All about history book of myths and legends. ( PDFDrive )

The hero Heracles, renowned for his great

strength, was the son of Zeus and the mortal

woman Alcmene. Zeus’s wife, Hera, was

jealous of the affair and resentful towards

Heracles, and she persecuted him throughout

his life. The hero married Megara, daughter

of King Creon of Thebes, but Hera made

him go mad and kill his wife and children.

To punish Heracles, King Eurystheus of

Mycenae set him 12

apparently impossible

tasks to accomplish.

The Labours of Heracles

Heracles and the bull

The powerful bull of Crete was

the target of Heracles’s seventh

labour. The hero needed all his

strength to subdue the beast.

The Stymphalian birds

This vase shows Heracles shooting the

Stymphalian birds with a sling, a more

effective weapon than his club or bow.

CLASSICAL EUROPE

of wisdom. For the fifth labour, he

was told to go to Elis and clean the

stables of King Augeas, which were

fouled with great heaps of horse dung.

Heracles ingeniously cleared out the

stables by diverting two rivers so that they washed the mess

away. Then, for his sixth labour, Heracles had to visit Lake

Stymphalis, northwest of Mycenae, to rid it of a plague of

birds. He frightened the birds with castanets that Athena

had lent him, then shot them as they flew into the air.

FARTHER AFIELD

For his subsequent labours, Heracles had to travel farther,

leaving mainland Greece. His seventh labour was to capture

a monstrous bull belonging to King Minos of Crete. After

that he was sent north to Thrace, where he caught some

man-eating mares that belonged to King Diomedes. The

ninth, tenth, and eleventh labours required Heracles to steal

items of great value. First he took the belt of Hippolyta,

queen of the Amazons, who lived to the south of the Black

Sea. Next he led away the cattle of the giant Geryon, who

dwelled in the far west. After this, he managed to obtain the

golden apples of the Hesperides. But even these

labours were straightforward compared with the

twelfth: to go to the Underworld and bring back its guard

dog, Cerberus. To the amazement of Eurystheus, Heracles

succeeded in this seemingly impossible feat too.

THE MYTH

The labours imposed on Heracles by King Eurystheus

involved slaying horrific monsters, bringing back trophies

for the king, and other tasks, each of which was more

diicult and sent the hero on a longer journey than the

preceding one. The first labour was to kill the lion of

Nemaea, not far from Mycenae. Heracles throttled the beast

and skinned it, taking the creature’s pelt as his cloak. The

second labour was to slay the Hydra, a water monster with

many heads that lived at Lerna. Heracles found that each

time he cut of one of the creature’s heads, two new ones

grew. So he asked his helper, Iolaos, to cauterize the

stumps, to stop the new heads growing. The third labour

was to capture and bring back the Keryneian hind, a

golden-horned deer consecrated to the goddess Artemis.

This involved the hero in a long chase, but eventually he

succeeded. The fourth task was to sieze the Erymanthian

boar, a fierce creature that posed little problem for Heracles.

WITH ATHENA’S HELP

Next, Heracles undertook

two tasks that required

more ingenuity. He was

helped in these by

Athena, the goddess

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