Labours of Heracles

Heracles, Labours of The number of Labours seems to have been canonized as twelve by the scholars working at Alexandria in the third century BC, but Euripides had already spoken of twelve, and twelve were depicted on the metopes of the temple of Zeus at Olympia (c.460 BC). They were imposed on Heracles by Eurystheus and according to the most commonly accepted list were as follows.The Peloponnesian Labours

1. The Nemean Lion, an invulnerable monster, the offspring of Echidna and Typhon or Orthrus, sent to Nemea in Argos by Hera, to destroy Heracles. Heracles choked the monster in his arms, and clothed himself with its skin, using the beast's own claws, by which alone the skin was penetrable, to separate it from the body.
2. The Hydra, the offspring of Echidna and Typhon; it was a poisonous watersnake which lived in the marshes of Lerna near Argos. It had numerous heads; when one was cut off another grew in its place. Moreover Hera sent a huge crab to help it, hence the proverb ‘Not even Heracles can fight two’, spoken by the hero as he summoned his comrade-in-arms Iolaus. The latter, as Heracles cut off the heads, seared the stumps with burning brands. Heracles then dipped his arrows in the Hydra's blood, which made their wounds incurable (fatally for himself, as it proved; see HERACLES). There were various elaborations of the legend, as that the Hydra had one immortal head, which Heracles buried under a rock. The crab, which Heracles killed by crushing it under foot, became the constellation Cancer.
3. The Erymanthian Boar. Heracles' labour in this case was to catch alive the boar that lived on Mount Erymanthus in Arcadia. He drove it into a snowfield, tired it out, and caught it in a net. It was while searching for the boar that he was entertained by Pholus the centaur, to whom he gave wine. The other centaurs, lured to the cave by the smell of wine, got drunk and attacked Heracles; in defending himself he killed many of them with his poisoned arrows.
4. The Cerynitian Hind. In the usual version Heracles captures the hind alive after a year-long chase which takes him to the land of the Hyperboreans. Though female and therefore by nature hornless, this creature was said to have gilded horns and to be sacred to Artemis. According to some it lived in the woods of Oenoē in the Argolid. Its connection with the Achaean town Ceryneia or river Cerynitēs is obscure.
5. The Stymphălian Birds, which infested the woods round lake Stymphălus in Arcadia. Various reasons are given about the need for their destruction, e.g. they used their bronze-tipped feathers as arrows and killed and ate men and beasts. Heracles scared them by means of a bronze rattle (made by Hephaestus), then shot some with his arrows and drove the rest away.
6. The Augēan Stables. Augēas, king of Elis, had enormous herds of cattle, like his father Helios, and Heracles was required to clean in one day their stables which had never been cleaned before. This he did by diverting the river Alphēus so that it flowed through the yard.Labours outside the Peloponnese
7. The Cretan Bull, either the bull with which Pāsiphaē (see MINOS) fell in love, or the one which bore Europa to Crete. Heracles caught it alive, brought it back to show Eurystheus, and let it go. It wandered throughout Greece and finally settled down near Marathon (see THESEUS).
8. The Horses of Diomēdēs. Diomedes was the son of Arēs and a nymph Cyrēnē, and king of the Bistones in Thrace. His horses were fed on human flesh. Heracles killed Diomedes and fed his body to the horses, whereupon they became tame and Heracles brought them to Argos.
9. The Girdle of the Amazon. The girdle given to Hippolytē, queen of the Amazons, by her father Arēs, was desired by the daughter of Eurystheus, and Heracles was sent to procure it. Hippolyte would have handed it over, but Hera stirred up war; in the ensuing battle Heracles killed Hippolyte and removed the girdle from her dead body. In another version he captured Hippolyte's second-in-command Melanippē who handed over the girdle as the price of freedom.
10. The Cattle of Geryon. In order to obtain the cattle Heracles had to travel to the extreme west where they were pastured on the mythical island of Erytheia (‘red island’) in Ocean. Helios (Sun) so much admired Heracles' boldness in drawing his bow on him when annoyed by the heat that he gave him his golden cup in which to sail to Erytheia. At the end of the journey Heracles erected two pillars (Calpē and Abyla), the Pillars of Hercules, one on each side of the Straits of Gibraltar. Having reached the island Heracles killed the dog Orthrus, the herdsman Eurytion, and lastly Geryon himself, who was a three-headed ogre, and brought away his cattle either in the golden cup, or by a long overland route through Spain, France, Italy, and Sicily, reaching even the Black Sea, and thus having opportunity for many more adventures (see CACUS, and ARA MAXIMA) before he reached home safely.
11. The Golden Apples of the Hesperides (‘daughters of Night’). These were the apples given by Gaia to Hera as a wedding present, and kept in a garden at the edge of the world. Heracles, who had to bring back the apples, had much difficulty in finding the way and forced Nereus to give him directions to the garden. Having killed Ladon, the dragon that guarded it, he carried off the apples. According to another version he induced Atlas to fetch the apples, holding up the sky in his place while he did this. Some say that Atlas then refused to resume his burden, and had to be tricked into doing so.
12. The Descent to the Underworld for Cerberus (Heracles' last labour and the only one explicitly mentioned in Homer). Heracles, after preliminary initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries, and with the help of the gods Hermes and Athena, descended to the Underworld near Cape Taenarum in Laconia. While there he freed Theseus, but was unable to free Pirithous. (See also HERACLES, MADNESS OF, below.) This may have been the occasion on which Heracles wounded Hades himself with an arrow, as Homer mentions. Heracles captured and bound the dog Cerberus, brought him to Eurystheus, and then returned him to the Underworld. This myth perhaps suggests that by conquering death Heracles earns his final immortality (see also ALCESTIS). For Heracles at Rome see HERCULES.