles had not found the release of purification from the sin of killing Iphitus, and now his body was ravaged by foul boils and abscesses. He went to Delphi to find out what to do, but the Sibyl there was appalled at the state of the man, who bore the marks of a murderer and a brigand all over his body, and refused to reply. In anger and disgust, Heracles ran amok and attempted to plunder the sanctuary of its treasures, including the sacred tripod on which the Sibyl sat to utter her dark words of prophecy. If she would not look into the future for him, he would use her tripod to establish his own oracle elsewhere. But Apollo could not allow this, and he came down in person from high Olympus, and wrestled Heracles for the tripod. Once again, however, Heracles held his own against one of the great gods, and once again Zeus had to break the contest up.
At the command of Zeus, Heracles was sold to Omphale, queen of the Lydians, to serve as her slave for three years, as the period of purification. Hermes himself, the god of commerce, negotiated the sale. For all this period of time, Omphale kept his lionskin and weapons for herself, while he was forced to dress as a woman, and do woman’s work such as weaving inside the palace. Nevertheless, she had a child by him—a son called Lamus.
Just like Iobates with Bellerophon, she set him to clear the land of pests. First, he expelled the Itoni, the first inhabitants of Lydia, who were resisting the rule of Omphale’s house. Then he dealt with Syleus, a foul-mouthed landowner who compelled passersby to work in his vineyard. Heracles pretended to go along with the game, but instead of harvesting the swollen grapes, he swiftly drank up the wine store and started destroying the vineyard with his mattock. When Syleus and his daughter came up to protest, Heracles killed them and burned the vineyard.
Finally, he had to get rid of the Cercopes, two mean little dwarfs who played spiteful tricks on people. Heracles traveled to Ephesus, where the Cercopes had their lair, and began to search for them. Although he often got close, they always evaded him, and all Heracles heard were irritating giggles receding in the distance. But malice and wisdom tend not to coincide in the same mind. At last, exhausted, Heracles lay down to rest—and the mischievous Cercopes crept over to where he lay under a tree and began to steal his weapons. But men like Heracles sleep with one eye open, and he grabbed them before they could race away.
Heracles found a stout pole and tied the dwarfs to either end of it, as a way of carrying them off to permanent confinement. Now, the Cercopes had known for a long time—their mother had drummed it into their youthful ears—that they should beware of a black-bottomed man. And when Heracles began to carry the imps away, they at last understood the bizarre prophecy. Suspended as they were by their heels upside down from the pole, they got a good look at Heracles’ bottom—and, indeed, it was black—black with wiry hair! This caused the Cercopes no end of amusement, and they began to make crude jokes about Heracles and his black bottom. “Which wooded hills are cleft by a valley you’d never want to walk in?” “What’s black, hairy, and gases strangers?” “I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘b.’” That kind of thing. But good men laugh well, and Heracles enjoyed the jokes so much that he let them go. They have never been seen since, and the rumor is that they tried to play a practical joke on Zeus and were turned into monkeys.
After he had completed his three years of penance in Lydia, Heracles made his way back to Greece up the western coast of Asia Minor. He had a bone to pick with Laomedon, king of Troy. He had rescued Laomedon’s daughter Hesione from certain death at the jaws of a sea monster, but Laomedon had cheated. Instead of giving Heracles the promised reward, the immortal horses of Tros, he had given him ordinary horses.
Now, this was not the kind of deception that could last: as soon as the horses began dying, Heracles knew he had been cheated. So he returned to Troy with eighteen ships to claim his proper prize by force. While Heracles marched with his men toward the city, Laomedon made a sortie and attacked the ships, beached and vulnerable on the shore. On his way back to Troy, however, he fell into an ambush set by Heracles and his allies. Laomedon was killed, and then the heroes assaulted the city. Telamon was the first to force his way inside, and received Hesione as the prize for his valor. All of Laomedon’s sons were killed, save only Priam, whom Heracles, in a final act of king-making, set on the throne of Troy.
So Heracles set sail from Troy, flushed with victory, and in possession of the immortal horses. But now it was the time of Hera’s greatest folly—her final attempt to ruin the life of her husband’s beloved son. She called on Sleep, and he wove his magic on Zeus, and the father of gods and men fell into a deep slumber.
While he was asleep, Hera summoned up a savage storm, which separated Heracles from his companions and drove him south to the island of Cos.
At first, he was made welcome there by King Eurypylus, who persuaded him to stay by offering him his daughter Chalciope. As others had before him, he wanted the blood of the hero to flow in his grandson’s veins. And indeed Heracles did sire a fine son on Chalciope—Thessalus, the future king of the island—but not before he and Eurypylus had fallen out. The king drove Heracles from his palace, and the battle was so hard fought that Zeus had to rescue his son to protect him from an untimely death. He transported Heracles to a peasant woman’s hut, where the hero found refuge and escaped in humiliating disguise, wearing her clothes. But later he returned in force, killed or expelled all the members of Eurypylus’ family, and established his own dynasty instead.
Finally, after a prolonged absence, the gods allowed Heracles to resume his life in Trachis. But Zeus punished Hera for her presumption by suspending her from heaven by golden chains, with anvils on her feet. He had to convince her that her long hostility to his son was futile, for he was destined to become a god.
“The mortal part of Heracles burned away and descended into Hades, but his spirit was taken up to Olympus.”[58]
After all this time, Heracles’ passion for Iole had not diminished, and he returned to Greece still determined to win her, and to complete the unfinished business at Oechalia. Eurytus was dead, but his surviving sons would pay for their father’s treachery. Heracles returned at the head of an army and sacked the city of Oechalia—destroyed it so thoroughly, in fact, that today no one is sure where it lay. Eurytus’ sons all died in the massacre, and Heracles brought Iole into his home as his beloved concubine.
Heracles organized a splendid sacrifice, a thanksgiving offering to the gods for his victory at Oechalia. In a display of solidarity, Deianeira wove a gorgeous robe for him to wear at the ceremony. Thinking to rid her husband of his foolish infatuation with Iole, and ensure that his love for her remained lifelong, she poured the potion of Nessus over the robe, and it soaked into every fiber of the cloth.
Heracles wore his splendid new robe with pride as he approached the sacrificial fire. But before he had even begun the holy rite, the robe began to cling to his body in an uncomfortable fashion, warmed by the flames of the fire. And then it began to ravage his flesh with its acid. The more he tried to rip the garment off, the more closely it molded itself to his limbs, like a murderous second skin.
Desperate for the release of death, Heracles had himself carried in agony to Mount Oeta. While his men were busy building a huge funeral pyre, the inconsolable Deianeira seized a sword from one of her attendants and fell on it. Grimacing through his pain and grief, Heracles told Hyllus, his son by Deianeira, to marry Iole in his place.
Then the great hero lay back on his pyre, his head pillowed by his club, and commanded his men to light the fire. But none would obey—none wanted the responsibility of sending a son of Zeus to his death—save only loyal Poeas, a shepherd. As his reward Heracles gave him his mighty bow; and so his bow and arrows would come a second time to Troy, for it was fated that a vital contribution to the sack of Troy would be made by the bow of Heracles.
As the sun rose, the mortal part of Heracles burned away and descended into Hades, but his spirit was taken up to Olympus by Athena, where Zeus gladly accepted him among the company of the gods, and blessed him with eternal life and youth. He ordered Hera to lay aside her grudge and Heracles married her daughter by Zeus, trim-ankled Hebe. They live forever in bliss as gods among gods.
