GREEK
Since the dawn of the ages, the culture most renowned for its mythology
and famous heroes is, with very little doubt, the Greek. From Perseus to
Jason and his Argonauts to the famous Odysseus, the amount of heroes,
bold, fearless, and favored by the gods, is rivalled only by the population of
gods themselves.
The position of the most well-known and famed one, belongs only to
Heracles - or, as he was dubbed later by the Romans, and even further in
time by the cartoon animators of Disney, Hercules.
His struggle was difficult not to sympathize with - a jealous Hera taking out
her rage against her flighty husband on Heracles in some very potentially
fatal ways made him both a victim and a hero. What brought him the most
prominence and fame for centuries to come, however, were the Twelve
Labors he had to perform for Eurystheus, king of Tiryns.
First, some backstory is in order. Hera, in the way gods typically went
about it, had possessed Heracles, sending him into a craze and causing him
to murder his own three children. The Delphi oracles informed him the
only way to clear him of his horrendous crime was to perform ten tasks for
Eurystheus, who, having beaten Heracles to the throne of Tiryns by mere
seconds, naturally did not look favorably upon healthy competition and
was only too eager to leap at a chances to send Heracles to his doom.
Heracles, being Heracles, overcame all of them. Although he was only
commissioned to ten, Eurystheus, in the good-natured manner of all sore
losers worldwide, refused to credit two of his tasks - the Hydra and the
Augean Stables - claiming Heracles had cheated by receiving the assistance
of others. Heracles gracefully took this all in stride, completing the Twelve
Labors with a finality that earned him a place of his own on Mt. Olympus,
home of the gods.
LABOR ONE: KILL THE NEMEAN LION
Heracle's first task had him slay the Nemean lion, a fearsome beast with
skin so thick and tough that no weapon could pierce it. As Heracles realized
his olive-wood club, and his bow and arrows were useless, he threw them
aside and choked the lion to death with his bare hands. Our hero,
understanding the great defensive advantages of having skin that could
deflect weapons better than any rock, used the lion's own claws to skin it,
and showed off the pelt to King Eurytheus as his brand new armour that he
wore from that day on.
LABOR TWO: KILL THE LERNAEAN
HYDRA
The Hydra, guardian of Lake Lerna, supposedly a gate to the Underworld,
was a ten-headed beast, similar to a serpent - if you could find a serpent
that grew back two heads once you cut one off, and with both poisonous
blood and breath. And to add to the problems, one of its many heads was
both indestructible and immortal.
Undaunted, and with a toxin-stopping cloth wrapped around his mouth,
Heracles descended into Lake Lerna to kill it, accompanied with his
nephew Iolaus. Luring the monster out of its lair by shooting flaming
arrows into its den, Heracles then set about to decapitating the serpent,
only to discover to his dismay its amazing regenerative properties. Iolaus,
however, cleverly came up with the idea to hold a burning torch to the
stump of the Hydra's chopped off heads, and lo and behold, they stopped
growing back.
Once Hercules had whalloped off nine heads, and reached the tenth,
immortal head, he deftly cut it off and buried it under a boulder just to be
safe - but of course, not before dipping his arrow tips into the venomous
blood from the Hydra's body. Eurystheus, however, displeased at Iolaus's
hand in the matter, declared the Hydra's death null and void, and sent
Heracles packing with yet another task.
LABOR THREE: CAPTURE THE
CERYNEIAN HIND
The Ceryneian Hind, or a female deer with golden antlers like a stag, could
outrun an arrow if it so cared to. And with Heracles on its tail, caring would
be most definitely on its mind.
As it was, Heracles sought out the hind for a full year, until he finally
caught it when it was drinking, by laming it with an unpoisoned arrow.
However, the task to capture the Hind was not as straightforward as it
seemed, with Eurytheus behind it. The ill-meaning king knew the animal
was a sacred animal belonging to Artemis, and hoped Heracles would incur
the wrath of the goddess of hunting by touching the creature.
However, meeting Artemis and her twin Apollo, Heracles regaled them
with his tale of his ten labors, and begged pardon, promising to return the
animal.
Eurytheus, hoping to cause more trouble, demanded Heracles hand over
the hind for keeping, but as he stepped out to claim the animal, Heracles
let go of the creature, exclaiming, "Too slow!" and probably giggling to
himself as he did.
LABOR FOUR: CAPTURE THE BOAR
Heracles then trekked to the mountains of Erymanthus, where he drove the
Erymanthian boar, a dangerous tusky-mouthed beast, into a snowbank
where he overcame the boar and lugged its hairy, steaming body back
home over his shoulders.
LABOR FIVE: CLEAN THE AUGEAN
STABLES
To add a new twist to spice things up, Eurytheus decided to make add a
time limit on this new task of Heracle's. Our hero's bargain was to clean
Augeas's stables, home to the largest amount of cattle throughout the
country, and to do it in one day. As a reward, Augeas promised Heracles a
tenth of his cattle in return for doing the dirty work. Not a particularly
exalting job, but wages were wages.
Heracles, ingeniously as ever, decided that irrigation of a different sort was
the answer. Tearing a hole into a wall of the stables and redirecting the
flow of the Alpheus and Peneus rivers with dug trenches, Heracles used the
rivers to flush through the stables, letting the roaring waters take the muck
and dirt back out of the place, and leaving it significantly cleaner.
Augeas, however, proving to have the same moral composition as what
used to fill his stables, went back on his word and refused to pay Heracles
when he learnt the hero had been sent by Eurytheus, denying he had even
promised a reward. Augeas's son, being as straight as a stick and having the
same amount of intellectual matter, testified against Augeas, saying his
father had indeed promised Heracles his cattle. Infuriated, Augeas exiled
both Heracles and his son.
Augeas's son's gesture of niceness came to naught, however, as Eurytheus
glowered at hearing of Heracle's payment and refused to count the task as
legit.
LABOR SIX: RID THE LAND OF THE
BIRDS
The Stymphalian Birds were supposedly Ares's pets, minions of the god of
war himself. With claws made of razor-sharp brass and metallic feathers
that could be launched as projectile missles at their targets, these flying
monstrosities wreaked on the land and country. (You also might be
interested in knowing that their dung was particularly noxious.)
In this mission, Heracles received the help of Athena and Hephaestus in
the form of huge bronze clappers, which created a racket and caused the
birds to rise into the air in panic. From there, Heracles shot them down
with his arrows. Those that didn't die from an arrow thudding into their
bodies never returned to Greece.
LABOR SEVEN: CAPTURE THE CRETAN
BULL
Upon sailing to Crete to locate this bull, Minos, King of Crete, willingly
gave away the troublesome animal to Heracles, who rounded it up with a
lasso and brought it back to Eurytheus. Eurytheus's attempt to sacrifice the
bull in honor of Hera failed, as Hera, angry that the bull was another
feather in Heracle's cap, snubbed the offering. At a loss, the bull was let
loose and later wandered to Marathon, where it later amazingly became
known as the Marathonian Bull.
LABOR EIGHT: ABDUCT THE MARES
These particular mares, owned by the giant Diomedes, were four
uncontrollable, frenzied man-eating horses, and the animals Heracles was
after to steal. Heracles, bringing along a youth named Abderus with him,
succeeded in making away with the four mares - although with Diomedes
hot on his heels. Heracles then made the enormous and possibly delicious
mistake of leaving Abderus behind with the mares while Heracles went to
fight off Diomedes and his men, which resulted, as he later found in
dismay, of the horses making a tasty and slightly gruesome meal out of
human.
Understandably not taking this in a very kindly manner, Heracles relieved
his grief somewhat by feeding Diomedes to his own carnivorous mares, and
took advantage of the post-feasting doze of the horses to bind shut their
mouths and lead them back to Eurytheus.
LABOR NINE: RETRIEVE THE GIRDLE
Heracles's next task was on the whim of Eurytheus's daughter, Admete,
who desired the magical girdle that belonged to the Queen of the Amazons,
Hippolyte. Hippolyte actually fell in love with Heracle's manliness,
however, and gave him her girdle out of their own free will. Not to let
Heracles get away with an easy task for once, Hera sneakily duped the
Amazons into believing Heracles was kidnapping their queen, and let the
Amazons and Greeks battle it out. However, the Greeks won out in the end,
and Heracles happily returned to Admete with Hippolyte's belt, but not
without offhandedly marrying off the queen herself to one of Heracle's
friends.
LABOR TEN: ABDUCT THE COWS OF
GERYON
Heracle's tenth quest was to travel far past the Libyan desert to Erytheia,
where Geryon and his famous red cattle resided. The quality of the cows
themselves were nothing in comparsion to the level of security Erytheia
went to in guarding them - the man, and the word "man" is being used only
in the loosest of terms, had three heads, three bodies, and six arms. His
guard dog, Orthrus, suffered similar genetic mutations, being two-headed
and distantly related to Cerberus, and was accompanied by Geryon's
herdsman, Eurythion.
Upon arriving at Erytheia, Heracles promptly dealt a few crushing blows to
Orthrus and Eurythion with his olive-tree club, and was similarly capable
in killing Geryon with his poison-tipped arrows.
The messy work being done and over with, Heracle's return home was no
less eventful. Our hero suffered from a bad case of cattle rustling, the thief
concerned later killed, gadflies sent by Hera, as well as all sorts of other
unpleasantries such as floods and half-woman half-serpent monsters.
LABOR ELEVEN: RETRIEVE THE
APPLES
The golden apples of immortality resided in the Garden of Hesperides,
Hera's own garden in the western corner of the world (or the world to the
Greeks, at that time). Hera charged the Hesperides, three maidens, to care
for the orchards and its fruit. Feeling an additional urge of paranoia, Hera
also added a hundred-headed dragon named Ladon to guard the garden.
Heracles, not to be stopped, came up with a cunning solution. Striking a
deal with Atlas, the god who held up the skies, he agreed to take over
Atlas's job for a bit while Atlas went to go fetch the apples from the Garden
of Hesperides. Atlas duly set off to retrieve the apples, and, being a relation
of the Hesperides, was allowed to steal the apples from the garden and
bring them back to Heracles.
However, the story doesn't end there. Atlas discovered what a great joy it
was not being responsible for carrying the heavens, and had no intention of
taking it back from Heracles. Heracles quickly asked Atlas to hold the sky
"for just a minute", claiming he wanted to adjust his cloak so he'd be a little
more comfortable. Atlas, not being the sharpest stick in the woodpile, or
charmed off his sandals by Heracle's charisma, acquiesced to Heracles as
our hero strolled away merrily back to Eurytheus.
LABOR TWELVE: CAPTURE CERBERUS
Heracles last and ultimate task was to bring back Cerberus, the hellish
hound that guarded the gates of Hades, barring the doorway to block iving
beings from coming in and undead wraiths going out.
Heracles entered the entrance to the underworld at Taenarum, cowing
Charon into ferrying him across the river Styx via coercion and threats.
Upon reaching Cerberus, he coaxed the dog with three heads and tails
made of countless snakes into following him by treating him nicely, the
first time this had ever been done to the animal, who promptly followed
Heracles back to Eurytheus like a puppy and was later sent back safely.
After this, Heracles was one-hundred percent entirely free of his conniving
taskmaser and of the guilt of murdering his children, and Hera, scowling,
withdrew from her constant murder attempts of our hero. Heracles left
Tiryns, and natually spent the rest of his years accomplishing other heroic
feats and adventures, and killing whatever he could in his way.
SOURCES
1. Wikipedia - The Twelve Labors
2.Encyclopedia Mythica - Nemean Lion
3.Hercules - The Lernean Hydra
4. Hercules - The Augean Stables
An Oracle ThinkQuest Site
http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00212/monomyth.ht
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