c. Having at last tracked down the lion, and dispatched it with an untrimmed club cut from a wild-olive tree which he uprooted on Helicon, Heracles dressed himself in its pelt and wore the gaping jaws for a helmet. Some, however, say that he wore the pelt of the Nemean Lion; or of yet another beast, which he killed at Teumessus near Thebes; and that it was Alcathous who accounted for the lion of Cithaeron.3
1. Apollodorus: ii. 4. 8–9; Pausanias: ix. 26. 4; 27. 1 and 31. 1; Scholiast on Theocritus’s Idyll xiii. 6.
2. Apollodorus: ii. 4. 10 and 7. 8; Pausanias: ix. 27. 5; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 29; Scholiast on Hesiod’s Theogony 56.
3. Theocritus: Idyll xxv; Apollodorus: ii. 4. 10; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 11; Lactantius on Statius’s Thebaid i. 355–485; Pausanias: i. 41. 4.
1. Thespius’s fifty daughters – like the fifty Danaids, Pallantids, and Nereids, or the fifty maidens with whom the Celtic god Bran (Phoroneus) lay in a single night – must have been a college of priestesses serving the Moon-goddess, to whom the lion-pelted sacred king had access once a year during their erotic orgies around the stone phallus called Eros (‘erotic desire’). Their number corresponded with the lunations which fell between one Olympic Festival and the next. ‘Thesius’ is perhaps a masculinization of thea hestia, ‘the goddess Hestia’; but Thespius (‘divinely sounding’) is not an impossible name, the Chief-priestess having an oracular function.
2. Hyginus (Fabula 162) mentions only twelve Thespiads, perhaps because this was the number of Latin Vestals who guarded the phallic Palladium and who seem to have celebrated a similar annual orgy on the Alban Hill, under the early Roman monarchy.
3. Both the youngest and the eldest of Thespius’s daughters bore Heracles twins: namely, a sacred king and his tanist. The mythographers are confused here, trying to reconcile the earlier tradition that Heracles married the youngest daughter – matrilineal ultimogeniture – with the patrilineal rights of primogeniture. Heracles, in Classical legend, is a patrilineal figure; with the doubtful exception of Macaría (see 146. b), he begets no daughters at all. His virgin-priestess at Thespiae, like Apollo’s Pythoness at Delphi, theoretically became his bride when the prophetic power overcame her, and could therefore be enjoyed by no mortal husband.
4. Pausanias, dissatisfied with the myth, writes that Heracles could neither have disgraced his host by this wholesale seduction of the Thespiads, nor dedicated a temple to himself – as though he were a god – so early in his career; and consequently refuses to identify the King of Thespiae with the Thespiads’ father.
The killing of a lion was one of the marriage tasks imposed on the candidate for kingship (see 123.1).
5. Heracles cut his club from the wild-olive, the tree of the first month, traditionally used for the expulsion of evil spirits (see 52.3; 89. 7; 119. 2, etc.).
121
ERGINUS
SOME years before these events, during Poseidon’s festival at Onchestus, a trifling incident vexed the Thebans, whereupon Menoeceus’s charioteer flung a stone which mortally wounded the Minyan King Clymenus. Clymenus was carried back, dying, to Orchomenus where, with his last breath, he charged his sons to avenge him. The eldest of these, Erginus, whose mother was the Boeotian princess Budeia, or Buzyge, mustered an army, marched against the Thebans, and utterly defeated them. By the terms of a treaty then confirmed with oaths, the Thebans would pay Erginus an annual tribute of one hundred cattle for twenty years in requital for Clymenus’s death.1
b. Heracles, on his return from Helicon, fell in with the Minyan heralds as they went to collect the Theban tribute. When he inquired their business, they replied scornfully that they had come once more to remind the Thebans of Erginu’s clemency in not lopping off the ears, nose, and hands of every man in the city. ‘Does Erginus indeed hanker for such tribute?’ Heracles asked angrily. Then he maimed the heralds in the very manner that they had described, and sent them back to Orchomenus, with their bloody extremities tied on cords about their necks.2
c. When Erginus instructed King Creon at Thebes to surrender the author of this outrage, he was willing enough to obey, because the Minyans had disarmed Thebes; nor could he hope for the friendly intervention of any neighbour, in so bad a cause. Yet Heracles persuaded his youthful comrades to strike a blow for freedom. Making a round of the city temples, he tore down all the shields, helmets, breast-plates, greaves, swords, and spears, which had been dedicated there as spoils; and Athene, greatly admiring such resolution, girded these on him and on his friends. Thus Heracles armed every Theban of fighting age, taught them the use of their weapons, and himself assumed command. An oracle promised him victory if the noblest-born person in Thebes would take his own life. All eyes turned expectantly towards Antipoenus, a descendant of the Sown Men; but, when he grudged dying for the common good, his daughters Androcleia and Aids gladly did so in his stead, and were afterwards honoured as heroines in the Temple of Famous Artemis.3
d. Presently, the Minyans marched against Thebes, but Heracles ambushed them in a narrow pass, killing Erginus and the greater number of his captains. This victory, won almost single-handed, he exploited by making a sudden descent on Orchomenus, where he battered down the gates, sacked the palace, and compelled the Minyans to pay a double tribute to Thebes. Heracles had also blocked up the two large tunnels built by the Minyans of old, through which the river Cephissus emptied into the sea; thus flooding the rich cornlands of the Copaic Plain.4 His object was to immobilize the cavalry of the Minyans, their most formidable arm, and carry war into the hills, where he could meet them on equal terms; but, being a friend of all mankind, he later unblocked these tunnels. The shrine of Heracles the Horse-binder at Thebes commemorates an incident in this campaign: Heracles came by night into the Minyan camp and, after stealing the chariot horses, which he bound to trees a long way off, put the sleeping men to the sword. Unfortunately, Amphitryon, his foster-father, was killed in the fighting.5
e. On his return to Thebes, Heracles dedicated an altar to Zeus the Preserver; a stone lion to Famous Artemis; and two stone images to Athene the Girder-on-of-Arms. Since the gods had not punished Heracles for his ill-treatment of Erginus’s heralds, the Thebans dared to honour him with a statue, called Heracles the Nose-docker.6
f. According to another account, Erginus survived the Minyan defeat and was one of the Argonauts who brought back the Golden Fleece from Colchis. After many years spent in recovering his former prosperity, he found himself rich indeed, but old and childless. An oracle advising him to put a new shoe on the battered plough coulter, he married a young wife, who bore him Trophonius and Agamedes, the renowned architects, and Azeus too.7
1. Apollodorus: ii. 4. 11; Pausanias: ix. 37. 1–2; Eustathius on Homer p. 1076; Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius: i. 185.
2. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 10.
3. Diodorus Siculus: loc. cit.; Apollodorus: ii. 4. ii; Pausanias: ix. 17. 1.
4. Euripides: Heracles 220; Diodorus Siculus: loc. cit.; Pausanias: ix. 38. 5; Strabo: ix. 11. 40.
5. Polyaenus: i. 3.5; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 18.7; Pausanias: ix. 26.1; Apollodorus: ii. 4. 11.
6. Euripides: Heracles 48–59; Pausanias: ix. 17. 1–2 and 25. 4.
7. Pausanias: ix. 37. 2–3 and 25. 4; Eustathius on Homer p. 272.
1. Heracles’s treatment of the Minyan heralds is so vile – a herald’s person being universally held sacrosanct, with whatever insolence he might behave – that he must here represent the Dorian conquerors of 1050 B.C., who disregarded all civilized conventions.
2. According to Strabo (ix. 2. 18), certain natural limestone channels which drained the waters of the Cephissus were sometimes blocked and at other times freed by earthquakes; but eventually the whole Copaic Plain became a marsh, despite the two huge tunnels which had been cut by the Bronze Age Minyans – Minoanized Pelasgians – to make the natural channels more effective. Sir James Frazer, who visited the Plain about fifty years ago, found that three of the channels had been artificially blocked with stones in ancient times, p
erhaps by the Thebans who destroyed Orchomenus in 368 B.C., put all the male inhabitants to the sword, and sold the women into slavery (Pausanias: ix. 15.3). Recently a British company has drained the marshland and restored the plain to agriculture.
3. When the city of Thebes was in danger (see 105. i and 106. j), the Theban Oracle frequently demanded a royal pharmacos; but only in a fully patriarchal society would Androcleia and Aids have leaped to death. Their names, like those of Erechtheus’s daughters, said to have been sacrificed in the same way (see 47. d), seem to be titles of Demeter and Persephone, who demanded male sacrifices. It looks as if two priestesses ‘paid the penalty instead of’ the sacred king – thereafter renamed Antipoenus – who refused to follow Menoeceus’s example. In this sense the Sphinx leaped from the cliff and dashed herself to pieces (see 105. 6).
4. ‘Heracles the Horse-binder’ may refer to his capture of Diomedes’s wild mares, and all that this feat implied (see 130. 1).
5. Athene Girder-on-of-Arms was the earlier Athene, who distributed arms to her chosen sons; in Celtic and German myths, the giving of arms is a matriarchal prerogative, properly exercised at a sacred marriage (see 95.5).
122
THE MADNESS OF HERACLES
HERACLES’S defeat of the Minyans made him the most famous of heroes; and his reward was to marry King Creon’s eldest daughter Megara, or Megera, and be appointed protector of the city; while Iphicles married the youngest daughter. Some say that Heracles had two sons by Megara; others that he had three, four, or even eight. They are known as the Alcaids.1
b. Heracles next vanquished Pyraechmus, King of the Euboeans, an ally of the Minyans, when he marched against Thebes; and created terror throughout Greece by ordering his body to be torn in two by colts and exposed unburied beside the river Heracleius, at a place called the Colts of Pyraechmus, which gives out a neighing echo when-ever horses drink there.2
c. Hera, vexed by Heracles’s excesses, drove him mad. He first attacked his beloved nephew Iolaus, Iphicles’s eldest son, who managed to escape his wild lunges; and then, mistaking six of his own children for enemies, shot them down, and flung their bodies into a fire, together with two other sons of Iphicles, by whose side they were performing martial exercises. The Thebans celebrate an annual festival in honour of these eight mail-clad victims. On the first day, sacrifices are offered and fires burn all night; on the second, funeral games are held and the winner is crowned with white myrtle. The celebrants grieve in memory of the brilliant futures that had been planned for Heracles’s sons. One was to have ruled Argos, occupying Eurystheus’s palace, and Heracles had thrown his lion pelt over his shoulders; another was to have been king of Thebes, and in his right hand Heracles had set the mace of defence, Daedalus’s deceitful gift; a third was promised Oechalia, which Heracles afterwards laid waste; and the choicest brides had been chosen for them all – alliances with Athens, Thebes, and Sparta. So dearly did Heracles love these sons that many deny now his guilt, preferring to believe that they were treacherously slain by his guests: by Lycus, perhaps, or as Socrates has suggested, by Augeias.3
d. When Heracles recovered his sanity, he shut himself up in a dark chamber for some days, avoiding all human intercourse and then, after purification by King Thespius, went to Delphi, to inquire what he should do. The Pythoness, addressing him for the first time as Heracles, rather than Palaemon, advised him to reside at Tiryns; to serve Eurystheus for twelve years; and to perform whatever Labours might be set him, in payment for which he would be rewarded with immortality. At this, Heracles fell into deep despair, loathing to serve a man whom he knew to be far inferior to himself, yet afraid to oppose his father Zeus. Many friends came to solace him in his distress; and, finally, when the passage of time had somewhat alleviated his pain, he placed himself at Eurystheus’s disposal.4
e. Some, however, hold that it was not until his return from Tartarus that Heracles went mad and killed the children; that he killed Megara too; and that the Pythoness then told him: ‘You shall no longer be called Palaemon! Phoebus Apollo names you Heracles, since from Hera you shall have undying fame among men!’ – as though he had done Hera a great service. Others say that Heracles was Eurystheus’s lover, and performed the Twelve Labours for his gratification; others again, that he undertook to perform them only if Eurystheus would annul the sentence of banishment passed on Amphitryon.5
f. It has been said that when Heracles set forth on his Labours, Hermes gave him a sword, Apollo a bow and smooth-shafted arrows, feathered with eagle feathers; Hephaestus a golden breast-plate; and Athene a robe. Or that Athene gave him the breast-plate, but Hephaestus bronze greaves and an adamantine helmet. Athene and Hephaestus, it is added, vied with one another throughout in benefiting Heracles: she gave him enjoyment of peaceful pleasures; he, protection from the dangers of war. The gift of Poseidon was a team of horses; that of Zeus a magnificent and unbreakable shield. Many were the stories worked on this shield in enamel, ivory, electrum, gold, and lapis lazuli; moreover, twelve serpents’ heads carved about the boss clashed their jaws whenever Heracles went into battle, and terrified his opponents.6 The truth, however, is that Heracles scorned armour and, after his first Labour, seldom carried even a spear, relying rather on his club, bow and arrows. He had little use for the bronze-tipped club which Hephaestus gave him, preferring to cut his own from wild-olive: first on Helicon, next at Nemea. This second club he later replaced with a third, also cut from wild-olive, by the shores of the Saronic Sea: the club which, on his visit to Troezen, he leaned against the image of Hermes. It struck root, sprouted, and is now a stately tree.7
g. His nephew Iolaus shared in the Labours as his charioteer, or shield-bearer.8
1. Scholiast on Pindar’s Isthmian Odes iv. 114 and 61; Apollodorus: ii. 4. 11; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 10; Hyginus: Fabula 31; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 38.
2. Plutarch: Parallel Stories 7.
3. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 11; Apollodorus: ii. 4. 12; Pindar: loc. cit.; Euripides: Heracles 462 ff.; Lysimachus, quoted by scholiast on Pindar’s Isthmian Odes iv. 114.
4. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 10–11; Apollodorus: loc. cit.
5. Euripides: Heracles 1 ff. and 1000 ff.; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 38 and 662–3; Diotimus: Heraclea, quoted by Athenaeus xiii. 8.
6. Apollodorus: ii. 4. 11; Hesiod: Shield of Heracles 122 ff., 141 ff., 161 ff., and 318–19; Pausanias: v. 8. 1.
7. Euripides: Heracles 159 ff.; Apollonius Rhodius: i. 1196; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 14; Theocritus: Idyll xxv; Apollodorus: ii. 4. 11; Pausanias: ii. 31. 13.
8. Plutarch: On Love 17; Pausanias: v. 8. 1 and 17. 4; Euripides: Children of Heracles 216.
1. Madness was the Classical Greek excuse for child-sacrifice (see 27. e and 70. g); the truth being that the sacred king’s boy-surrogates (see 42. 2; 81. 8; and 156. 2) were burned alive after he had lain hidden for twenty-four hours in a tomb, shamming death, and then reappeared to claim the throne once more.
2. The death of Pyraechmus, torn in two by wild horses, is a familiar one (see 71. 1). Heracles’s title Palaemon identifies him with Melicertes of Corinth, who was deified under that name; Melicertes is Melkarth, the Lord of the City, the Tyrian Heracles. The eight Alcaids seem to have been members of a sword-dancing team whose performance, like that of the eight morris-dancers in the English Christmas Play, ended in the victim’s resurrection. Myrtle was the tree of the thirteenth twenty-eight-day month, and symbolized departure; wild-olive, the tree of the first month, symbolized inception (see 119. 2). Electryon’s eight sons (see 118. a), may have formed a similar team at Mycenae.
3. Heracles’s homosexual relations with Hylas, Iolaus, and Eurystheus, and the accounts of his luxurious armour, are meant to justify Theban military custom. In the original myth, he will have loved Eurystheus’s daughter, not Eurystheus himself. His twelve Labours, Servius points out, were eventually equated with the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac; although Homer and Hesiod do not say that there were twelve of them, nor does the sequence of Labours correspo
nd with that of the Signs. Like the Celtic God of the Year, celebrated in the Irish Song of Amergin, the Pelasgian Heracles seems to have made a progress through a thirteen-month year. In Irish and Welsh myth the successive emblems were: stag, or bull; flood; wind; dewdrop; hawk; flower; bonfire; spear; salmon; hill; boar; breaker; sea-serpent. But Gilgamesh’s adventures in the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic are related to the signs of the Zodiac, and the Tyrian Heracles had much in common with him. Despite Homer and Hesiod, the scenes pictured on ancient shields seem not to have been dazzling works of art, but rough pictograms, indicative of the owner’s origin and rank, scratched on the spiral band which plated each shield.
4. The occasion on which the twelve Olympians heaped gifts on Heracles was doubtless his sacred marriage, and they will have all been presented to him by his priestess-bride – Athene, Auge, Iole, or whatever her name happened to be – either directly, or by the hands of attendants (see 81. l). Here Heracles was being armed for his Labours, that is to say, for his ritual combats and magical feats.
123
THE FIRST LABOUR: THE NEMEAN LION
THE First Labour which Eurystheus imposed on Heracles, when he came to reside at Tiryns, was to kill and flay the Nemaen, or Cleonaean lion, an enormous beast with a pelt proof against iron, bronze, and stone.1
b. Although some call this lion the offspring of Typhon, or of the Chimaera and the Dog Orthrus, others say that Selene bore it with a fearful shudder and dropped it to earth on Mount Tretus near Nemea, beside a two-mouthed cave; and that, in punishment for an unfulfilled sacrifice, she set it to prey upon her own people, the chief sufferers being the Bambinaeans.2