Twelve Labours of Heracles
Introduction
Hercules was the name by which the Greek mythological character Heracles was known to the Romans. Heracles, to give him his proper Greek name, was the most famous of the Greek mythological heroes. To make amends for a crime, he was compelled to perform a series of heroic tasks, or Labours.
Like most authentic heroes, Heracles had a god as one of his parents, being the son of Zeus and a mortal woman named Alcmene. Zeus's wife Hera was jealous of Heracles, and when he was still an infant she sent two snakes to kill him in his crib. Heracles was found prattling delighted baby talk, a strangled serpent in each hand. Hera never sent any more snakes after that.
When he had come of age and already proved himself an unerring marksman with bow and arrow, a champion wrestler and the possessor of superhuman strength, Heracles was driven mad by the goddess Hera. In a fit of madness, he killed his own children. To atone for this crime, he was sentenced to perform a series of tasks, or "Labours", for his cousin Eurystheus, the king of Mycenae. These became to be known as the famous Twelve Labours of Heracles.
Labour One:The Nemean Lion
Heracles First Labour was to kill the Nemean lion. This was no easy feat, for the beast's parentage was supernatural and it was more of a monster than an ordinary lion. Its skin could not be penetrated by spears or arrows. Heracles blocked off the entrances to the lion's cave, crawled into the close confines where it would have to fight him face to face and throttled it to death with his bare hands. Ever afterwards he wore the lion's skin as a cloak and its gaping jaws as a helmet
Labour Two: Hydra
King Eurystheus was so afraid of his heroic cousin that when he saw him coming with the Nemean lion on his shoulder, he hid in a storage jar. From this shelter he issued the order for the next Labour. Heracles was to seek out and destroy the monstrous and many-headed Hydra. The mythmakers agree that the Hydra lived in the swamps of Lerna, but they seem to have had trouble counting its heads. Some said that the Hydra had eight or nine, while others claimed as many as ten thousand.
Only one of the Hydra's heads was immortal, but cutting it off was the challenge. To make matters worse, the Hydra's very breath was lethal. Even smelling its footprints was enough to bring death to an ordinary mortal. Fortunately, Heracles was no ordinary mortal.
The great hero sought out the monster in its lair and brought it out into the open with flaming arrows. Then he made sure to hold his breath while grappling with the beast. Heracles had the strength of ten, but the fight went in the Hydra's favour. The monster twined its many heads around the hero and tried to trip him up. It called on an ally, a huge crab which also lived in the swamp. The crab bit Heracles in the heel and further impeded his attack. Heracles was on the verge of failure when he remembered his nephew.
Heracles had a twin brother named Iphicles. Iphicles took part in a number of heroic exploits but generally remained in the shadow of his illustrious twin. Heracles employed Iphicles' son, Iolaus, as his charioteer. Iolaus had driven Heracles to the swamps of Lerna, and he looked on in anxiety as his uncle became entangled in the Hydra's snaky heads. Finally, Iolaus could no longer bear to stand aside.
In response to his uncle's shouts, he grabbed a burning torch and dashed to the fray. Now, as soon as Heracles cut off one of the Hydra's heads, Iolaus was there to sear the wounded neck with flame. This kept further heads from sprouting. In this fashion, Heracles cut off the heads one by one, with Iolaus cauterising the wounds with fire. Finally Heracles lopped off the immortal head and buried it deep beneath a rock.
Labour Three:The Cerynitian Hind
The third Labour was the capture of the Cerynitian hind. The Cerynitian hind was a female deer, a doe, and a fleet-footed beast with golden horns. It was sacred to Artemis, goddess of the hunt, so Heracles dared not wound it. He hunted it for an entire year before running it down on the banks of the River Ladon in Arcadia. Taking careful aim with his bow, he fired an arrow between the tendons and bones of the two forelegs, pinning it down without drawing blood. All the same, Artemis was displeased, but Heracles dodged her wrath by blaming it on his taskmaster Eurystheus.
Labour Four: The Erymanthian Boar
The fourth Labour took Heracles back to Arcadia in quest of an enormous boar, which he was challenged to bring back alive. While tracking it down he stopped to visit the centaur Pholus. This creature -- half-horse, half-man -- was examining one of the hero's arrows when he accidentally dropped it on his foot. Because it had been soaked in poisonous Hydra venom, Pholus succumbed immediately. Heracles finally located the boar on Mount Erymanthus and managed to drive it into a snow bank, immobilizing it. Flinging it up onto his shoulder, he carried it back to Eurystheus, who cowered as usual in his storage jar.
Labour Five: The Augean stables
Eurystheus was very pleased with himself for dreaming up the next Labour, which he was sure, would humiliate his heroic cousin. Heracles was to clean out the stables of King Augeas in a single day. Augeas possessed vast herds of cattle which had deposited their manure in such quantity over the years that a thick aroma hung over the entire Peloponnesus. Instead of employing a shovel and a basket as Eurystheus imagined, Heracles diverted two rivers through the stable yard and got the job done without getting dirty. But because he had demanded payment of Augeas, Eurytheus refused to count this as a Labour .
Labour Six: The Stymphalian Birds
The sixth Labour pit Heracles against the Stymphalian birds, inhabitants of a marsh near Lake Stymphalus in Arcadia. The sources differ as to whether these birds feasted on human flesh, killed men by shooting them with feathers of brass or merely considered a nuisance because of their number. Heracles could not approach the birds to fight them as the ground was too swampy to bear his weight and too mucky to wade through. Finally he resorted to some castanets given to him by the goddess Athena. By making a racket with these, he caused the birds to take wing. And once they were in the air, he brought them down by the dozens with his arrows.
Labour Seven : The Cretan Bull
Queen Pasiphae of Crete had been inspired by a vengeful god to fall in love with a bull, with the result that the Minotaur was born -- a monster half-man and half-bull that haunted the Labyrinth of King Minos. Pasiphae's husband was understandably eager to be rid of the bull, which was also ravaging the Cretan countryside, so Hercules was assigned the task as his seventh Labour. Although the beast belched flames, the hero overpowered it and shipped it back to the mainland. It ended up near Athens, where it became the duty of another hero, Theseus, to deal with it once more .
Labour Eight : The Mares of Diomedes
Heracles' next mission was to bring Eurystheus the mares of Diomedes. These horses dined on the flesh of travellers who made the mistake of accepting Diomedes' hospitality. In one version of the myth, Heracles pacified the beasts by feeding them their own master. In another, they satisfied their appetites on the hero's squire, a young man named Abderus. In any case, Heracles soon rounded them up and herded them down to sea, where he embarked them for Tiryns. Once he had shown them to Eurystheus, he released them. Wild animals on Mount Olympus eventually ate them .
Labour Nine : Hippolyte's Belt
The ninth Labour took Heracles to the land of the Amazons, to retrieve the belt of their queen for Eurystheus' daughter. The Amazons were a race of warrior women, great archers who had invented the art of fighting from horseback. Heracles recruited a number of heroes to accompany him on this expedition, Theseus was also among them. As it turned out, the Amazon queen, Hippolyte, willingly gave Hercules her belt, but Hera was not about to let the hero get off so easily. The goddess stirred up the Amazons with a rumour that the Greeks had captured their queen, and a great battle ensued. Heracles made off with the belt, and Theseus kidnapped an Amazon princess.
Labour Ten : The Cattle of Geryon
In creating monsters and formidable foes, the Greek mythmakers used a simple technique of multiplication. Thus Geryon, the owner of some famous cattle that Heracles was now instructed to steal, had three heads and/or three separate bodies from the waist down. His watchdog, Orthrus, had only two heads. The hound Orthrus rushed at Heracles as he was making off with the cattle, and the hero killed him with a single blow from the wooden club which he customarily carried. Geryon was dispatched as well, and Heracles drove the herd back to Greece, taking a wrong turn along the way and passing through Italy.
Labour Eleven : the Apples of the Hesperides
The Hesperides were apples which she had received as a wedding present, entrusted by the goddess Hera to the nymphs . These were kept in a grove surrounded by a high wall and guarded by Ladon, a many-headed dragon. The grove was located in the far-western mountains named for Atlas, one of the Titans or first generation of gods. Atlas had sided with one of his brothers in a war against Zeus. In punishment, he was compelled to support the weight of the heavens by means of a pillar on his shoulders. Heracles, in quest of the apples, had been told that he would never get them without the aid of Atlas .
The Titan was only too happy to oblige, since it meant being relieved of his burden. He told the hero to hold the pillar while he went into the garden of the Hesperides to retrieve the fruit. But first, Heracles would have to do something about the noisily vigilant dragon, Ladon.
This was swiftly accomplished by means of an arrow over the garden wall. Then Heracles took the pillar while Atlas went to get the apples. He was successful and returned quickly enough, but in the meantime he had realized how pleasant it was not to have to strain for eternity keeping heaven and earth apart. So he told Heracles that he'd have to fill in for him for an indeterminate length of time. And the hero feigned agreement to this proposal. But he said that he needed a cushion for his shoulder, and he wondered if Atlas would mind taking back the pillar just long enough for him to fetch one. The Titan graciously obliged, and Heracles strolled off, omitting to return.
Labour Twelve: the Capture of Cerberus
As his final Labour, Heracles was instructed to bring the hellhound Cerberus up from Hades, the kingdom of the dead. The first barrier to the soul's journey beyond the grave was the most famous river of the Underworld, the Styx. Here the newly dead congregated as insubstantial shades, mere wraiths of their former selves, awaiting passage in the ferryboat of Charon the Boatman.
There were two ways to get to the Underworld. The first and simplest was to die, a method which he was not enthusiastic about using. The other way was only open to gods or heroes, who could proceed with caution to Hades' realm via certain natural chasms and caves. The most popular of these seems have been Taenarum in Laconia.
In being challenged to bring back Cerberus to the land of the living, Heracles was faced with one of his most difficult Labours. Descending to Hades via Laconian Taenarum, the first problem he encountered was a glowering Charon the Boatman. Charon wasn't about to ferry anyone across in his rickety craft unless they met two conditions. Firstly, they had to pay a fare or bribe. And secondly, they had to be dead. Heracles met neither condition, a circumstance which aggravated Charon's natural grouchiness and caused him to glower more fiercely than usual.
But Heracles simply glowered in return, and such is the perseverance of a proper hero ,that once having set about a task, the said hero will not fail to achieve and excel. The task in this instance being glowering, Heracles accomplished it with such gusto that Charon let out a whimper and meekly conveyed the hero across the Styx.
The next and greater challenge was Cerberus himself. The dog had teeth of a razor's sharpness, three heads, a venomous snake for a tail and for good measure another swarm of snakes growing out of his back. When Heracles closed and began to grapple with the hound, these snakes lashed at him from the rear, while Cerberus's multiple canines lunged for a purchase on the hero's throat. Fortunately, Heracles was wearing his trusty lion's skin, which had the magic property of being impenetrable by anything short of one of Zeus's thunderbolts. After a long and tiring struggle, Heracles got Cerberus by the throat and choked the dog into submission.
Taking care to secure the permission of Hades and his queen Persephone, the hero then slung Cerberus over his shoulder and carted him off to Mycenae, where he received due credit for the Labour.
Epilogue
Heracles was the only hero to become a full-fledged god upon his demise, but even in his case there was his mortal aspect to be dealt with. He received special consideration because he had aided the Olympians in their epic battle against the Giants. These titanic sons of Earth had stormed the godly citadel in a hail of flaming oaks and rocks. And the deities of Olympus would never have prevailed without Heracles and his bow. By virtue of his spectacular achievements, even by heroic standards, Heracles was given a home on Mount Olympus and a goddess for a wife. But part of him had come not from his father Zeus but from his mortal mother Alcmene, and that part was sent to the Underworld. As a phantasm it eternally roams the Elysian Fields in the company of other heroes