532 THE GREEK SAGAS: GREEK LOCAL LEGENDS
spent their time playing tricks on people. They had been warned by their mother
"to beware of the black-bottomed man." Now as Heracles was asleep under a
tree, they attempted to steal his weapons, but he caught them and slung them
from a pole across his shoulders upside down. They thus had an uninterrupted
view of his backside which, since the lionskin did not cover it, had been burned
black by the sun. They joked about the sight so much that Heracles, himself
amused, let them go. Later they tried to trick Zeus and were punished by being
turned into either apes or stones.HYLAS
Heracles was among the heroes who sailed on the Argo. But he was too impor-
tant to be subordinate to other heroes in the saga, and so he soon dropped out
of the expedition. In one version he went looking for the boy Hylas, whom he
loved. When the Argo put in at Cios (in Asia Minor), Hylas went to a nearby
spring to draw water, and the water-nymphs were so entranced by his beauty
that they pulled him into the water, to remain with them forever. Heracles spent
so long searching for him that the rest of the Argonauts sailed away withoutHylas and the Nymphs. By J. W. Waterhouse (1849-1917); oil on canvas, 1896, 38 X 63 in.
The young Hylas is lured to his fate by seven water-nymphs. The artist brilliantly com-
bines English Victorian ideals of female beauty and landscape (the latter in colors of great
beauty) with psychological insight that anticipates Freud. (Manchester, England, City Art
Gallery.)