Heroes: Volume II of Mythos

Stephen Fry

HEROES Volume II of Mythos

CONTENTS Picture Credits Foreword Map The Olympians Introduction Hera’s Dream PERSEUS The Shower of Gold The Wooden Chest The Two Strangers in the Oak Grove The Graeae Gorgon Island Andromeda and Cassiopeia The Return to Seriphos HERACLES The Line of Perseus Snakes Alive Youth and Upbringing of a Hero Crime and Punishment The Labours of Heracles 1. The Nemean Lion 2. The Lernaean Hydra 3. The Ceryneian Hind 4. The Erymanthian Boar 5. The Augean Stables 6. The Stymphalian Birds 7. The Cretan Bull 8. The Mares of Diomedes (incorporating the Story of Alcestis and Admetus) 9. The Girdle of Hippolyta 10. The Cattle of Geryon 11. The Golden Apples of the Hesperides 12. Cerberus After the Labours: Crimes and Grudges The Giants: a Prophecy Fulfilled The Shirt of Nessus Apotheosis BELLEROPHON The Winged One Bearing False Witness In Lycia Chimerical Reaction Flying Too High ORPHEUS The Power to Soothe the Savage Beast Orpheus and Eurydice Orpheus in the Underworld The Death of Orpheus JASON The Ram Return to Iolcos The Argo The Isle of Lemnos The Dolionians Hylas Disappears Harpies The Clashing Rocks Deaths, Razor-Sharp Feathers and the Phrixides The Eagle King Three Goddesses Medea The Khalkotauroi The Grove of Ares Escape from Colchis The Journey Home The Magical Death of Pelias Medea Rises Up ATALANTA Born to Be Wild The Calydonian Boar The Calydonian Hunt The Foot Race OEDIPUS The Oracle Speaks Where Three Roads Meet The Riddle of the Sphinx Long Live the King The Aftermyth THESEUS The Chosen One Under the Rock The Labours of Theseus 1. Periphetes 2. Sinis 3. The Crommyonian Sow 4. Sciron 5. Cercyon and the Birth of Wrestling 6. Procrustes, the Stretcher The Wicked Stepmother The Marathonian Bull The Queen of Poisons The Story of the Tribute The Bull from the Sea To Crete The Dungeons of Knossos The Bull Man Abandonment and Flight Father and Son Theseus, the King Envoi The Offspring of Echidna and Typhon The Rages of Heracles Afterword Illustrations List of Characters Olympian Gods Primordial Beings Monsters Mortals Acknowledgements Follow Penguin

To all the heroes we have never heard of. Perhaps you are one.

Picture Credits

S ECTION O NE 1. Olympus. Iliad Room, Palazzo Pitti (fresco), Luigi Sabatelli. De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman. 2. Prometheus Bound, Peter Paul Rubens, c.1611–18. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, PA, USA / Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1950 / Alamy. 3. Danaë, 1907–8, Gustav Klimt. Galerie Wurthle, Vienna, Austria / Bridgeman. 4. Danaë and Baby Perseus being Rescued by Corsali in Serifo Island, Jacques Berger, 1806. De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman. 5. Perseus, Jacques-Clément Wagrez, 1879. Peter Horree / Alamy. 6. Medusa, painted on a leather jousting shield, Caravaggio, c.1596–98. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Tuscany, Italy / Bridgeman. 7. Perseus and Andromeda, Carle van Loo, seventeenth century. State Hermitage, St Petersburg / Alamy. 8. Young boy portrayed as Heracles choking the snakes (marble), Roman, (second century AD). Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy / Heritage Image Partnership / Alamy. 9. The Origin of the Milky Way, 1575, Jacopo Tintoretto. National Gallery / Alamy. 10. Heracles and the Nemean Lion, Pieter Paul Rubens. Historic Collection / Alamy. 11. Athenian Attic black-figure amphora with Heracles carrying the Erymanthean Boar, c.510 BC. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, USA / Alamy. 12. Amazonomachy, first century BC, clay with polychrome remains. Campana collection, Italy / Alamy. 13. Heracles, Attic Kylix in the style of Douris, c.480 BC. Vulci, Papal Government – Vincenzo Campanari excavations, 1835–1837 / Vatican Museums. 14. The Garden of the Hesperides, c.1892. Frederic Leighton. Lady Lever Art Gallery / Alamy. 15. Zeus Striking the Rebelling Giants (the Fall of Giants) in The Hall of Jupiter, 1530-33 (fresco). Perino del Vaga. Villa del Principe, Italy / Ghigo Roli / Bridgeman. 16. Winged horse Pegasus, ridden by Greek mythological hero Bellerophon. Official symbol of the Parachute Regiment / Alamy. 17. Orpheus before Pluto (Hades) and Persephone, Francois Perrier, seventeenth century. Louvre, Paris, France / Bridgeman. 18. Orpheus and Eurydice, Enrico Scuri, nineteenth century. De Agostini Picture Library / A. Dagli Orti / Bridgeman.

S ECTION T WO 19. Priestess of Delphi, John Collier, 1891. Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide / Alamy. 20. Hylas and the Nymphs, 1896, John William Waterhouse. Manchester Art Gallery, UK / Alamy. 21. Jason and the Argonauts Sail Through the Symplegades (Clashing Rocks). Engraving depicting Jason and the Argonauts from ‘Tableaux du temple des muses’ (1655). Almay. 22. Jason Taming the Bulls of Aeëtes, 1742, Jean Francois de Troy. The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, UK / Bridgeman. 23. Medea, Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys, nineteenth century. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, UK / Bridgeman. 24. Medea Putting the Dragon guarding the Golden Fleece to Sleep, Spanish School, nineteenth century. Private Collection / © Look and Learn / Bridgeman. 25. And plunged them deep within the locks of gold (pen and ink on paper), Maxwell Ashby Armfield, Illustration for ‘Life & Death of Jason’ by William Morris. Private Collection / Bridgeman. 26. The Calydonian Boar Hunt, 1617, Peter Paul Rubens. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna / Alamy. 27. Atalanta and Hippomenes, c.1612, Guido Reni. Prado, Madrid, Spain / Bridgeman. 28. Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1864, Gustave Moreau. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA / Alamy. 29. Red-figured Kylix, depicting the deeds of the hero Theseus, made in Athens. Dated fifth century BC. British Museum / Alamy. 30. Theseus Taming the Bull of Marathon, 1745, Charles-André van Loo. Los Angeles County Museum of Art / Alamy. 31. The Toreador Fresco, Knossos Palace, Crete, c.1500 BC (fresco) / National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece / Bridgeman. 32. The Tribute to the Minotaur, woodcut engraving from the original painting by Auguste Gendron, 1882. Glasshouse Images / Alamy. 33. The Legend of Theseus with a Detail of the Cretan Labyrinth (engraving), sixteenth century. Private Collection / Bridgeman. 34. Attic bilingual eye-cup with black-figure interior depicting running minotaur and inscription reading ‘the boy is beautiful’. Werner Forman Archive / Bridgeman. 35. Landscape with Fall of Icarus, Carlo Saraceni, 1606–7. Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Campania, Italy / Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/Sergio Anelli / Bridgeman. 36. Ariadne in Naxos, 1925–26 (tempera on handwoven linen), Joseph Southall. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, UK / Bridgeman. 37. Statue of Theseus, Athens. © Sotiris Tsagariolos / Alamy.

Foreword Heroes can be regarded as a continuation to my book Mythos, which told the story of the beginning of everything, the birth of the Titans and gods and the creation of mankind. You don’t need to have read Mythos to follow – and I hope enjoy – this book, but plenty of footnotes will point you, by paperback page number, to stories, characters and mythical events that were covered in Mythos and which can be encountered there in fuller detail. Some people find footnotes a distraction, but I have been told that plenty of readers enjoyed them last time round, so I hope you will navigate them with pleasure as and when the mood takes you. I know how off-putting for some Greek names can be – all those Ys, Ks and PHs. Where possible I have suggested the easiest way for our English-speaking mouths to form them. Modern Greeks will be astonished by what we do to their wonderful names, and German, French, American and other readers – who have their own ways with Ancient Greek – will wonder at some of my suggestions. But that is all they are, suggestions … whether you like to say Eddipus or Eedipus, Epidaurus or Ebeethavros, Philoctetes or Philocteetees, the characters and stories remain the same.

Stephen Fry

Introduction ZEUS sits on his throne. He rules the sky and the world. His sister-wife HERA rules him. Duties and domains in the mortal sphere are parcelled out to his family, the other ten Olympian gods. In the early days of gods and men, the divine trod the earth with mortals, befriended them, ravished them, coupled with them, punished them, tormented them, transformed them into flowers, trees, birds and bugs and in all ways interacted, intersected, intertwined, interbred, interpenetrated and interfered with us. But over time, as age has succeeded age and humankind has grown and prospered, the intensity of these interrelations has slowly diminished. In the age we have entered now, the gods are still very much around, favouring, disfavouring, directing and disturbing, but PROMETHEUS’s gift of fire has given humankind the ability to run its own affairs, build up its distinct city states, kingdoms and dynasties. The fire is real and hot in the world and has given mankind the power to smelt, forge, fabricate and make, but it is an inner fire too; thanks to Prometheus we are now endowed with the divine spark, the creative fire, the consciousness that once belonged only to gods. The Golden Age has become an Age of Heroes – men and women who grasp their destinies, use their human qualities of courage, cunning, ambition, speed and strength to perform astonishing deeds, vanquish terrible monsters and establish great cultures and lineages that change the world. The divine fire stolen from heaven by their champion Prometheus burns within them. They fear, respect and worship their parental gods, but somewhere inside they know they are a match for them. Humanity has entered its teenage years. Prometheus himself – the Titan who made us, befriended us and championed us – continues to endure his terrible punishment: shackled to the side of a mountain he is visited each day by a bird of prey that soars down out of the sun to tear open his side, pull out his liver and eat it before his very eyes. Since he is immortal the liver regenerates overnight, only for the torment to repeat the next day. And the next. Prometheus, whose name means Forethought, has prophesied that now fire is in the world of man, the days of the gods are numbered. Zeus’s rage at his friend’s disobedience derives as much from a deep-buried but persistent fear that man will outgrow the gods as from his deep sense of hurt and betrayal. Prometheus has also seen that the time will come when he will be released. A mortal human hero will arrive at the mountain, shatter his manacles and set the Titan free. Together they will save the Olympians. But why should the gods need saving? For hundreds of generations a deep resentment has smouldered beneath the earth. When kronos the Titan castrated his father, the primordial sky god ouranos, and hurled his genitals across Greece, a race of giants sprang from where the drops of blood and seed fell. These ‘chthonic’ beings, these creatures sprung from the earth, believe that the time will come when they can wrest power from the arrogant upstart children of Kronos, the Olympian gods. The giants await the day when they can rise up to conquer Olympus and begin their own rule. Prometheus squints into the sun and awaits his moment too. Mankind, meanwhile, gets on with the mortal business of striving, toiling, living, loving and dying in a world still populated with more or less benevolent nymphs, fauns, satyrs and other spirits of the seas, rivers, mountains, meadows, forests and fields, but bristling too with its share of serpents and dragons – many of them the descendants of the primordial gaia, the earth goddess and tartarus, god of the depths beneath the earth. Their offspring, the monstrous ECHIDNA and TYPHON, have spawned a multitude of venomous and mutant creatures that ravage the countryside and oceans that humans are trying to tame. To survive in such a world, mortals have felt the need to supplicate and submit themselves to the gods, to sacrifice to them and flatter them with praise and prayer. But some men and women are beginning to rely on their own resources of fortitude and wit. These are the men and women who – either with or without the help of the gods – will dare to make the world safe for humans to flourish. These are the heroes.

Hera’s Dream Breakfast on Mount Olympus. Zeus sits at one end of a long stone table, sipping his nectar and considering the day ahead. One by one the other Olympian gods and goddesses drift in to take their seats. At last Hera enters and takes her place at the opposite end from her husband. Her face is flushed, her hair discomposed. Zeus glances up in some surprise. ‘In all the years I have known you, you have never once been late for breakfast. Not once.’ ‘No, indeed,’ says Hera. ‘Accept my apologies, but I slept badly and feel unsettled. I had a disturbing dream last night. Most disturbing. Would you like to hear it?’ ‘Absolutely,’ lies Zeus, who has, in common with us all, a horror of hearing the details of anyone else’s dreams. ‘I dreamt that we were under attack,’ Hera says. ‘Here on Olympus. The giants rose up, climbed the mountain and they assaulted us.’ ‘My, my …’ ‘But it was serious, Zeus. The whole race of them streamed up and attacked us. And your thunderbolts glanced as harmlessly off them as if they were pine needles. The giants’ leader, the largest and strongest, came for me personally and tried to … to … impose himself.’ ‘Dear me, how very upsetting,’ says. ‘But it was after all only a dream.’ ‘Was it though? Was it? It was all so clear. It had more the feeling of a vision. A prophecy, perhaps. I have had them before. You know I have.’ This was true. Hera’s role as goddess of matrimony, family, decorum and good order made it easy to forget that she was also powerfully endowed with insight. ‘How did it all end?’ ‘Strangely. We were saved by your friend Prometheus and …’ ‘He is not my friend,’ snaps Zeus. Any mention of Prometheus is barred on Olympus. To Zeus the sound of his once dear friend’s name is like lemon juice on a cut. ‘If you say so, my dear, I am merely telling you what I dreamed, what I saw. You know, the strange thing is that Prometheus had with him a mortal man. And it was this human that pulled the giant off me, threw him down from Olympus and saved us all.’ ‘A man, you say?’ ‘Yes. A human. A mortal hero. And in my dream it was clear to me, I am not sure how or why, but it was clear, so clear, that this man was descended from the line of Perseus.’ ‘Perseus, you say?’ ‘Perseus. There could be no doubt about it. The nectar is at your elbow, my dear …’ Zeus passes the jar down the table. Perseus. There’s a name he hasn’t heard for a while. Perseus …

PERSEUS

T HE S HOWER OF G OLD ACRISIUS, ruler of Argosfn1, having produced no male heir to his kingdom, sought advice from the oracle at Delphi as to how and when he might expect one. The priestess’s reply was disturbing: King Acrisius will have no sons, but his grandson will kill him. Acrisius loved his daughter and only child DANAË,fn2 but he loved life more. It was clear from the oracle that he should do everything in his power to prevent any male of breeding age from getting close to her. To this end he ordered the construction of a bronze chamber beneath the palace. Locked up in this gleaming, impregnable prison, Danaë was given as many creature comforts and as much feminine company as she asked for. After all, Acrisius told himself, he was not flint-hearted.fn3 He had sealed the bronze chamber against all invaders, but he had reckoned without the lusts of the all-seeing, all-cunning Zeus, whose eye had fallen on Danaë and who was even now considering how he might penetrate this sealed chamber and take his pleasure. He liked a challenge. In his long, amorous career the King of the Gods had transformed himself into all kinds of exotic entities in his pursuit of desirable females and, from time to time, males. It was clear to him that to conquer Danaë he had to come up with something better than the usual bulls, bears, boars, stallions, eagles, stags and lions. Something a little more outré was required … A shower of golden rain streamed down through the narrow slit of the skylight one night, poured itself into Danaë’s lap and penetrated her.fn4 It may have been an unorthodox form of coition, but Danaë became pregnant and in due time, with the help of her loyal female attendants, she gave birth to a healthy mortal boy, whom she named PERSEUS. Along with the mortal healthiness of Perseus came a pair of very serviceable lungs, and try as they might neither Danaë nor her aides could stifle the wails and cries of the baby which made their way through the bronze walls of her prison all the way to the ears of her father two floors above. His rage when confronted with the sight of his grandson was terrible to behold. ‘Who dared break into your chamber? Tell me his name and I shall have him gelded, tortured and strangled with his own intestines.’ ‘Father, I believe it was the King of Heaven himself who came to me.’ ‘You are telling me – will someone please shut that baby up! – that it was Zeus?’ ‘Father, I cannot lie, it was.’ ‘A likely story. It was the brother of one of these damned maidservants of yours, wasn’t it?’ ‘No, father, it was as I said. Zeus.’ ‘If that brat doesn’t stop screaming I’ll smother him with this cushion.’ ‘He’s just hungry,’ said Danaë, putting Perseus to her breast. Acrisius thought furiously. His threat with the cushion notwithstanding, he knew that there could be no greater crime than a blood killing. The murder of one’s kin would provoke the Furies to rise up from the underworld and pursue him to the ends of the earth, scourging him with their iron whips until the very skin was flayed from his body. They wouldn’t leave off until he was raving mad. Yet the oracle’s prophecy meant that he could not suffer this grandson to live. Perhaps … The next night, out of sight of gossiping townspeople, Acrisius had Danaë and the infant Perseus shut up in a wooden chest. His soldiers nailed down the lid and hurled the chest over the cliffs and into the sea. ‘There,’ said Acrisius, dusting off his hands as if to clear himself of all responsibility. ‘If they perish, as perish they surely will, none can say that I was the direct cause. It will be the fault of the sea, the rocks and the sharks. It will be the fault of the gods. Nothing to do with me.’ With these weasel words of comfort, King Acrisius watched the chest bob out of sight.

T HE W OODEN C HEST Tossed in the wild waves of the sea, the wooden box bounced and buffeted its way from island to island and coast to coast, neither breaking up on the rocks, nor beaching safely on the soft sands. Inside the darkness of the chest Danaë suckled her child and waited for the end to come. On the second day of their heaving, pitching voyage she felt a great lurch and then a terrible bang. After a few moments of stillness she heard the lid of the box creak and shift. All at once daylight poured in, accompanied by a strong smell of fish and the cry of gulls. ‘Well, well,’ said a friendly voice. ‘Here’s a catch!’ They had been caught in a fisherman’s nets. The owner of the voice extended a strong hand to help Danaë out of the chest. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said, though in truth he was the one who felt fear. What could all this portend? ‘My name is Dictysfn5 and these are my crewmen. We mean you no harm.’ The other fishermen crowded around, smiling shyly, but Dictys pushed them away. ‘Let the lady breathe. Can’t you see she’s worn out? Some bread and wine.’ Two days later they landed on Dictys’s home island of Seriphos. He took Danaë and Perseus to his small cottage behind the dunes. ‘My wife died giving birth to a boy, so perhaps Poseidon has sent you to take their place – not that I mean …’ he added in hasty confusion, ‘I would not, of course, expect … I make no demands on you as a …’ Danaë laughed. The atmosphere of unaffected kindness and simplicity was just what she needed for rearing her child. Guileless amiability had been in short supply in her life. ‘You are too kind,’ she said. We accept your offer, don’t we, Perseus?’ ‘Yes, mother, whatever you say.’ No, this is not the Miracle of the Talking Baby. Seventeen years have now passed on Seriphos. Perseus has grown into a fine, strong young man. He is, thanks to his adopted father Dictys, a confident and skilled fisherman. Standing in a boat in swelling seas he can spear a darting swordfish, and he can flick up a trout from the fast waters of a stream with his fingers. He runs faster, throws further and jumps higher than any other young man on Seriphos. He wrestles, he rides wild asses, he can milk a cow and tame a bull. He is impulsive, perhaps a little boastful sometimes, but his mother Danaë is right to be proud of him and to believe him the best and bravest boy on the island. The plainness of Dictys’s home seemed all the more remarkable to Danaë when she discovered that this humble fisherman was the brother of Seriphos’s king, POLYDECTES. The island’s ruler was everything that Dictys was not: proud, cruel, dishonest, greedy, lascivious, extravagant and demanding. At first he had paid no particular attention to Dictys’s houseguest. Over the last few years, however, his black heart had become more and more troubled with feelings of attraction for the beautiful mother of that boy, that impertinent boy. Perseus had an instinctive way of interposing himself between his mother and the king that was most aggravating. Polydectes was in the habit of calling round when he knew that his brother would be out, but every time he did the pestilential Perseus would be there: ‘Mum, mum, have you seen my running sandals?’ ‘Mum, mum! Come out to the rock pool and time me while I hold my breath underwater.’ It was too irritating. At last Polydectes hit on a way of sending Perseus far away. He would exploit the youth’s vanity, pride and bluster. Messages were sent to all the young men of the island inviting them to the palace for a feast to celebrate Polydectes’ resolution to seek the hand in marriage of hippodamia, daughter of King oenomaus of Pisa.fn6 This was a bold and surprising move. Just as the oracle had prophesied that King Acrisius of Argos would be killed by a grandson, so it had told Oenomaus that he would be killed by a son-in-law. To prevent his daughter ever marrying, the king challenged every applicant for her hand to a chariot race, the loser to forfeit his life. Oenomaus was the finest charioteer in the land: so far, the heads of more than a dozen hopeful young men adorned the wooden stakes that fenced the racing field. Hippodamia was very beautiful, Pisa was very rich and the suitors kept coming. Danaë was delighted to hear that Polydectes had thrown his hat into the ring. She had long felt uncomfortable in his presence and the surprising news that his heart was elsewhere came as a great relief. How gracious of him to invite her son to a feast and show that there were no hard feelings. ‘It is an honour to be invited,’ she told Perseus. ‘Don’t forget to thank him politely. Don’t drink too much and try not to talk with your mouth full.’ Polydectes sat young Perseus in the seat of honour to his right, filling and refilling his cup with strong wine. He played the young man just as Perseus himself would have played a fish. ‘Yes, this chariot race will certainly be a challenge,’ he said. ‘But the best families of Seriphos have each promised me a horse for my team. May I look to you and your mother to …?’ Perseus flushed. His poverty had always been a source of mortification. The young men with whom he played at sports, wrestled, hunted and chased girls all had servants and stables. He still lived in a stone fisherman’s cottage behind the dunes. His friend Pyrrho had a slave to fan him in his bed when the nights were warm. Perseus slept out on the sand and was more likely to be awoken by a nip from a crab than by a serving girl with a cup of fresh milk. ‘I don’t really have a horse as such,’ said Perseus. ‘A horse as such? I’m not sure I know what “a horse as such” might be.’ ‘I don’t really own anything much more than the clothes I wear. Oh, I do have a collection of sea shells that I’ve been told might be quite valuable one day.’ ‘Oh dear. Oh dear. I quite understand. Of course I do.’ Polydectes’s sympathetic smile cut Perseus deeper than any sneer. ‘It was too much to expect you to help me.’ ‘But I want to help you!’ Perseus said, a little too loudly. ‘Anything I can do for you I will. Name it.’ ‘Really? Well, there is one thing but …’ ‘What?’ ‘No, no, it’s too much to ask.’ ‘Tell me what it is …’ ‘I’ve always hoped that one day someone would bring me … but I can’t ask you, you’re just a boy.’ Perseus banged the table. ‘Bring you what? Say the word. I’m strong. I’m brave. I’m resourceful, I’m …’ ‘… just a little bit drunk.’ ‘I know what I’m saying …’ Perseus rose unsteadily to his feet and said in a voice everyone in the hall could hear. ‘Tell me what you want brought to you, my king, and I will bring it. Name it.’ ‘Well,’ said Polydectes with a rueful shrug of defeat, as one forced into a corner. ‘Since our young hero insists, there is one thing I’ve always wanted. Could you bring me the head of MEDUSA, I wonder?’ ‘No problem,’ said Perseus. ‘The head of Medusa? It’s yours.’ ‘Really? You mean that?’ ‘I swear it by the beard of Zeus.’ A little while later Perseus stumbled home across the sands to find his mother waiting up for him. ‘You’re late, darling.’ ‘Mum, what’s a “Medusa”?’ ‘Perseus, have you been drinking?’ ‘Maybe. Just a cup or two.’ ‘A hiccup or two, by the sound of it.’ ‘No, but seriously, what’s a Medusa?’ ‘Why do you want to know?’ ‘I heard the name and wondered, that’s all.’ ‘If you’ll stop pacing around like a caged lion and sit down, I’ll tell you,’ said Danaë. ‘Medusa, so they say, was a beautiful young woman who was taken and ravished by the sea god Poseidon.’fn7 ‘Ravished?’ ‘Unfortunately for her this took place on the floor of a temple sacred to the goddess Athena. She was so angry at the sacrilege that she punished Medusa.’ ‘She didn’t punish Poseidon?’ ‘The gods don’t punish each other, at least not very often. They punish us.’ ‘And how did Athena punish Medusa?’ ‘She transformed her into a Gorgon.’ ‘Blimey,’ said Perseus, ‘and what’s a “Gorgon”?’ ‘A Gorgon is … Well, a Gorgon is a dreadful creature with boar’s tusks instead of teeth, razor-sharp claws of brass and venomous snakes for hair.’ ‘Get away!’ ‘That’s the story.’ ‘And what does “ravished” mean, exactly?’ ‘Behave yourself,’ said Danaë, slapping his arm. ‘There are only two others like her in the world, Stheno and Euryale, but they were born as Gorgons. They are immortal daughters of the ancient divinities of the sea, Phorcys and Ceto.’ ‘Is this Medusa immortal as well?’ ‘I don’t think so. She was once human, you see …’ ‘Right … and if … say, for example … someone was to go hunting for her?’ Danaë laughed. ‘They’d be a fool. The three of them live together on an island somewhere. Medusa has one special weapon worse even than her serpent hair, her tusks and her talons.’ ‘What would that be?’ ‘One glance from her will turn you to stone.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I mean that if you were to meet her eyes for just one second you would be petrified.’ ‘Scared?’ ‘No, petrified means turned into stone. You’d be frozen for all eternity. Like a statue.’ Perseus scratched his chin. ‘Oh. So that’s Medusa? I’d rather hoped she might turn out to be some sort of giant chicken, or a pig, maybe.’ ‘Why do you want to know?’ ‘Well, I sort of promised Polydectes that I’d bring him her head.’ ‘You what?’ ‘He wanted a horse, you see, and somehow this Medusa came up and I found myself saying I’d bring him her head …’ ‘You will go round to the palace first thing tomorrow morning and tell him that you will do no such thing.’ ‘But …’ ‘No buts. I absolutely forbid it. What was he thinking of? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Now, you go and sleep off that wine. In future you’ll have no more than two cups in an evening, is that understood?’ ‘Yes, mum.’ Perseus sloped off to bed as commanded, but he awoke in a mutinous mood. ‘I will leave the island and I will search for this Medusa,’ he declared over breakfast and nothing Danaë said to him would make him change his mind. ‘I made a promise in front of others. It’s a matter of honour. I am of an age to travel. To have adventures. You know how swift and strong I am. How cunning and resourceful. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’ ‘You speak to him, Dictys,’ said Danaë, despairing. Dictys and Perseus walked along the beach for most of the morning. Danaë was not pleased when they returned. ‘It’s like he says, Danaë. He’s old enough to make his own decisions. He’ll never find Medusa, of course. If she even exists. Let him go to the mainland and try out life for a while. He’ll be back before long. He’s well able to look after himself.’ The farewell between mother and son was all tears and distress on the one side and hand-patting and reassurance on the other. ‘I’ll be fine, mother. Ever seen anyone who can run faster? What harm can come to me?’ ‘I’ll never forgive Polydectes, never.’ That at least, thought Dictys, was something. He took Perseus by boat to the mainland. ‘Don’t trust anyone who offers you anything for free,’ he warned. ‘There’ll be plenty who’ll want to befriend you. They might be trustworthy, they might not. Don’t gaze around you as if it’s the first time you’ve ever seen a busy port or a city. Look bored and confident. As if you know your way around. And don’t be afraid to seek guidance from the oracles.’ How much of this excellent advice Perseus was likely to heed, Dictys could not tell. He was fond of the boy, and even fonder of his mother, and it grieved him to be complicit in so foolhardy an adventure. But, as he had told Danaë, Perseus was set on it and if they parted with hot words his absence would be all the harder to bear. When they arrived on the mainland Perseus thought that Dictys’ fishing boat looked very small and shabby beside the great ships moored at the harbour. The man he had called father since he had been able to speak suddenly looked very small and shabby, too. Perseus embraced him with fierce affection and accepted the silver coins slipped into his palm. He promised to try and send word to the island as soon as he had any news worth imparting and was patient enough to stand on the quayside and wave Dictys and his little boat goodbye, even though he was desperate to get going and explore the strange new world of mainland Greece.

T HE T WO S TRANGERS IN THE O AK G ROVE Perseus was confounded and confused by the cosmopolitan clamour of the mainland. No one seemed to care who he was, unless it was to try and con him out of his few pieces of silver. It did not take him very long to that Dictys was right: if he was going to return to Polydectes with the head of Medusa he would need guidance. The oracle of Apollo at Delphi was a long way to walk, but at least it was free to all.fn8 He joined the long queue of petitioners and after two long days found himself at last standing before the priestess.fn9 ‘What does Perseus wish to know?’ Perseus gave a little gasp. She knew who he was! ‘I, well, I … I want to know how I can find and kill Medusa, the Gorgon.’ ‘Perseus must travel to a land where people subsist not on Demeter’s golden corn but on the fruit of the oak tree.’ He stayed there hoping for further information, but not a word more was forthcoming. A priest pulled him away. ‘Come along, come along, the Pythia has spoken. You’re holding up the others.’ ‘I don’t suppose you know what she meant?’ ‘I’ve got better things to do than listen to every pronouncement that comes from her mouth. You can be sure that it was wise and truthful.’ ‘But where do people subsist on the fruit of the oak?’ ‘Fruit of the oak? There’s no such thing. Now please, move along.’ ‘I know what she meant,’ said an old lady, who was one of the many regulars who came daily to sit on the grass and watch the line of supplicants shuffling along to hear their fortune. ‘It was her way of telling you to visit the oracle at Dodona.’ ‘Another oracle?’ Perseus’s heart sank. ‘The people there make flour from acorns that drop from oaks sacred to Zeus. I’ve heard tell the trees can speak. Dodona is a long way north, my love,’ she wheezed. ‘A very long way!’ A long way it was. His small supply of coins had gone and Perseus slept under hedgerows and subsisted on little more than wild figs and nuts as he travelled north. He must have presented a forlorn figure by the time he arrived, for the women of Dodona were kind. They ruffled his hair and served him delicious acorn-flour bread spread thick with sharp goats’ curd and sweetened with honey. ‘Go early in the morning,’ they advised. ‘The oaks are more talkative in the cool hours before the noontide sun.’ A mist hung over the countryside like a veil when Perseus set out for the grove at dawn the next day. ‘Er, hello?’ he called out to the trees, feeling remarkably stupid. The oaks were tall, stately and impressive enough, but they did not have mouths or faces with recognisable expressions. ‘Who calls?’ Perseus started. Unquestionably a voice. Calm, soft, female, but strong and deeply authoritative. ‘Here to help.’ Another voice! This one seemed to contain a hint of scorn. ‘My name is Perseus. I have come …’ ‘Oh, we know who you are,’ said a young man stepping forward from the shadows. He was young, startlingly handsome and most unusually dressed. Aside from the loincloth around his waist, a narrow-brimmed hat that circled his brow and winged sandals at his ankles, he was quite naked.fn10 Perseus noticed that two live snakes writhed about the staff that he was carrying. A woman holding a shield emerged behind him. She was tall, grave and beautiful. When she raised her shining grey eyes to his, Perseus felt an extraordinary surge of something he could not quite define. He decided the quality was majesty and bowed his head accordingly. ‘Don’t be afraid, Perseus,’ she said. ‘Your father has sent us to help you.’ ‘My father?’ ‘He’s our father too,’ said the young man. ‘The Cloud Gatherer and Bringer of Storms.’ ‘The Sky Father and King of Heaven,’ said the shining woman. ‘Z-Z-Zeus?’ ‘The same.’ ‘You mean it’s really true, then? Zeus is my father?’ Perseus had never believed his mother’s wild story about Zeus coming to her as a shower of golden rain. He had taken it for granted that his real father was some itinerant musician or tinker whose name she had never discovered. ‘Quite true, brother Perseus,’ said the tall woman. ‘Brother?’ ‘I am Athena, daughter of Zeus and Metis.’ ‘Hermes, son of Zeus and Maia,’ said the young man, bowing. It was a lot for a youth of sheltered upbringing to take in. The two Olympians now told him that Zeus had been keeping an eye on him since his birth. He had guided the wooden chest into the net of Dictys. He had watched Perseus grow up into young manhood. He had seen him rise to Polydectes’ challenge. He admired his boldness and had sent his two favourite children to assist their half-brother in his quest for the head of Medusa. ‘You’re going to help me?’ said Perseus. This was so much more than he could have hoped for. ‘We can’t slay the Gorgon for you,’ said Hermes, ‘but we can help tilt the odds a little in your favour. You might find these useful.’ He looked down and addressed the sandals at his feet. ‘To my brother Perseus,’ he commanded. The sandals unwrapped themselves from the god’s ankles and flew to Perseus. ‘Take your own off, first.’ Perseus did so and at once the sandals attached themselves to his feet. ‘You’ll have plenty of time to get used to them,’ said Athena, watching in some amusement as Perseus leapt in the air like a dancer. ‘You’re confusing them,’ said Hermes. ‘You don’t have to flap your feet to fly. Just think.’ Perseus closed his eyes and strained. ‘Not like you’re taking a crap. Just picture yourself in the air. That’s it! You’ve got it now.’ Perseus opened his eyes to discover that he had risen up into the air. He dropped down again with a jarring bump. ‘Practice. That’s the key. Now here is a hood from our uncle hades. Wear this and no one will be able to see you.’ Perseus took the hood in his hands. ‘I have something for you too,’ said Athena. ‘Oh,’ said Perseus, putting the hood down and taking the object she was offering to him. ‘A satchel?’ ‘You might find it useful.’ After flying sandals and a cap of invisibility, a plain brown leather satchel seemed something of a disappointment, but Perseus tried not to show it. ‘That’s very kind of you, I’m sure it will come in useful.’ ‘It will,’ said Athena, ‘but I have more for you. Take this …’ She passed him a short-bladed weapon, curved like a scythe. ‘Be very careful, the blade is very sharp.’ ‘You’re not wrong!’ said Perseus, sucking blood from his thumb. ‘It is called a harpe and can cut through anything.’ ‘It is forged from adamantine,’ Hermes added. ‘A perfect replica of the great sickle Gaia made for Kronos.’ ‘And this shield is like no other,’ said Athena. ‘Its name is AEGIS. You must make sure its surface is always kept to a mirror shine like this.’ Perseus shaded his eyes from the flashing light of the rising sun that was reflecting from the polished bronze. ‘Is the idea to dazzle Medusa with its glare?’ ‘You must work out for yourself how best to use it, but believe me, without this shield you will surely fail.’ ‘And die,’ said Hermes. ‘Which would be a pity.’ Perseus could hardly contain his excitement. The wings at his heels fluttered and he found himself rising up. He made some swishes with the harpe. ‘This is all just amazing. So what do I do next?’ ‘There are limits to how much we can help. If you’re to be a hero you must make your own moves and take your own –’ ‘I’m a hero?’ ‘You can be.’ Hermes and Athena were so fine. They shone. Everything they did was performed without any seeming effort. They made Perseus feel hot and clumsy. As if reading his mind, Athena said, ‘You will get used to Aegis, to the scythe, the sandals, the hood and the satchel. They are outwards things. If your mind and spirit are directed to your task, everything else will follow. Relax.’ ‘But focus,’ said Hermes. ‘Relaxation without focus leads to failure.’ ‘Focus without relaxation leads to failure just as surely,’ said Athena. ‘So concentrate …’ said Perseus. ‘Exactly.’ ‘… but calmly?’ ‘Concentrate calmly. You have it.’ Perseus stood for a while inhaling and exhaling in a manner that he hoped was relaxed, yet focussed, concentrated, yet calm. Hermes nodded. ‘I think this young man has an excellent chance of success.’ ‘But the one thing these – wonderful – gifts can’t help me with is finding the Gorgons. I have asked all over but no one seems to agree where they live. On an island somewhere, far out to sea, that’s all I have been told. Which island? Which sea?’ ‘We cannot tell you that,’ said Hermes, ‘but have you heard of the PHORCIDES?’ ‘Never.’ ‘They are sometimes called the GRAEAE, or Grey Ones,’ said Athena. ‘Like their sisters, the Gorgons Stheno and Euryale, they are daughters of Phorcys and Ceto.’ ‘They’re old,’ said Hermes. ‘So old they have only one eye and one tooth between them.’ ‘Seek them out,’ said Athena. ‘They know everything but tell nothing.’ ‘If they don’t say anything,’ said Perseus, ‘what use are they? Do I threaten them with the sickle?’ ‘Oh no, you’ll have to think of something subtler than that.’ ‘Something much craftier,’ said Hermes. ‘But what?’ ‘I’m sure it’ll come to you. They can be found in a cave on the wild shores of Kisthene, that much is common knowledge.’ ‘We wish you good fortune, brother Perseus,’ said Athena. ‘Relaxed but focussed, that’s the key,’ said Hermes. ‘Goodbye …’ ‘Good luck …’ ‘Wait, wait!’ cried Perseus, but the figures and forms of the gods had already begun to fade into the bright morning light and soon they had vanished entirely. Perseus stood alone in the grove of sacred oaks. ‘This sickle is real at least,’ said Perseus, looking at the cut on his thumb. ‘This satchel is real, these sandals are real. Aegis is real …’ ‘Are you trying to blind me?’ Perseus swung round. ‘Just watch how you flash that shield about,’ came an irritated voice. It seemed to be coming from the very heart of the oak tree closest to him. ‘So you trees can talk after all,’ said Perseus. ‘Of course we can talk.’ ‘We usually choose not to.’ ‘There’s so little worth saying.’ Voices came now from all parts of the wood. ‘I understand,’ said Perseus. ‘But perhaps you wouldn’t mind pointing me in the direction of Kisthene?’ ‘Kisthene? That’s Aeolia.’ ‘More Phrygia, really,’ another voice put in. ‘I’d call it Lydia.’ ‘Well, it’s certainly east.’ ‘North of Ionia but south of the Propontis.’ ‘Ignore them, young man,’ boomed an older oak, rustling his leaves. ‘They don’t know what they’re talking about. Fly over the isle of Lesbos and then up along the coast of Mysia. You can’t miss the cave of the Grey Sisters. It’s under a rock shaped like a weasel.’ ‘Like a stoat, you mean,’ squeaked a young sapling. ‘An otter, surely?’ ‘I’d’ve said a pine marten.’ ‘The rock resembles a polecat and nothing else.’ ‘I said weasel and I meant weasel,’ said the old one, quivering all over so that his leaves shook. ‘Thanks,’ said Perseus. ‘I really must be going.’ Throwing his satchel over his shoulder, attaching the scythe to his belt and settling the shield firmly in his grip, Perseus frowned in on himself to awaken the sandals and with a great shout of triumph shot up into the blue of the sky. ‘Good luck,’ cried the oaks. ‘Look out for a rock in the shape of a marmoset …’

T HE G RAEAE By the time Perseus landed neatly, toes down, on the Mysian shore, outside a cave whose outer formation resembled, to his eyes at least, a squashed rat, the day was all but spent. Looking westwards he could see that HELIOS’s sun-chariot was turning from copper to red as it neared the land of the HESPERIDES and the end of its daily round. As Perseus approached the mouth of the cave he slipped on the cap that Hermes had given him, the Hood of Hades. The moment it was on his head, the long shadow that had been striding along the sand beside him disappeared. Everything was darker and a little misty with the hood over his eyes, but he could see well enough. ‘I won’t be needing these,’ he said to himself, leaving the scythe, satchel and shield on the sand outside the cave. He followed the murmur of voices and a glimmer of light through a long, winding passageway. The light grew brighter and the voices louder. ‘It’s my turn to have the tooth!’ ‘I’ve only just put it in.’ ‘Then PEMPHREDO should let me have the eye at least.’ ‘Oh, stop moaning, ENYO …’ As Perseus entered the chamber he saw, held in the flickering light of a lamp that hung over them, three fantastically old women. Their ragged clothes, straggling hair and sagging flesh were as grey as the stones of the cave. In the bare lower gum of one of the sisters jutted up a single yellow tooth. In the eye socket of another sister a solitary eyeball darted back and forth and up and down in the most alarming manner. It was just as Hermes had said, one eye and one tooth between them. A pile of bones lay heaped on the floor. The sister with the tooth was gnawing the side of one, stripping it of its rotten flesh. The sister with the eye had picked up another bone and was inspecting it closely and lovingly. The third sister, with no eye and no tooth, raised her head with a jerk and sniffed the air sharply. ‘I smell a mortal,’ she shrieked, stabbing a finger in the direction of Perseus. ‘Look, Pemphredo. Use the eye!’ Pemphredo, the sister with the eye, cast wild glances in all directions. ‘There’s nothing there, Enyo.’ ‘I tell you there is. A mortal. I smell it!’ cried Enyo. ‘Bite it, DINO.fn11 Use your tooth. Bite! Bite it to death!’ Perseus stole silently closer, taking great care not to step on any cast-off bones. ‘Give me the eye, Pemphredo! I swear to you I smell mortal flesh.’ ‘Here, take it.’ Pemphredo took the eye from her socket and the one called Enyo stretched out her hand greedily to receive it. Stepping forward Perseus snatched up the eye himself. ‘What was that? Who? What?’ Perseus had brushed Dino, the sister with the tooth. Taking advantage of her open-mouthed astonishment he plucked the tooth from her mouth and stepped back with a loud laugh. ‘Good evening, ladies.’ ‘The tooth! The tooth, someone has taken the tooth!’ ‘Where is the eye? Who has the eye?’ ‘I have your tooth, sisters, and I have your eye too.’ ‘Give them back!’ ‘You have no right.’ ‘All in good time,’ said Perseus. ‘I could return this cloudy old eye and this rotten old tooth. I’ve no use for them. Of course, I could just as easily throw them into the sea …’ ‘No! No! We beg of you!’ ‘Beg …’ ‘It all depends on you,’ said Perseus, walking round and round them. As he passed they shot out their bony arms to try and grab him, but he was always too quick. ‘What do you want?’ ‘Information. You are old. You know things.’ ‘What would you have us tell you?’ ‘How to find your sisters, the Gorgons.’ ‘What do you want with them?’ ‘I’d like to take Medusa home with me. Part of her at least.’ ‘Ha! You’re a fool. She will petrify you.’ ‘That’s turn you to stone.’ ‘I’m not ignorant. I know what “petrify” means,’ said Perseus. ‘You let me worry about all that, just tell me where to find the island where they live.’ ‘You mean our lovely sisters harm.’ ‘Tell me or I throw first the eye and then the tooth into the sea.’ ‘Libya!’ cried the one called Enyo. ‘The island is off the coast of Libya.’ ‘Are you satisfied?’ ‘They’ll kill you and feast on your flesh and we shall hear of it and cheer,’ screeched Dino. ‘Now, give us our eye and our tooth.’ ‘Certainly,’ said Perseus. These hags might be old, he told himself, but they have sharp claws and they are fierce and vengeful. I had better buy myself some time. ‘Tell you what, let’s make a game of it,’ he said. ‘Close your eyes and count to a hundred … Oh. Of course. No need to close your eyes. Just count to a hundred while I hide the tooth and eye. They’ll be somewhere in this cave, I promise. No cheating. One, two, three, four …’ ‘Damn you, child of Prometheus!’ ‘May your flesh rot from your bones!’ Perseus moved swiftly round their chamber, counting with them. ‘You should be thanking me … nineteen, twenty … not cursing me,’ he said as they hurled fouler and filthier obscenities at him. ‘Forty-five, forty-six … surely this is the most exciting thing to have happened to you for centuries … sixty-eight, sixty-nine … you will be talking about this day for ages and ages to come. Don’t start looking till you reach a hundred, no cheating, now!’ As Perseus returned along the passageway towards the mouth of the cave and the open beach he heard the voices of the Graeae behind him squabbling, screaming and spitting. ‘Out of the way, out of the way!’ ‘I have it, I have it!’ ‘That’s just a chip of bone, you old fool.’ ‘The eye! I have the eye!’ ‘Let go of my tongue!’

G ORGON I SLAND Perseus smiled to himself as he buckled on the scythe and shield. He had hidden the tooth and eyeball well. The Grey Ones would be scrabbling for them for days. He felt sure that they would not think to break off their search to summon some bird or sea creature to warn their sisters of his approach. Even if they did, he had his marvellous armoury. The shield, Aegis, though … Why had Athena laid such stress on his keeping its surface polished to a high shine? He rose above the surface of the sea and pointed himself in the direction of the Libyan coast. The moon-chariot of SELENE was high in the sky as Perseus skimmed the sea searching for the Gorgon’s home. He came upon it soon enough, more of a series of rocky outcrops than an island and entirely shrouded in fog. He descended low enough to pierce the mist. Scant moonlight penetrated here. He realised as he hovered over the island that what he had taken for rock formations were in fact lifelike statues: seals, seabirds – and men. Even some women and children. How extraordinary to find a sculpture garden in so remote and sombre a place. Now he could see the Gorgons. The three lay in a circle fast asleep, arms clasped around each other in a tender sisterly embrace. It was not quite as his mother had described to him. All three had tusks for teeth and claws of bronze, just as she had said, but only one had living, writhing serpents for hair. This must be Medusa. She was smaller than the others. In the moonlight her face was smooth. The other two had scaly skin that drooped in pouches. Medusa’s eyes were shut while she slept and Perseus could not resist looking at the closed lids, knowing that they only had to open for a second for his life to be ended. One single glance and – Oh, fool that he was! The statues standing all around were not art, they were not the work of some gifted sculptor, they were the petrified forms of those who had met Medusa’s gaze. The sandals silently beat the air as he hovered. He unsheathed the curved blade of the harpe and held out the shield before him. What should he do next? Suddenly he understood why Athena had charged him to keep it polished. He could not look directly into the eyes of Medusa, but her reflection … that was another thing. He held the shield out and tilted it down so that he could see the sleeping group reflected quite clearly in the surface of the shining bronze. Anyone who has ever tried to snip a recalcitrant eyebrow in the bathroom mirror will know how difficult it is to perform so delicate a task accurately in the backwards world of reflection without stabbing oneself. Left is right and right is left, near is far and far is near. Perseus adjusted the mirror so that he could see himself swinging the scythe backwards and forwards. But there was nothing to see! How could the mirror not work? Of course! Cursing himself for his slowness of wits, he removed the Hood of Hades and tucked it into the satchel. This was no easy task. With a heavy sickle in one hand and the even heavier shield in the other, with his mind half on the danger of waking the Gorgons and half on keeping his sandals hovering at just the right altitude, he was sweating and panting hard by the time he had tucked the hood away and was ready to concentrate on practising his moves. His reflection now clearly visible in the shield, he taught himself how to swing his sword arm in the mirror image. Without knowing it he had dropped a little lower. The swishing of the blade awoke the vipers on Medusa’s head and they began to spit and rear. Changing the angle of the shield, Perseus saw they were looking directly at him and hissing. At any moment Medusa would wake – and perhaps her indestructible sisters too. He closed in on Medusa’s sleeping form, weapon at the ready. In the shield he saw her stir and her eyelids flutter. Her eyes opened. He didn’t know what he had expected, ugliness and horror, perhaps, certainly not beauty. But Medusa’s eyes, for all their blaze and fury, had a quality that made him want to turn from the reflected image and look deep into them for real. He pushed the feeling down and raised his blade higher. Medusa was staring into the shield. She lifted her head to look at Perseus directly, giving him a clear sight of her throat. The harpe swept through the air and he felt the blade slice through the flesh of her neck. He lunged down to snatch away the head and pushed it into his satchel before the thrashing, dying snakes could fix their fangs into him. He tried to fly up and away, but something was tugging at his ankles. The other Gorgons, Stheno and Euryale, awake and screaming, were pulling him down. With a mighty effort he kicked and kicked, urging the sandals up. The screeches of the outraged sisters rang in his ears as he rocketed through the ceiling of fog and into the clear moonlit air, with never a backward glance. Perhaps he should have looked back. A most remarkable sight would have met his eyes. Since the day Poseidon violated her in Athena’s temple, Medusa had held in her womb twins from that union. With her head removed, they had at last a place from which they could be born. The first to rise out of the gaping wound was a young man bearing a weapon of shining gold. His name was to be CHRYSAOR, which means ‘Golden Sword’. Another form now emerged from the open throat of the dead Medusa. Not since the lovely APHRODITE arose from the frothing seed and blood of Ouranos’s severed testicles was something so transcendentally beautiful born of something so appallingly foul. Chrysaor’s twin was a shimmering white, winged horse. It pawed the air and flew up into the sky leaving its brother and the two shrieking sisters behind. The name of the horse was PEGASUS.

A NDROMEDA AND C ASSIOPEIA ‘I did it! I did it! I did it!’ Perseus shouted to the moon. Indeed he had. With Medusa’s head safely stored inside the satchel he had originally dismissed as so uninteresting, he flew on in a state of intoxicated excitement. Indeed, so excited was he, so high on the thrill of his achievement, that he took a wrong turn. Instead of turning left he turned right, and soon found himself flying along a strange coastline. Mile after mile he flew, not tiring, but growing increasingly bewildered by the unfamiliar shore. And suddenly, in the first light of dawn, the most extraordinary sight met his eyes. A beautiful girl, naked and chained to a rock. He flew up to her. ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘What does it look like I’m doing? And I’ll thank you to keep your eyes up on my face, if you don’t mind.’ ‘I’m sorry … I couldn’t help wondering … is there any way I can help you? … My name is Perseus.’ ‘ANDROMEDA, pleased to meet you.’ ‘How are you staying up in the air?’ ‘It’s a long story, but more to the point, why are you chained to this rock?’ ‘Well …’ Andromeda sighed. ‘It was my mother, really. It’s a long story too, but I’ve nothing better to do so I might as well tell you. My parents, CEPHEUS and CASSIOPEIA, are the king and queen.’ ‘Where are we exactly?’ ‘Ethiopia, where did you think we were?’ ‘Sorry, go on …’ ‘It was all mother’s fault. She remarked out loud one day that I was more beautiful than all the NEREIDS and OCEANIDS in the world.’fn12 ‘Well, you are,’ said Perseus. ‘Oh shush. Poseidon heard this boast and he was so outraged he sent a monstrous sea dragon called CETUS to ravage the shoreline.fn13 No shipping could get through and the people began to starve. We rely on trade, you see. The priests and priestesses were consulted and they told my parents that the only way to appease the god and call off Cetus was to have me chained naked to the rocks. Cetus would devour me, but the kingdom would be saved. Oh no – there he is now – look, look!’ Perseus looked round and saw a great sea beast arching through the waves towards them. Without a moment’s thought he dived into the water to confront it. Andromeda looked on with feelings of admiration and relief that slowly turned to despair when, as the minutes passed, Perseus failed to surface. She could not know that he held the Seriphos underwater breath-holding record. Nor could she know that he was in possession of a blade so keen it could cut through even Cetus’s hard horny scales. She let out a great cry of relief when Perseus’s cheerful and triumphant face finally burst up through the waves, surrounded by a boiling mess of blubber and blood. He waved shyly before flying up to Andromeda once more. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘I just can’t believe it! How did you do that?’ ‘Oh, well,’ said Perseus, breaking her shackles with two swift strokes of the harpe. ‘I’ve always been at home in the water. Just swam underneath him with my blade up to slice through his belly. Fancy a lift?’ By the time they landed at the royal palace Andromeda was as hopelessly in love with him as he was with her. Cassiopeia was overjoyed to see her daughter alive and thrilled to think of the handsome young hero becoming her son-in-law. Cepheus the king said meekly. ‘Don’t forget, my dear, that Andromeda is already promised to my brother PHINEUS.’ ‘Oh poo,’ said Cassiopeia, ‘a loose agreement, no kind of a binding engagement. He’ll understand.’ Phineus did not understand. As a brother of AEGYPTUS and descendant of NILUSfn14, he believed that an alliance with Andromeda would allow him to unite the most powerful kingdoms of the Nile. He was not about to let some puppy with a scythe take that away from him. The rumours of the puppy being able to fly he discounted. So it was that the music and laughter of the betrothal banquet in the great hall of the Ethiopian palace was silenced by Phineus and a large body of men storming in, armed to the teeth. ‘Where is he?’ roared Phineus. ‘Where is the boy who dares come between me and Andromeda?’ Up on the top table where the royal party was feasting, Cassiopeia and Cepheus looked on in some embarrassment as Perseus rose uncertainly to his feet. ‘I think there may have been some mistake,’ he said. ‘You’re damned right there has,’ said Phineus. ‘And you made it. That girl was promised to me months ago.’ Perseus turned to Andromeda. ‘Is this true?’ ‘It is true,’ she said. ‘But I was never consulted. He’s my uncle, for heaven’s sake.’fn15 ‘What’s that got to do with it? You’re mine and that’s an end to it. And you,’ snarled Phineus, pointing his sword at Perseus, ‘you have two minutes to leave the palace and the kingdom, unless you want your head to decorate the gatepost.’ Perseus looked down across the hall towards Phineus. There must have been sixty armed men behind him. But talk of heads decorating gateposts gave Perseus an idea that made his head spin. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you two minutes to leave the palace – unless you want you and your men to decorate this hall.’ Phineus blew out his lips in amused contempt. ‘You’ve got a nerve, I’ll give you that. A purse of gold to the first to fire an arrow through this brat’s insolent neck.’ The armed men roared in delight and started to draw their bows. ‘Those with me, get behind me!’ shouted Perseus, opening his satchel and bringing out the head of Medusa. Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Cepheus and the wedding guests on the top table shrieked in astonishment as Phineus and his sixty men instantly froze. ‘Why aren’t they moving?’ ‘Oh, my lord – they’re stone!’ Perseus put the head back into the satchel and turned to his parents-in-law to be. ‘I hope you didn’t like him too much.’ ‘My hero …’ breathed Andromeda. ‘How did you do that?’ shrieked Cassiopeia. ‘They’re statues. Stone statues! How is this possible?’ ‘Oh, you know,’ said Perseus with a modest shrug. ‘I just happened to meet Medusa the Gorgon last night. Came away with her head. Thought it might come in useful.’ Perseus hid the extremity of his relief. He had by no means been certain that the gaze from the Gorgon’s dead eyes would have retained the power to petrify, but an inner voice had told him that it was worth trying. Whether the inner voice was his own inspiration or the whispered advice of Athena, he would never know. Cepheus put a hand on Perseus’s shoulder. ‘Always hated Phineus. Done me a great service. Don’t know how to thank you.’ ‘The hand of your daughter in marriage is all the thanks I need. I hope you will allow me to fly her to my home island of Seriphos to meet my mother? No!’ Perseus slapped Queen Cassiopeia’s hand which had inched forward to lift the flap of the satchel. ‘Not a good idea.’ ‘Oh, mother,’ sighed Andromeda. ‘Will you never learn?’

T HE R ETURN TO S ERIPHOS ‘It’s not a palace,’ Perseus warned Andromeda as they flashed across the sea towards Seriphos. ‘Just a simple cottage.’ ‘If it’s where you grew up, I know I’ll adore it.’ ‘I love you.’ ‘Of course you do.’ But when they landed on the beach, they found that Dictys’s cottage had been burned to the ground. ‘What can have happened? Where is everyone? What can have happened?’ Perseus found a group of fishermen mending nets not far off. They shook their heads sadly. Danaë and Dictys had been taken prisoner by Polydectes. ‘They say the king is holding a great feast at the palace.’ ‘Aye. Even now.’ ‘Some announcement to make, they say.’ Perseus grabbed Andromeda’s hand and flew with her to the palace. They arrived at the back of the throne room in time to see Danaë and Dictys, bound with ropes and being dragged before the seated Polydectes. ‘How dare you? How dare you marry each other without my permission?’ ‘It was all my doing,’ said Dictys. ‘It was our doing,’ said Danaë. ‘But I offered you my hand. You could have been my queen!’ screamed Polydectes. ‘For this insult, you will both die.’ Perseus stepped forward and walked towards the throne. Polydectes looked over the shoulders of Danaë and Dictys and saw him coming. He smiled broadly. ‘Well, well, well. If it isn’t brave young Perseus. You told me you wouldn’t return without the head of the Medusa.’ ‘You told me you were going to challenge Oenomaus to a chariot race for the hand of Hippodamia.’ ‘I changed my mind.’ ‘Why have you arrested my mother?’ ‘She and Dictys are due to die. You can be hanged alongside them if you like.’ Danaë and Dictys turned. ‘Run, Perseus, run!’ ‘Mother, Dictys, if you love me, turn and look at Polydectes. I beg you! All who love me, look on the king now!’ The smile on Polydectes’ face was a little less certain. ‘What nonsense is this?’ ‘You asked for the head of Medusa. Here she is!’ ‘Surely you don’t expect me to —’ Polydectes got no further. ‘You can turn and look at me now,’ said Perseus, putting Medusa’s head back in the satchel. ‘It’s safe now.’ The statue of Polydectes on his throne, flanked by stone men-at-arms, became a popular attraction on Seriphos. Visitors paid to see and touch them, and the money was spent on the construction of a temple to Athena and the installation of a hundred herms around the island.fn16 Andromeda and Perseus left King Dictys and Queen Danaë on Seriphos and moved on. Perseus and Andromeda could have stayed and inherited the throne. They could have returned to Andromeda’s homeland and ruled the combined kingdoms of Ethiopia and Egypt. But they were young, spirited and minded to travel, and Perseus was keen to visit the land of his birth. As a baby he had been there for less than a week. His grandfather King Acrisius had done everything to prevent his existence and shorten his life, but he was curious to see what Argos, the famous kingdom of his birth, was like. When Perseus and Andromeda arrived, they discovered that Acrisius, after casting his daughter and grandson onto the waters in their chest all those years ago, had turned dark, cruel and despotic. Never a popular ruler, he had soon been toppled from his throne. Nobody knew where he was now. The people of Argos, having heard of Perseus’s astonishing feats, invited him to fill the vacant throne. Uncertain what to do or where to settle, the young couple thanked the Argives and asked for time to consider. They wandered about mainland Greece, Perseus funding their travels with prize money from athletic meetings that he entered and invariably won. They heard news that the King of Larissa was holding the richest games of the year and made their way north to Thessaly to compete. The finest athletes in Greece were taking part and great would be the honours awarded the competitor who won the most events. One by one, Perseus prevailed in every race and every competition. It came at last to the discus. Perseus threw his so far it shot over the longest mark, cleared the stadium and landed amongst the spectators. The great roar of delight that met this astounding feat swiftly turned to a groan of horror. The discus had struck someone in the crowd. Perseus ran to the place. An old man was lying on the ground, blood streaming from his gashed head. Perseus cradled him in his arms. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘So terribly sorry. I don’t know my own strength. May the gods forgive me.’ To Perseus’s astonishment the old man smiled and even managed to cough out a laugh. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s funny really. I defeated the oracle. How many can say that? It said I would be killed by my grandson, and here I am instead, felled by some clumsy oaf of an athlete.’ The old man’s attendant pushed Perseus away. ‘Give his majesty air.’ ‘His majesty?’ ‘Don’t you know this is King Acrisius of Argos?’ Accident or not, preordained or not, it was a blood crime. Perseus and Andromeda made a sad pilgrimage to Mount Cyllene in Arcadia and the temple of Hermes that stood near the cave where the god was born. On the altar stone they laid the hood of invisibility and the talaria, the winged sandals. As they left the temple precincts, after a brief prayer to the god, they turned to look back at the altar. The hood and sandals had disappeared. ‘We did the right thing,’ said Andromeda. Now they made their way to Athens, and in the deepest recesses of the temple of Athena they hid the sickle, the shield and the satchel that held the head of Medusa. Athena herself appeared before them and blessed them. ‘You did well, Perseus. Our father is pleased with you.’ She raised the shield and they saw that the face of Medusa, startled, dismayed, sad and somehow beautiful stared out, forever trapped within the shining surface of the bronze. From that time on the shield was the Aegis of Athena – her sign, her standard and her warning to the world. It can be said of Perseus and Andromeda, and of no other great heroes I can think of, that they lived happily ever after. After their wanderings they returned to the Peloponnese – the large southwestern peninsula connected to the mainland of Greece by the land bridge of the Isthmus of Corinthfn17 – and founded Mycenae, a great kingdom that in time, under the name of Argolis or the Argolid, absorbed neighbouring Arcadia and Corinth as well as Perseus’s birth kingdom of Argos to the south. Through their son Perses, their bloodline founded the Persian nation and people. After their long lives, Perseus and Andromeda were awarded the greatest prize that Zeus can bestow on mortals. Along with Cassiopeia and Cepheus, they were taken up into the heavens as constellations. Together Perseus and Andromeda look over their unruly shower of meteor children, the PERSEIDS, whom we can still watch showing off in the night sky once a year.

HERACLES

T HE L INE OF P ERSEUS Zeus sat alone at the breakfast table, musing on Hera’s dream long into the morning. Someone would rise up to save the immortals. Someone from the line of Perseus. It was probable, he told himself, that it was nothing but an impertinent fantasy sent by MORPHEUS to delude and confound. But there was a chance, a slim one, perhaps, but a chance nonetheless, that the dream was indeed a warning – a prophecy. There would be no harm in making preparations. Besides, a little fun could be had along the way. So. The line of Perseus. Where were we …? Zeus looked down on Tiryns, the capital of Mycenae. The royal pair of Perseus and Andromeda themselves had been catasterized, raised to the firmament as constellations; but were there, Zeus wondered, any direct descendants who might give birth to a hero whose bloodline would accord with the conditions of Hera’s dream? There seemed to be three obvious candidates. One grandson of Perseus and Andromeda was STHENELUS, the current King of Mycenae. He was married to a young woman called NICIPPE.fn1 The couple was as yet childless. The second living grandson was AMPHITRYON, who had fallen in love with and married his cousin, another grandchild of Perseus and Andromeda, the beautiful ALCMENE. They too were without issue. It was possible, then, that one of these couples might produce a great hero. Now Alcmene, Zeus could not help noticing, happened to be very, very, very beautiful. Suppose she were to bear my son, not Amphitryon’s, he asked himself. Since Alcmene was herself a grandchild of Perseus, such a child would be of his line, all right and tight, and thus satisfy the demands of Hera’s prophetic vision. But it would also be a son of Zeus and therefore naturally constructed out of strong heroic stuff. The more Zeus thought about it, the more he liked the idea. It would provide a hero that fitted the requirements of Hera’s dream and give him pleasure along the way. But how to impregnate Alcmene? She and Amphitryon did not live in Tiryns, but all the way over in Thebes. The reason for this was complicated, but interesting. While hunting, Amphitryon had accidentally killed Alcmene’s father ELECTRYON (who was, of course, his uncle as well as his father-in-law). The killing of blood relations, I need not remind you, whether accidental or not, was held by the Greek mind to be the darkest and most unforgivable of all crimes. Amphitryon and Alcmene fled to Thebes where the ruler CREON expiated him for this blood crime. Cleansed and purified, Amphitryon left his wife behind in Thebes to return to Mycenae and settle a complex series of dynastic difficulties which Alcmene herself had demanded he do. At the moment, therefore, Alcmene was alone in the grand villa in Thebes that Creon had lent the couple. She was a loyal, loving wife, so rather than manifest himself to her as an eagle, a goat, a shower of golden rain, a bear, a bull or any of the other animals or phenomena he had impersonated in the course of his lustful adventuring, Zeus elected to appear to her in the form of her beloved husband Amphitryon himself.fn2 Suitably armed and dusty from the road, Zeus-Amphitryon arrived one evening at the villa and told the delighted Alcmene that he had prevailed in Mycenae. Entranced by the details of how cleverly he had settled the difficulties she had sent him to solve, and thrilled to have him safely home, she welcomed him to her bed. Zeus stretched out the one night into the length of three, the better to enjoy himself. When morning finally came, he left. Amphitryon – the real Amphitryon – returned that morning from Mycenae and was astonished to discover that Alcmene already knew every detail of his triumphant campaign. ‘But you told me last night, you dear, silly goose of a husband,’ she said. ‘And then we made love – and oh, how wonderfully we did so! We made love time and time again and with such fire and force. Let’s do it again.’ Amphitryon had been on the dusty road between Tiryns and Thebes for some days and had been so looking forward to just such amatory excitements that he put the oddity of her comments aside and leapt gratefully onto the bed. When they had finished, Alcmene could not help remarking on the difference between Amphitryon’s love-making that morning and the previous night. ‘You’re joking,’ said Amphitryon. ‘Last night I was still on the road. Ask my troops.’ ‘But …’ They had a long conversation between themselves and decided that only TIRESIAS was wise and insightful enough to be able to shed light on the mystery. Tiresias saw nothing with his eyes but everything with his prophetic mind. The blind Theban seer listened to their separate accounts of the events of the last day. ‘The first visitor to your bed was the Sky Father, Zeus,’ he told Alcmene. ‘And now something remarkable is happening inside you.’ He was quite right. Having slept with Zeus and Amphitryon in rapid succession, she had been made pregnant by each of them. Twins were forming in her womb, two sons – one fathered by Zeus and the other by Amphitryon. This phenomenon of polyspermy is common enough in littering mammals like cats, dogs and pigs, but is rare in humans. Rare, but not unknown. It rejoices in the name heteropaternal superfecundation.fn3 Up on Mount Olympus none of this was lost on Hera. Never had the Queen of Heaven been so infuriated by one of her husband’s dalliances. In her mind his affairs with SEMELE, GANYMEDE, IO, CALLISTO, Danaë, LEDA and EUROPA were as nothing to this monstrous, humiliating betrayal. Maybe it was one infidelity too many, the amorous straw that broke the camel’s back, maybe she felt Zeus’s real affections had been engaged, maybe she felt most especially mortified because it had all come about on account of the dream she had shared with him. For whatever reason, an implacably vengeful Hera watched Alcmene grow closer and closer to term and resolved to do anything and everything she could to destroy the fruit of so insulting a union. Hera could rely – of course she could – on her husband’s vanity to provide the first opportunity for revenge. It came the night before Alcmene was due to give birth, when the King of the Gods was in his cups on Mount Olympus. Zeus, being Zeus, could not help himself. ‘The next child born of the house of Perseus will rule all Argolis,’ he blurted out. ‘You mean that, husband?’ said Hera quickly. ‘Certainly I mean it.’ ‘Swear it before all.’ ‘Really?’ ‘If you mean it, swear it.’ ‘Very well,’ said Zeus, puzzled by this earnestness, but confident that nothing could go wrong. Alcmene was ready to give birth at any moment, after all. ‘I proclaim before you,’ he said in a loud, clear voice, ‘that the next child to be born in the line of Perseus shall rule the Argolid.’ You will remember Perseus’s other grandson in Mycenae, Sthenelus? Hera knew that his wife Nicippe had also become pregnant, although she was only seven months on. That circumstance would have been enough to stymie most people, but Hera was not most people. She was the goddess of marital fidelity, the Queen of Heaven and, more than that, a wronged wife. While she had a will – and no one ever had a keener one – she would find a way. She summoned her daughter EILEITHYIA, goddess of childbirth fn4 and commanded her to go at once to Thebes, sit herself on a chair outside Alcmene’s bedchamber with her legs firmly crossed, and to remain in that position until further notice. This posture, in such close proximity to the pregnant woman, would prevent Alcmene from opening her own legs to give birth, which Hera knew must in time suffocate and kill the children trapped in her womb. Meanwhile, she went to Tiryns with a potion to induce Nicippe to give birth to her son by Sthenelus prematurely. A complicated, cruel and distasteful scheme, but clever and effective. Such were the powers of Eileithyia that Alcmene, writhing in pain, was indeed unable to open her legs. In Tiryns, Nicippe was successfully delivered of a healthy boy, whom she and Sthenelus called EURYSTHEUS.fn5 Hera returned to Olympus in triumph. ‘My dear husband,’ she trilled. ‘Prepare to be overjoyed. A boy has been born, a direct descendant of Perseus, no less!’ Zeus smiled broadly. ‘Ah, yes. I rather thought that might be the case.’ ‘Such delightful news,’ trilled Hera. ‘I’m so happy for the couple. Sthenelus is a grandson of Perseus, of course, but Nicippe’s lineage is exemplary too. Quite a pedigree. Descended not only from Pelops but also –’ ‘Wait, wait, wait … Nicippe? Sthenelus? What in hell’s name have they got to do with anything?’ ‘Why, didn’t I say?’ Hera looked surprised. ‘It is Nicippe and Sthenelus who have given the world a son.’ ‘B-but …’ ‘Was there ever such splendid news? And now, just as you have sworn, this boy – Eurystheus, by name – son of Sthenelus and a grandson of Perseus will grow up to rule the Argolid.’ ‘But …’ ‘Just as you have sworn,’ Hera repeated in her sweetest tones. ‘In front of everyone. And I know you will ensure that no harm will ever come to the boy. For your word is law and mighty Cosmos would cry out and Olympus would crack and the gods fall should you be so foolish as to go against your own word.’ ‘I … I …’ ‘Mouth is open, darling, and there’s a string of drool dribbling from your beard right into your lap. It’s most unappealing. Would you like Ganymede to find you a napkin?’ Zeus had been outmanoeuvred in masterly fashion. Hera knew, and he knew, that he would be forced to honour his oath and allow this wholly unlooked-for grandson of Perseus, this Eurystheus, to rule over the Argolid – the united lands of Mycenae, Corinth, Arcadia and Argos. All the plans Zeus had formed for his son by Alcmene now threatened to come to nothing. The wretched boy would be stillborn and Hera would win. No warring husband and wife ever let the other win in a battle of wills if they could help it, but Zeus could not think what to do next. He sat on his throne and brooded darkly. Fortunately for Zeus, and for history, Alcmene was as lovely in manner as she was in looks. Good people attract loyal, loving friends and none were more loyal nor more loving than the two women who attended her, GALANTHIS and HISTORIS. For seven days and seven nights they had watched their poor friend and mistress writhing in pain at the growing burden inside her. At last Historis, who was a daughter of Tiresias and highly intelligent, conceived a plan. Outside the door Eileithyia sat as stiff as a statue, legs tightly crossed, wondering how long it would be before she could safely assume that the baby inside Alcmene had died and she would be able stand up and let the circulation flow back into her thighs. Suddenly, there came from inside the bedchamber the sound of screams. Could this be the news she was waiting for? The doors to Alcmene’s room were flung open and Galanthis burst out, clapping her hands and shouting, not with despair but with joy. ‘Spread the news, spread the news!’ she exclaimed. ‘Our mistress has given birth! Oh happy day, happy day!’ Dumbfounded, Eileithyia jumped up. ‘This cannot be!’ she cried. ‘Show me!’ Too late did she realise that she had been tricked into standing and uncrossing her legs. Through the open door she saw Alcmene, attended by Historis, now open her legs and push. First one, then another baby boy emerged and filled the air with healthy wailing cries. Wrapping her garments tight about her, Eileithyia fled the scene. She knew well how great Hera’s wrath would be. Wild indeed was Hera’s rage when she found out what had happened. With a fierce flick of her hand she turned the impudent scheming Galanthis into a weasel.fn6 She had never felt so cheated and humiliated. From that moment on she swore eternal enmity against Alcmene’s son by Zeus. But which of the twins was Zeus’s and which Amphitryon’s? They were both fine-looking babies, vigorous, strong and – as you might expect, being eight days overdue – hefty. The doting parents named the twin first from the womb Alcides, in honour of his grandfather Alcaeus, son of Perseus, the other they called IPHICLES.fn7 They could not tell by looking which was the son of a mortal and which the son of a god. They would discover which of the two was the son of Zeus soon enough.

S NAKES A LIVE The villa which King Creon had given over to Amphitryon and Alcmene for their use while resident in Thebes stood quietly in the moonlight. Only the most attentive sentry, and one with the most finely tuned senses, would have observed a slight parting of the tall grass of the outer perimeter as two turquoise snakes slid across the lawn in the direction of the terrace. Hera wished to lose no time in unleashing her vengeance on the insolent mortal baby that had dared to commit the crime of allowing itself to be born. Not concerned with which of the twins was her husband’s baseborn progeny, she had sent the two venomous serpents to the kill them both. A concerned weasel watched powerlessly as they slithered along the terrace and towards the room with the sleeping infants. There was nothing that Galanthis could do but hope and pray. Amphitryon and Alcmene were awoken early the next morning by the hysterical shrieks of Historis. ‘Oh come, come!’ she urged them, pulling the sheets from their bed. Alarmed, they followed the squealing girl to the twins’ nursery, where the most extraordinary sight met their eyes. The two babies lay in their cot. The face of one was screwed up with fear and it was purple from screaming. The other lay on his back, kicking his legs in the air. In each dimpled fist he clutched a strangled viper. He looked up at his parents as they peered down and waved the dead snakes at them like toys, gurgling with delight.fn8 ‘Well,’ said Amphitryon, looking from one infant to the other. ‘I think we can safely say now which is the son of Zeus.’ ‘Alcides.’ ‘Exactly.’ ‘This is the work of Hera,’ said Alcmene, picking up Iphicles and quieting his frightened sobs. ‘She sent those snakes. She will stop at nothing to destroy my boys.’ ‘It isn’t fair on Iphicles,’ raged Amphitryon, chucking his true son under the chin. ‘We must consult Tiresias again.’ They made their way that night to seek his advice. While they were gone, the god Hermes stole silently into the nursery, took Alcides from his cot, flew with him up to Olympus and gave him to the waiting Athena. The two gods crept round to where Hera was sleeping. Athena gently dropped the baby Alcides on her breast. At once he began to gorge himself. But he guzzled at her teat with such vigour that Hera woke up with a cry of pain. She looked down, plucked Alcides from her nipple and threw him disgustedly from her. Milk sprayed from her nipple in a great arc across the night sky, imprinting it with stars. Stars which, from that moment, would be known as the Milky Way.fn9 Hermes had deftly caught the baby when Hera cast him aside and he now sped off back to Thebes to replace Alcides in his cot before anyone noticed he was gone. The whole botched affair had been Zeus’s idea. He wanted his son Alcides to feed on Hera’s milk, which would make him immortal. His favourite son and daughter, Hermes and Athena, had done their best, but Alcides had ingested little more than a mouthful and none of them wanted to try that trick again.fn10 In Tiresias’s temple, meanwhile, Alcmene and Amphitryon listened to the seer’s advice. ‘I have seen that Alcides will do marvellous things,’ he was saying. ‘Slay terrible monsters. Topple tyrants and found great dynasties. He will achieve fame such as no mortal has ever known. The other gods will help him, but Hera will harry and hound him without mercy.’ ‘Is there nothing we can do to placate her?’ asked Alcmene. Tiresias thought for a moment. ‘Well, there is one thing. Perhaps you could change the child’s name.’ ‘Change his name?’ said Amphitryon. ‘How would that help?’ ‘If you were to call him “Hera’s glory” for instance? “Hera’s pride”.’ And so it was decided. From now on Alcides would be called Heracles.fn11

Y OUTH AND U PBRINGING OF A H ERO Young Heracles grew up with his twin half-brother Iphicles. Amphitryon and Alcmene raised them as equals, but the speed with which Heracles put on height, weight and muscle separated the two boys very early in the minds of all who encountered them. The twins received the kind of education usual for children of a royal house in those days. Chariot driving, javelin and discus throwing, track jumping and running were taught by Amphitryon. EURYTUS, King of Oechalia, the most famed bowman in Greece and a grandson of the archer god Apollo himself, taught the young Heracles to string a bow and shoot arrows with speed and accuracy. By the time he was ten, Heracles had already acquired a reputation as a fearsome runner, jumper, horseman, driver, thrower and archer. It was noticed, though, that despite the boy’s amiable and friendly nature, he also possessed a fiery and furious temper. When the red mist descended, he was ungovernable by all but his father. As well as fostering physical prowess, rhetoric, mathematics and music were of the first importance in the education of noble young Greeks and it was a matter of pride amongst the better families to secure the finest teachers. LINUS, the brother of ORPHEUS and a fine musician himself, taught Heracles and Iphicles how to tune and play a lyre, how to compose and sing, how to tap out precise rhythms and how to dance. None of these graceful accomplishments came easily to the young Heracles, who hated how self-conscious, clumsy and uncoordinated he felt when he tried to sing in tune or move in time. The day came when Linus, infuriated by Heracles’ refusal to attend to his instructions, lifted a stick and brought it down on the boy’s back. A storm broke in Heracles’ mind: he grabbed the cane with a savage roar and jerked it towards him, bringing Linus’s face directly in front of his. He nodded down, cracking the tutor’s brow, and then picked him up and flung him across the room. Linus fell dead to the floor, the bones of his arms, legs and back all shattered. The scandal was too great to be hushed up, but in the end Heracles was forgiven. Iphicles had been in the schoolroom too and told anyone who would listen that his brother had been sorely provoked. EUMOLPUS, a son of AUTOLYCUSfn12, took over the music tuition. At the same time CASTOR himself, the twin of POLYDEUCES, and like Heracles the offspring of a divine heteropaternal superfecundationfn13, offered to complete the youth’s training in weaponry and the manly arts. The killing of Linus revealed that Heracles had a very short fuse, something that was to cause distress to him and many victims of his outbursts of temper in the years to come. The rest of his schooling revealed that … how shall we put it kindly? … It revealed that while nature and fatefn14 may have gifted Heracles with many fine attributes, wit and wisdom, craft and cunning were not foremost amongst them. He was, as we might say today, far from the brightest pixel on the screen. He was not stupid, not a brainless oaf by any means, but his real strength was … his real strength. For what could be said with confidence and admiration, was that by the time he grew into his later teens Heracles was the tallest, broadest, strongest and fastest young man in the world. Those gods who championed him came forward now with signs of their favour, to equip him for a life of warfare, trials and endurance. Athena presented him with a robe, Poseidon gave him fine horses, Hermes a sword, Apollo a bow and arrows, HEPHAESTUS a most wondrous breastplate of pure gold. The young man’s growing reputation was cemented by the slaying of a fierce lion on Mount Cithaeron when he was still only eighteen years old.fn15 For forty-nine days he tracked the terrible creature; while each night the King of Thespiae, the grateful Thespisfn16, whose realm had suffered most from this dreadful scourge, rewarded Heracles for his heroic efforts by sending him each night one of his fifty daughters. When at last the fiftieth day dawned, the lion was cornered and killed. That night, after enjoying the fiftieth bout of passion with the fiftieth daughter of the king, Heracles went home. Each daughter went on to give birth to a male child, the eldest and youngest girls bearing twins. A son for every week of the year. Heracles was as virile and potent in his love-making as in his killing. On Heracles’ return, he single-handedly defended Thebes against an attack from King ERGINOS of Orchomenos. The people of Thebes had been proud enough of Heracles, but pride now turned to veneration. They revered him as the greatest Theban since their founder hero Cadmus. If they had their way, Heracles would rule over them as king. Thebes already had a king, Creon, who was smart and politic enough to offer Heracles the hand of his daughter Megara.fn17 All seemed so sweet in the life of the young Heracles. His fame increased and spread and happy years passed, during which he fathered a son and daughter by Megara and grew to full manhood as a devoted husband and father, very likely the heir to the Theban throne.

C RIME AND P UNISHMENT Heracles’ life in Thebes was almost modern in its rhythms. Each day he would kiss goodbye to his wife Megara and children and go off to work, killing monsters and toppling tyrants. Today’s commuter finds less drastic ways to defeat competitors and bestial colleagues perhaps – the dragons we slay may be more metaphorical than real – but the manner and routine is not so very different. One fateful evening Heracles returned to the family villa to be met by two small but fierce and burning-eyed demons in the doorway. He charged them at once, grappled them to the ground, broke their backs and stamped on their screeching heads until they lay crushed and dead at his feet. Suddenly, a great dragon came screaming out of the house towards him, fire streaming from its mouth and nostrils. He rushed at it, closed his hands around its scaly neck and squeezed with all his strength. Only as the life went of the monster and it slipped dead to the floor did Hera lift the mist of delusion she had visited on him. Looking down, he now saw with appalling clarity that the dragon he had killed was his wife Megara and the two demons were his beloved children. It was one of Hera’s cruellest interventions, and evidence of the unfathomable depth of her hatred. She had been growing ever more frustrated at the sight of her loathed enemy living so happy and fulfilled a life. She chose to strip Heracles down to a state of absolute nothingness, to take in one swift and irreversible moment everything that mattered to him. Not just those he loved most, but his reputation too. When news broke of what he had done, no one would speak to, or come near to, him. He was polluted. From hero to zero is a tired phrase today, but nobody before had so swiftly gone from universal love and admiration to loathing and contempt. Heracles’ grief was overpowering. He wanted to die. But he knew that he must punish himself by undergoing an unrelenting penance. Only then would he feel fit to meet the souls of Megara and his children in the underworld. Without purification from a king, oracle, priest or priestess, those responsible for blood crimes had to attempt to cleanse themselves by a life of exile and atonement. If they failed to expiate their crimes, the Erinyes, the wild Furies, would rise up from Erebus and chase them down, flailing them with iron whips until they went mad. Heracles exiled himself from Thebes, and went on his kneesfn18 to Delphi to seek guidance. ‘To atone for his abominable crimes, Heracles must take himself to Tiryns and supplicate himself before the throne,’ the Pythia chanted. Heracles could not know this, but the priestess had been entranced by Hera and the words were hers. ‘For ten years he must serve without question,’ the priestess continued. ‘Whatever he is told to do, Heracles must do. Whatever tasks he is set to perform, these must Heracles willingly undertake. Only then can he be free.’ Hera’s spirit left the priestess and the voices of Apollo and Athena now enthusedfn19 her. ‘Do all that you are asked without stint, without complaint, and immortality will be yours. Your father has promised it.’ Heracles did not want immortality, but he knew he must obey in any case. He turned his feet towards the road leading to Tiryns, capital of Mycenae. Its king was the now fully-grown Eurystheus, Heracles’ cousin, the one whose premature birth had been induced by Hera all those years ago to ruin Zeus’s plan to secure the throne for Heracles. Eurystheus had none of Heracles’ heroic attributes, none of his strength, spirit, generosity or air of command. He had grown up all too aware of the reputation of his stronger, finer and more popular cousin, and he had long smouldered with hatred, envy and resentment. What self-control it took for Heracles to kneel in front of Eurystheus’s throne and beg for expiation we can only guess. ‘The filth of your unnatural crimes has revolted all people of feeling,’ said the king, savouring every moment. ‘You will not be worthy to live in the world of men until you have paid the full price. Ten tasks you will perform for me over ten years without assistance or payment. When you have completed the last of them I may be disposed to forgive you, embrace you as my cousin and allow you your freedom. Until then you are bound to me as my slave. The Queen of Heaven herself has ordained it. Is this understood?’ Hera had instructed her instrument well. Heracles bowed his head.

THE LABOURS fn1 OF HERACLES

1. T HE N EMEAN L ION Eurystheus rubbed his chin and thought hard. If he were to command his unruly cousin and set him to useful work, he might as well begin at home. Eurystheus ruled not just Mycenae, but – thanks to Zeus’s rash promise – all of Argolis, much of which was afflicted by terrifying wild beasts.fn2 The most obviously terrifying was a lion that preyed on the people of Nemea in the northeast of the kingdom, not far from the Isthmus of Corinth. Fear of this terrible animal was deterring mainland travellers and merchants from trading with the Argolid and the rest of the Peloponnese. Offspring of the monstrous CHIMERAfn3, this was no ordinary lion. Its golden hide was so thick that spears and arrows bounced off it as though they were straws. Its claws were razor sharp and could tear through armour as though it were paper. Its powerful jaws could crunch rock as though it were celery. Many warriors had already perished trying to subdue it. ‘Go to Nemea,’ Eurystheus said to Heracles, ‘and kill the lion that is laying waste the countryside.’ Shame really, Eurystheus thought to himself with a giggle. I shan’t get ten years out of him. This first task will kill him. Oh well. ‘Just kill it?’ said Heracles. ‘You don’t want it brought back?’ ‘No, I don’t want it brought back. What would I do with a lion?’ To gales of obedient laughter from his courtiers, Eurystheus tapped the side of his head as Heracles straightened, bowed and left the throne-room. ‘Arms the size of an oak tree, brain the size of an acorn,’ said the king with a snort. Heracles spent months stalking the creature, as he had done years before with the Thespian Lion. He knew that his weapons, of formidable and divine providence as they were, would be of no use against the animal’s impregnable pelt. He would have to rely on his bare hands, and so he spent these months in training. He took to uprooting trees and raising boulders above his head until his raw strength, mighty as it had always been, was now greater than ever. When he knew that he was ready, Heracles tracked the lion to its lair. He fell on the immense monster and threw it to the ground. Never had anyone dared to attack the beast in this way. Grappling tight, Heracles gave it no chance to pull back and strike with claws or jaws. What use was its impenetrable hide against the iron grip of Heracles’ hands around its throat? For hours they rolled in the dust until the life was at last throttled from it and the great Nemean Lion breathed no more. Heracles stood by its body and bowed his head. ‘It was a fair fight,’ he said. ‘And I hope you didn’t suffer. I hope you will forgive me if I now flay the hide from you.’ Such respect for an enemy, even a dumb brute, was typical of Heracles. When an adversary was alive he knew no mercy, but the moment they were gone he did his best, where possible, to send them to the next world with honour and ceremony. He could not be sure that animals had souls or the expectation of an afterlife, even those descended from primordial entities like Echidna and Typhon, but he behaved as if they did. The greater the fight they put up, the deeper and more reverent his funeral prayers. He had been stung by Eurystheus’s contemptuous dismissal of him. He wanted to skin his kill and take the pelt in triumph back to Mycenae, which is why he asked permission of the lion’s corpse. But Heracles found his sharpest knives and swords could not make so much as a scratch on that impenetrable hide. He hit, at last, on the idea of pulling out the lion’s razor-like claws. These were sharp enough, and Heracles skinned off one great piece, snarling head included. He strung the deadly claws into a necklace and in an excess of frenzied joy he pulled up the greatest oak tree he could find and stripped it of its branches to form a mighty club. With the necklace of claws around his neck, the indestructible pelt over his shoulders, the open jaws and glaring eyes of the lion on top of his head, and the mighty club swinging by his side, Heracles had found his look.

2. T HE L ERNAEAN H YDRA Eurystheus had not expected Heracles to come back alive at all, certainly not dressed like some wild, untamed brigand of the mountains. The king, however, was crafty enough to hide his dismay. ‘Yes … that was to be expected,’ he said, stifling a yawn. ‘An aged lion is no test. Now, for your next task. Do you know Lake Lerna, not that far from here? It is terrorised by the Hydra, which guards the gate there to the underworld. I wouldn’t dream of interfering were it not that the creature has taken to attacking and killing innocent men, women and children who venture near. I am too busy to deal with it myself, so I send you, Heracles, to rid us of this nuisance.’ ‘As you wish,’ said Heracles, nodding a bow of assent which caused the head of the Nemean Lion to snap its jaws violently shut. Eurystheus could not help but leap in alarm. With an ill-concealed grin of contempt, Heracles turned and left. The goddess Hera had prepared Lake Lerna with malicious relish. Not only were its waters infested by the Hydra, a huge water serpent with nine heads (one of which was immortal), each capable of spraying jets of the deadliest poison known in the world, but she had hidden in the lake’s depths a ferocious giant crab too. The Hydra reared up at Heracles’ approach, every one of its vicious heads spitting venom.fn4 Confidently enough he lunged forward and sliced one of the heads clean off. Instantly two new heads grew up out of the stump. This was going to be difficult. Every time Heracles sliced or clubbed a head two more sprang up in its place. To make matters worse the crab was now jumping up out of the water and making a frenzied attack. Its giant pincers came at him again and again, trying to slice him open and gut him. Leaping to one side, Heracles brought his club down with all his might and shattered the shell into thousands of fragments. The squelched creature inside reared its slimy body in the air, quivered and fell back dead. Hera placed her favourite crustacean in the stars where it shines today as the constellation Cancer, the Crab. But she was content. Her beloved Hydra was wreaking her revenge. Already it had twenty-four heads, each spraying a lethal poison. Heracles made a tactical withdrawal. As he sat at a safe distance, pondering what to do next, his nephew Iolaus, son of Heracles’ twin brother Iphicles, came out from behind some trees. ‘Uncle,’ he said, ‘I’ve watched the whole thing. If Eurystheus is allowed to encumber you with an extra trial, then I should be allowed to assist you. Let me be your squire.’ In truth, the intrusion of the crab had annoyed Heracles greatly. One quest at a time, that was what he had agreed to. The addition of a second, unannounced danger struck him as unfair. He accepted his nephew’s offer and between them they came up with a new plan of attack. I am inclined to believe that the scheme was more likely to have emerged from the mind of Iolaus than that of Heracles, who was a man of action, a man of passions and a man of limitless courage, but not a man of ideas. The plan was to approach the Hydra systematically: Heracles would advance and lop off a head, then Iolaus would step smartly in with a burning torch and sear the fresh stump, preventing any new heads from erupting in its place. Slice, cauterise, slice, that was the system they came up with – and it worked. After hours of exhausting and disgusting effort there was only one head left, the immortal head, the head that could not die. At last Heracles hacked this off too and buried it far underground. The Hydra’s poisonous vapours breathe up their sulphurous gas by the waters of Lake Lerna to this day. ‘Thank you,’ said Heracles to Iolaus. ‘Now you get home. And not a word to your father.’ Heracles knew that his twin would be angered if he heard that his son had been in such danger. Heracles felt no need to pay his respects to the Hydra. After all, the immortal head was still alive and belching hate underground. He knelt beside the twitching body not in reverence, but to coat the tips of his arrows with its congealing blood. The envenomed arrows would prove to be immeasurably useful – and immeasurably tragic. Their use would change the world.

3. T HE C ERYNEIAN H IND Eurystheus now turned cunning. A water serpent was one thing, but not even Heracles could match an Olympian. ‘Bring me the golden hind of Ceryneiafn5,’ he said. He felt confident that this Third Labour must surely be Heracles’ last, for success would mean certain death, or at the very least eternal torment. The golden-horned, brass-footed Ceryneian Hind could do no harm to anyone. A deer fleeter than any hound or arrow, she presented a challenge to huntsmen, but not a danger. But the hind was sacred to Artemis, and this was where the threat lay. The savagery with which the goddess protected her own and punished any sacrilege against her or those who followed her was well known. She would never allow harm to befall her beloved hind.fn6 Heracles would either fail in his task or be struck down by Artemis for presumption. Either way, Eurystheus was confident that his pestilential cousin would not return. For almost a year Heracles pursued his quarry over hill and – one supposes – dale. Finally he succeeded in netting and subduing the animal. He had no wish to harm so shy and beautiful a creature. He slung the hind gently over his shoulders and whispered to her as he walked back to Mycenae. As he passed through a wood, Artemis emerged from the shadows. ‘You dare?’ she hissed, raising her silver bow. ‘Goddess, goddess, I throw myself on your mercy.’ Heracles, went down on one knee. ‘Mercy? I do not know the word. Prepare to die.’ As Artemis took aim her twin Apollo stepped out of the wood and pushed the bow down. ‘Now, sister,’ he said. ‘Don’t you know this is Heracles?’ ‘If it was our father, the Storm Bringer himself, I would shoot him for daring to take my hind.’ ‘I understand,’ said Heracles in his meekest voice. ‘It is a terrible sacrilege, but I am bound to King Eurystheus and it was he who commanded me to take the animal. It is Hera’s will that I obey him.’ ‘Hera’s will?’ Apollo and Artemis conferred. The Queen of Heaven had at best a stiff and formal relationship with Zeus’s children by other womenfn7 and had never made the twins’ lives easy. It amused them to assist her enemy. Artemis turned to Heracles. ‘You may continue on your way,’ she said. ‘But when you have shown my hind to the court in Mycenae you must return her to the wild.’ ‘You are as wise as you are beautiful,’ said Heracles. ‘Dear me,’ said Apollo. ‘That sort of flattery is not the way to my sister’s heart. On your way.’ Eurystheus was astonished to see Heracles return with the glorious creature, which he announced he would make the prize exhibit in his private menagerie. Mindful of his promise to Artemis, however, Heracles replied: ‘Certainly, my king. Come forward, she is yours to claim.’ Just as Eurystheus approached, Heracles, under the cover of his lion-skin cloak, gave the hind a sharp pinch on the rump. Eurystheus leapt to catch her as she reared up, but she galloped away with a bark, her bronze hooves setting up sparks from the palace flagstones. ‘You failed in your task!’ snarled Eurystheus. ‘Majesty, I brought you the hind as agreed,’ said Heracles. ‘It’s a pity you weren’t quick enough to hold her and keep her, but I cannot be held responsible for that.’ He turned to the court. ‘Surely I did everything that was asked of me?’ A murmur of sympathetic agreement from his courtiers held Eurystheus back from venting his true feelings. Sometimes, Heracles could display something approaching real cunning.

4. T HE E RYMANTHIAN B OAR Heracles’ next task was to bring back alive a giant boar that was ravaging the area around Mount Erymanthus, in Arcadia. The Labour itself was not the greatest challenge Heracles faced and would hardly be worth retelling were it not for one episode. It not only reveals our hero at his clumsiest and least appealing but might also be considered to have set in motion the circumstances that were to lead to his terrible death. Heracles went to seek advice about the boar’s habits from a friend of his who lived nearby, a centaur named PHOLUS. The offspring of IXION and the cloud goddess NEPHELE,fn8 centaurs were a hybrid breed. From the head to the waist they were human, but the rest was pure horse. Expert archers, they made fierce and brave warriors, but often became ill-natured, violent and licentious when in drink. The great exceptions were Chiron, master of the healing arts and the wise tutor of Asclepiusfn9 and, later, of Jason and Achilles, and Heracles’ friend Pholus. Chiron was the immortal offspring of Kronos and the oceanid philyra, while the mortal Pholus was sired by silenus, the pot-bellied companion of Dionysus and one of the Meliae, the nymphs of the ash-tree. His advice to Heracles was not to think of capturing the Erymanthian Boar until winter came. ‘Trap him in a snow drift, that’s the best way,’ he said. ‘Otherwise he’ll run you ragged. Meanwhile, why don’t you stay with me here in my cave?’ Heracles was only too happy to avail himself of the invitation. One night after dinner, he helped himself to a stone jar of wine. He had no reason to know that it was the common property of the whole centaur tribe. The smell of the wine attracted the other centaurs and they trotted up to demand their share. Heracles’ short temper was piqued by this (perhaps his own inebriation didn’t help) and an ill-mannered argument broke out. The row became a fight and the fight soon degenerated into slaughter as Heracles unloosed a volley of arrows, which were tipped, you will recall, with fatally venomous Hydra blood.fn10 Even poor Pholus died when he dropped an arrow on his foot, piercing the skin above the hoof and sending enough of the Hydra’s venom into his bloodstream to kill him. A few of the Arcadian centaurs did survive. Amongst them was one called NESSUS, who would in time – as we shall see – revenge these deaths in the most terrible manner. Meanwhile, a mortified and remorseful Heracles helped bury the dead before turning his mind to the business in hand, the capture of the boar. With snow now blanketing the higher slopes of the mountain, he easily tracked and trapped the animal in a deep drift, hoisted it over his shoulders and trudged back to Mycenae. When Heracles returned with a boar that was still very much alive, Eurystheus was so terrified by the enormous beast that he leapt into a great stone jar and cowered there. ‘What do you want me to do with it?’ ‘Take it away.’ ‘Don’t you want to examine it? It’s got lovely bristles.’ ‘Take it away now!’ Eurystheus’s voice echoed around the interior of the jar. This scene was a favourite amongst Greek pot painters who loved to depict the frightened Eurystheus cringing in his pithos while Heracles threatens to drop an enormous squirming pig down on top of him.

5. T HE A UGEAN S TABLES Halfway through – or so Heracles thought, we will cross that painful bridge when we come to it – and Eurystheus really believed that this time, this time, he had set Heracles a problem that he could never solve. Even if the task didn’t kill him it would, the king told himself with malicious glee, deprive him of everlasting life. After all, the oracle had told Heracles that the completion of the tasks would guarantee Heracles immortality, merely attempting them was not good enough. As Yoda had expressed it a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: ‘Do. Or do not. There is no try.’ King AUGEAS of Elis, a son of Helios the sun god, was possessed of a herd of three thousand cattle. The animals were immortal and had consequently produced, over the years, a far greater than ordinary quantity of dung.fn11 The stables in which they were quartered had not been cleaned for thirty years. ‘You will go to Elis,’ Eurystheus told Heracles, ‘and thoroughly clean out the stables of King Augeas in one day.’ Arriving in Elis, Heracles sought an audience with the king and struck a deal: if he did manage to clean the stables between sun up and sun down the next day, Augeas would give him one tenth of his herd. If I have given the impression that Heracles was a brainless lummox, a boneheaded oaf, a he-man of minimal intelligence, I have slightly misled you. He was direct – that is the quality I would associate most with him. We are perhaps too used to thinking that indirect, subtle, contrived tactics are more intelligent and effective than uncomplicated assaults, but sometimes that is not so. I do not imagine that either the clever Theseus or the cunning Odysseus would ever have come up with so simple and splendid a plan as the diverting of the two local rivers, the Peneus and the Alpheus. Of course, enormous strength was required to hammer openings into the stable walls and gouge out the rivers’ courses, but the idea was beautiful in its simplicity. Just as Heracles had planned, the waters poured through the stables and sluiced out the accumulated muck of thirty years. The manure-rich torrents swept down into the plains and fields of Elis and fertilised the land for miles around. A triumphant Heracles applied to Augeas for his reward of three hundred head of cattle, but the king, who loved his herd more than anything in the world, refused to pay up. ‘Eurystheus had sent you to cleanse my stables as his slave,’ he said, ‘so any reward would be unnecessary and wrong. Besides, I never struck such a bargain in the first place.’ ‘Oh, but you did!’ cried Augeas’s son, PHYLEUS, who admired Heracles and was shocked to see his father behave so meanly to his hero. ‘I heard you distinctly.’ The king angrily banished both from his kingdom. Phyleus was exiled to Dulichium, an island in the Ionian Seafn12, while Heracles made his way back to Mycenae, simmering with rage. He swore that one day he would return and have his revenge on Augeas. The people of Elis, however, cheered Heracles as he passed through their kingdom on his way back to Tiryns. The newly fertilised fields, enriched with all that manure, would bring prosperity to their whole region. He had made Nemea safe, and Lernea and Mount Erymanthia too. Heracles was no longer just a hero for kings and warriors. He was a people’s champion.

6. T HE S TYMPHALIAN B IRDS Heracles presented himself at the palace of Tiryns to hear what Eurystheus had in store for him next. Without speaking, the king sat on his throne and stroked his beard. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘Your next task is to rid Lake Stymphalia of its infestation of birds.’ When it comes to the Stymphalian Birds, there is disagreement amongst the sources we usually rely upon for details of Heracles and his Labours. It is generally accepted now that these were fearsome man-eating creatures the size of cranes with beaks of iron, talons of brass and foul, toxic droppings. Sacred to ARES, the god of war, they infested the tree-lined shores of Lake Stymphalia, causing havoc and distress to the farmers and villages of northeastern Arcadia and rendering the countryside for miles around entirely uninhabitable. The ground beneath the trees in which the birds nested was fetid swampland. When Heracles tried to approach, he sank up to his shoulders in the miasmic filth. Observing his plight Athena provided him with a great bronze rattle, manufactured in Hephaestus’s forge. Its ear-splitting rapid-fire clacking flushed the birds from their roosts in panic and fright and Heracles was able to shoot them down in enough numbers to cause the remainder to fly away – we will encounter their deadly menace once again on another occasion.

7. T HE C RETAN B ULL ‘The Cretan Bull?’ repeated Heracles. ‘Yes,’ said Eurystheus testily. ‘Do I have to tell you everything twice? The Cretan Bull. Ox. Steer. Male Cow. Crete. Island. Fetch.’ Many years ago, a great white bull had charged out of the sea onto the shores of Crete. It had been sent by the god Poseidon in answer to the prayers of King MINOS, who wished to awe his subjects with a sign that his rule was divinely sanctioned. The idea had been to sacrifice the bull to Poseidon once his brothers accepted this proof, but both Minos and his wife PASIPHAE were so enchanted by the creature’s beauty that they hadn’t the heart to slaughter it. Indeed, Pasiphae went so far as to mate with it. She bore it a son ASTERION, half man half bull, known as the Minotaur, who lived trapped in a cunning labyrinth built to house it by Minos’s architect, inventor and designer, the great DAEDALUS. The bull, meanwhile, rampaged around Crete, savage, untameable and terrifying. As a favour to Minos, Eurystheus sent Heracles there to subdue it and bring it to Tiryns – alive. Heracles, so different in approach, as we shall see, from his younger cousin Theseus, had no technique other than confidence in his own strength and inexhaustible stamina. He found the bull, shouted at it, maddened it and planted himself in its way. When it charged, he simply grabbed its hornsfn13 and wrenched. The bull resisted with all its strength. Gradually Heracles pulled it to the ground, rolling around with it, much as he had the Nemean Lion and the Erymanthian Boar. Never letting go of the horns he roared in the bull’s ear, slapped it, punched it, tweaked it, thwacked it and bit it. Finally, the battered and exhausted beast lay down in the dust beneath him and submitted its will to his. Mounting the creature, Heracles rode it over the waves from which it had been born all the way back to the Peloponnese. He led it into the palace of Eurystheus, who once more sought refuge in his stone jar. ‘All right, damn you, just get rid of it, will you?’ ‘Are you sure you don’t want to tickle its ear?’ ‘Get rid of the damned thing!’ If Eurystheus had called out from the jar ‘Sacrifice it to the gods’, the whole history of the world might be different. As it was, Heracles obediently released the bull into the countryside. Once free of its master, it bucked and galloped for miles and miles, finally making its home all the way over on the east of mainland Greece, on the Plain of Marathon, where it tormented and harassed the local people until another great hero, as we shall see, finally came to face it down and end its extraordinary life.

8. T HE M ARES OF D IOMEDES ( INCORPORATING THE STORY OF ALCESTIS AND ADMETUS ) ‘So you’ve dealt with the bull,’ said Eurystheus, pulling at his beard. ‘Very clever, I’m sure. But one bull is hardly a test, is it?’ Heracles said nothing. He stood awaiting his instructions. ‘Right. I’d like you to bring me the four mares of DIOMEDES.’ ‘Diomedes?’ ‘Do you know nothing? He’s the King of Thrace. Mares are female horses. Horses are quadrupeds with manes and hoofs. There are four of them. Four is a number between three and five. Now go – and don’t come back without them, understood?’ On his way north to Thrace, Heracles dropped in at Pherae to stay with his friends King ADMETUS of Pherae and his queen ALCESTIS, a couple whose story is well worth hearing. Many years earlier Zeus had been forced to kill Apollo’s son Asclepius, the master of medicine and the healing arts.fn14 Ares and Hades had complained about Asclepius’s habit of bringing mortals back to life, making a nonsense of war and death. Zeus had accepted their arguments and struck Asclepius down with a thunderbolt. Apollo stormed up to Hephaestus’s forge in a fit of rage and confronted the three CYCLOPES, who were responsible for the manufacture of Zeus’s thunderbolts. Apollo couldn’t punish the king of the gods for the death of Asclepius, but he could punish the Cyclopes: Arges, Steropes and Brontes. He shot all three with arrows. Such insurrection was not to be tolerated and Zeus banished Apollo from Olympus, sentencing him to labour in bondage to a mortal. Being famed for his hospitality (always a sure way to Zeus’s heart), the Thessalian king Admetus was the mortal Zeus selected, sending Apollo to serve as his herdsman for a year and a day. The punishment turned out to be anything but a penance for Apollo. From the first he and Admetus got along wonderfully. Admetus, who had just inherited his throne and was not yet married, was charming, hospitable, warm-hearted and physically attractive. Far from being Apollo’s master, the young king became his lover. Apollo enjoyed being a herdsman and made sure that all of Admetus’s cows gave birth to twins, greatly increasing the value of the royal herd. Ownership of cattle in those times – as it is around much of the world today – was a great marker of wealth and status. Admetus prospered and Apollo’s period of servitude passed in a flash. The two remained friends and the god even helped his favourite win Alcestis, one of the nine daughters of King PELIAS of Iolcosfn15. Alcestis was so beautiful that princes and nobles from all over Greece were clamouring for her hand. Her father ruled that he would give her in marriage to the first suitor who proved able to harness a boar and a lion to a chariot. Yoking together two such incompatible wild beasts had proved impossible for all comers thus far, but with Apollo’s help Admetus managed it. He drove the chariot up to Pelias and won his bride. The god came to his friend’s aid again when, what with the excitements of wooing and winning Alcestis, Admetus fell short in his devotions to Apollo’s twin Artemis, who was perhaps more sensitive to slights real and imaginary than any other Olympian. She punished Admetus for this neglect by sending snakes into the bridal chamber, putting something of a damper on the couple’s first night together. Apollo, however, helped Admetus by instructing him in which prayers and sacrifices would best mollify his prickly sister. The snakes vanished and the honeymoon proceeded. The ecstasy of the bridal chamber translated into perfect marital bliss and the marriage of Admetus and Alcestis proved to be as happy as any in Greece. So fond of Admetus was Apollo that he could not bear the idea of his beloved friend dying. Rather than begging Zeus to bestow immortality upon his favourite, as Selene and Eos had each done for a mortal lover,fn16 Apollo approached the problem differently. He invited the MOIRAI – the three Fates, CLOTHO, LACHESIS and ATROPOS – up to Olympus and got them very drunk. ‘Darling Moirai,’ he said to them, staggering slightly and slurring his speech to give the impression that he was as intoxicated as they were, ‘I love you.’ ‘Bloody love you too,’ said Atropos. ‘You’re the … hup … best,’ hiccupped Clotho. ‘Always said so,’ gulped Lachesis, wiping a tear from her eye. ‘I’ll take out anyone who says different and I’ll do them.’ ‘Damn right.’ ‘They’re dead.’ ‘So if I were to ask you ladies a favour …’ said Apollo. ‘Name it.’ ‘Condunder it sid – consider it done.’ ‘Only got to ask.’ ‘My friend Admetus. Lovely man. A prince.’ ‘I thought he was a king?’ ‘Well yes, he is a king,’ admitted Apollo. ‘But he’s a prince of a man.’ ‘Sort of makes sense,’ conceded Atropos. ‘Prince of a king.’ ‘But not king of a prince?’ ‘The point is,’ said Apollo, not wishing to be sidetracked, ‘I’d like to ask your help in ensuring that his life doesn’t get cut off.’ ‘The cutting off, that’s my job,’ said Atropos. ‘I know,’ said Apollo. ‘You want me not to cut the thread of his life?’ ‘I’d esteem it the greatest of favours.’ ‘You want him to live for ever?’ ‘If it could be managed.’ ‘Ooh, that’s quite an ask. Cutting the thread of life is what I do. Not cutting it … well, that’s a whole other thing. What say you, sisters?’ Apollo refilled their cups. ‘Have another drink while you think about it.’ The Moirai put their heads together. ‘Because we love you,’ said Clotho at last. ‘Lots …’ added Lachesis. ‘Because we love you lots, we will allow it. Just this one time. If your friend … What was his name?’ ‘Admetus. Admetus, King of Pherae.’ ‘If Admetus, King of Pherae, can find someone else willing to die in his place …’ ‘… then we don’t see any reason why we need to thread his cut …’ ‘Cut his thread …’ ‘What she said.’ This then was the bargain Apollo explained to Admetus. ‘You will never be taken down to the underworld so long as you can find someone, anyone, who’ll agree to take your place.’ Admetus went to his parents. They’ve already seen the best of life, he reasoned, and one of them will surely agree to be taken early if it means my immortality. ‘You begot me,’ he said to his father PHERES, ‘it must be your duty then to ensure that I keep living.’ To Admetus’s surprise and mortification, Pheres was entirely unwilling to cooperate. ‘Yes, I begot you, and I raised you to rule over this land, but I don’t see that I’m bound to die for you. There’s no law of our ancestors and no Greek law that says fathers should die for their children. You were born to live your own life, whether it’s a happy one or a wretched one. I have given you all I need give you. I don’t expect you to die for me, and you shouldn’t expect me to die for you. So, you love the light of day. What makes you think your father hates it? Know this: we are a long time dead. Life may be short, but it is sweet.’fn17 ‘Yes, but you’ve lived your life and I …’ ‘I have lived my life when my life comes naturally to its end, not when you say so.’ Rebuffed by his own flesh and blood, Admetus cast the net wider. He had never considered immortality before, but once Apollo had told him how it was possible, the idea became an obsession with him. He now believed it was his right. He had thought that it would be a simple matter to find someone, anyone, to do this simple thing for him and die. It turned out that everybody seemed, like his father, unreasonably anxious to hang on to their lives. Eventually it was his loyal and loving wife Alcestis who came to his rescue. She announced that she would be content to die in her husband’s place. ‘You mean it?’ ‘Yes, my darling,’ she said, calmly patting his hand. ‘You’re honestly happy to do this for me?’ ‘Quite happy, if it makes you happy.’ A fine marble tomb was constructed and Alcestis prepared herself for the allotted time of Admetus’s decease, which would now mark her own. But when the day came, Admetus had a radical change of heart. He realised how much he loved Alcestis and how much less of a life he would have without her. In fact, he now saw that a long and endless existence alone would be worse than death. He begged her not to go. But her declaration of intent to take his place had been heard and recorded by the Fates. Die she must – and die she did. It was at exactly this moment, with a devastated Admetus trying to come to terms with what he had done, that Heracles called in at the palace. So mindful of his obligations as a host was Admetus that he could not countenance turning a guest away. He did his best to hide his sorrow and entertain his guest with all the warmth and generosity for which he was famous. Nonetheless, Heracles couldn’t but notice that his old friend was dressed in black. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, we have had a death in the palace.’ ‘I’ll leave you then. I can always come another time.’ ‘No, no. Please, come in. I insist.’ Heracles was still unsure. Hosts have obligations, but so do guests. ‘Who died? No one close to you?’ Admetus had no wish to burden his friend with his woes. ‘No blood relation, I promise …’ which was technically true. ‘A woman of the household, that’s all.’ ‘Oh well, in that case …’ Heracles came through into the great hall. His eyes fell greedily on the table where the funeral banquet had been laid out. ‘Always said you served the best wine and cakes,’ he said, helping himself to lavish quantities of both. ‘You are too kind,’ said Admetus. ‘I’ll leave you for a moment but please, make yourself entirely at home.’ Heracles tucked cheerfully in. He finished all the wine on the table and yelled out for more. The chief steward of the household came, grim faced. He was a servant of the old school. Not even the risk of igniting the notorious temper of the strongest man in the world would make him swerve from his duty. ‘Have you no shame?’ he hissed. ‘How can you eat and drink like this with the house in such bitter mourning?’ ‘Why the hell shouldn’t I? Who’s dead? Only some serving woman or other.’ ‘Listen to him, gods! Our dear queen has been taken from us and you dare call her “some serving woman”?’ ‘Alcestis? But Admetus told me …’ ‘His majesty is even now in the garden sobbing his noble heart out.’ ‘Oh, what a fool I am!’ Heracles now succumbed to one of his periodic bouts of guilt and violent self-abasement. He beat his breast and called himself the most insensitive buffoon that ever lived, unworthy to be a guest in any man’s house, an arse, a clown an oaf and the lowest of the low. Then he came to his senses and realised what he had to do. ‘I shall go down to the underworld,’ he said to himself, ‘and I shall fight anyone who stops me from bringing Alcestis back up. I swear I shall.’ As luck would have it, such a drastic course was not necessary. Before setting off, Heracles went to pay his respects at Alcestis’s brand-new tomb. There he found THANATOS, the god of death, just as he was taking her soul. ‘Let go!’ bellowed Heracles. ‘You have no business here,’ said Thanatos. ‘I command you to –’ With a roar Heracles was on him, wrestling the helpless Thanatos to the ground and pounding him with his fists. Some time later Admetus left off his weeping in the garden and went back into the palace. ‘Where’s Heracles?’ he asked. ‘Oh, him,’ sniffed the steward. ‘He left as soon as he found out that the queen was dead. Good riddance, I say.’ Just then Heracles burst in. ‘I’m back,’ he said, slapping Admetus on the shoulder, ‘and I’ve brought a friend.’ He turned to the doorway and called. ‘You can come in now.’ Alcestis entered the room and stood before her disbelieving husband, a shy smile on her lips. ‘I wrestled Death himself to the ground to bring her back to you,’ said Heracles, ‘so make sure you bloody well keep her this time.’ Admetus did not seem to hear him. He had eyes only for his wife. ‘Yes. Well. I’ll leave you to it, then. Due in Thrace. Got to fetch some horses.’ In sending Heracles for the four mares of Diomedes, Eurystheus had neglected to furnish him with any further details. However, the horses’ names are known to us. They were PODARGOS, the ‘flashing-footed’; XANTHIPPE, the ‘yellow horse’;fn18 LAMPON, the ‘shining one’; and DINOS, the ‘terrible’.fn19 More pertinently, Heracles was unaware that, due to the depraved king’s habit of feeding them human flesh, all four had turned quite untameably mad and were kept chained with iron shackles to bronze mangers, a danger to all who approached.fn20 When Heracles arrived at Diomedes’ palace in Thrace, he was accompanied by his young friend and lover ABDERUS, a son of Hermes.fn21 Leaving Abderus to watch over the horses, Heracles set off to negotiate with the king. His curiosity getting the better of him, the boy drew too close to the mares. One of them caught his hand between her teeth dragged him into the stalls. He was torn apart and devoured in minutes. Heracles buried the mangled remains and founded a city around the tomb, which he called Abdera in honour of his lost beloved.fn22 The distraught and maddened hero now turned the full force of his wrath on Diomedes, slaughtering his palace guard, snatching up the king and throwing him to his own horses. The unpleasant taste of their one-time master caused the mares to lose their appetite for human flesh so that Heracles was able safely to harness them to a chariot and drive them all the way back to Mycenae. Eurystheus, who must surely have been getting used to the disappointment of seeing Heracles return unscathed by now, dedicated the mares to Hera and bred them for his own thoroughbreds. Later Greeks believed that it was from this line that Alexander the Great’s famous mount, Bucephalus, was descended.

9. T HE G IRDLE OF H IPPOLYTA ‘Far to the east, along the banks of the Thermodon, lives the race of Amazons!’ said ADMETE, breathless with excitement. Heracles bowed. Eurystheus’s daughter was being ‘given’ a Labour of Heracles as a coming of age present. ‘Set him to do anything you want, my darling,’ Eurystheus had told her. ‘The more difficult and dangerous, the better. Heracles has had it too easy.’ Admete had known straight away what she would demand of the hero. Like many young Greek girls, she worshipped this band of strong, independent and fiercely unapologetic women and had long dreamed of being an Amazon. ‘The daughters of Ares and the nymph HARMONIA,’ she told Heracles, ‘the Amazons dedicate themselves to fighting and to each other.’ ‘So I have heard,’ said Heracles. ‘Their queen …’ Admete was flushed with excitement now, ‘is HIPPOLYTA. Hippolyta the brave, Hippolyta, the beautiful, Hippolyta the entirely fierce. No man can conquer her.’ ‘That too have I heard.’ ‘She wears a belt, a most marvellous jewelled girdle, given her by her father Ares. I want it.’ ‘Excuse me?’ ‘You are to bring me the girdle of Hippolyta.’ ‘And if she would rather keep it?’ ‘Don’t toy with my daughter, Heracles. Obey her.’ So it was that Heracles found himself sailing east towards the land of the Amazons. The fame of these proud female warriors had spread throughout the ancient world.fn23 Riding on horseback – the first warriors in the world to do so – the Amazons had defeated all the tribes they had encountered in battle. When they conquered and subdued a people they took home the males that they judged would father the best daughters and bred with them. When the men had done their duty by them they were killed, like the males of many species of spider, mantis and fish. They put to death any male babies they bore, raising only girls to join their band. If they were accused of cruelty, they pointed out how many girl-children around the ‘civilised’ world were left exposed on mountainsides to diefn24 and how many women were used as childbearing livestock and given no other purpose in life than to serve, please and obey. By no means did Heracles underestimate the magnitude of the task facing him. But when his ship reached Pontus, on the southern coast of the Black Sea, he was surprised to be met by a friendly welcoming party including Queen Hippolyta herself. The Amazons and their queen were not the only heroic fighters to have achieved a reputation across the ancient world. For more than eight years Heracles had uncomplainingly achieved the impossible, and the news of his strength, courage and fortitude against such stacked and unjust odds had travelled far and wide. He had rid the world of much menace and terror. He had met magic and monstrosity with valour and dignity. Only the churlish or envious could fail to admire him. The Amazons’ admiration for valour, dignity and strength had overcome their instinctive distrust and dislike of men enough for them to welcome him and his crew with warmth and respect. Heracles and his crew were garlanded with flowers and feasted on the banks of the Thermodon.fn25 Heracles was deeply attracted by Hippolyta. She had poise, wit and a natural air of command that was rare in the world. She never raised her voice or seemed to expect attention or adoration, and yet Heracles found himself attending to no one else and felt closer to veneration for her than for any other woman, or indeed man, he had known. She seemed to like him equally. If there was a trace of a smile on her face when she saw that her hands together were nowhere near meeting around the muscles of his upper arm, it was a smile not so much of mockery as of amusement at the freakish wonder of such a specimen living in the world. ‘This will do it,’ she said, unbuckling her belt. She was right, her waist and Heracles’ biceps had the same dimensions. Fixing the clasp, she announced that it improved his appearance greatly. ‘That horrible lion’s head and pelt, the ugly club … no doubt they’re useful for frightening fools and cowards, but a man should be never be afraid to show a little colour and sparkle.’ She smiled again as Heracles examined the jewelled belt around his arm. She noticed that his face was clouded with a frown. ‘Don’t tell me that you are afraid that such a bangle does not consort with your great masculinity? I thought better of you than that.’ ‘No, no,’ said Heracles. ‘It isn’t that …’ ‘What then?’ ‘You say that you have heard of the tasks my cousin Eurystheus has set me?’ ‘All the world knows of the Labours of Heracles.’ ‘Is that what they call them?’ ‘Even if we allow for some natural exaggeration of your feats as the tales are passed mouth to ear, it seems you have done miraculous things.’ ‘I’m sure most of the stories are nonsense.’ ‘Well, is it true that when you carried the Erymanthian Boar into Eurystheus’s throne room he was so frightened that he dived headfirst into a stone jar?’ ‘That, yes, that is true,’ Heracles conceded. ‘And that you fed Diomedes to his own horses?’ Again Heracles nodded. ‘So tell me, great hero, what it is that can trouble you now?’ ‘Well, you see, I’m on the ninth of these tasks, these “Labours” as you call them. That is the reason I am here.’ Hippolyta stiffened. ‘I hope it is not to drag Hippolyta in chains before that vile tyrant?’ ‘No, no … not that. It’s this girdle …’ He looked down at the belt circling his arm. ‘His daughter, Admete, sent me to fetch it. But now that I have met you I cannot find it in my heart to …’ ‘Is that all? It is yours, Heracles. Accept it gladly as my gift to you. One warrior to another.’ ‘But it was a gift from your father, Ares the god.’ ‘And now it is a gift from your lover Hippolyta the woman.’ ‘They say that its wearer is invincible in battle. Can this be true?’ ‘I have worn it since I was fourteen and I have never been defeated.’ ‘Then I have no right …’ ‘Please. I insist. Now, let me see if all your dimensions are in proportion …’ We will leave Heracles and Hippolyta locked together in a fierce embrace in her royal tent on the banks of the Thermodon. You might be thinking that this Ninth Labour had come all too easily to Heracles. Certainly the goddess Hera believed just that. The hatred she bore him had not diminished over the years. If anything it grew more intense each time he triumphed over yet another adversity. His popularity enraged her. She had set out to humiliate and destroy him. Instead there were children and even towns being named after him and songs being composed about him praising his strength, courage and lack of self-pity. She would show the world they had chosen the wrong man to celebrate. In the form of an Amazon warrior Hera walked the riverbank sowing confusion, doubt and distrust. ‘Heracles cannot be trusted … he is here to kidnap our queen … I have heard that even now his men are preparing to take us prisoner, rape us and sell us as slaves in the markets of Argolis … We should kill him before he gets a chance to destroy us all …’ In the tent Heracles sat up, suddenly alert. ‘What is that noise?’ ‘Just my women celebrating with your crew, no doubt,’ said Hippolyta sleepily. ‘I can hear horses.’ Heracles leaned across Hippolyta’s prone form and lifted a flap of canvas. Amazons on horseback were firing arrows at his men! A party of them was galloping towards the tent. At once the blood throbbed in his temples and a red mist closed all around him. The smiles and hospitality had been a trap. Hippolyta had tried to make a fool of him. ‘Traitor! he cried. ‘You … deceitful … witch!’ He took her head in his hands and with the last raging word he twisted her neck round so that it snapped like the dry branch of a tree. He snatched up his club and ran out of the tent. He swung and dismounted three of the Amazons riding towards him with one sweeping blow. The others saw Hippolyta’s belt around his arm, the symbol of her authority and her invincibility. The fight went out of them. Heracles’ men, heartened by the sight of their leader with his blood up and roaring like a lion, rallied. In a short time the banks of the river were littered with the bodies of dead Amazons. Heracles and his men broke the long return journey back to Mycenae by putting in at Troy. It was ruled at this time by LAOMEDON, grandson of the king TROS who gave Troy and Trojans their names, and the son of King ILOS, who gave the city its other name, Ilium, as in Homer’s great epic, the Iliad. Troy was a fine city, the construction of its walls had recently been completed by the gods Apollo and Poseidon. But the greedy, duplicitous and foolish Laomedon refused to pay them for their work. In revenge Apollo fired plague arrows into the city, while Poseidon flooded the plain of Ilium and sent a sea monster there to harry and devour such Trojans as tried to escape their disease-ridden city. The priests and oracles of Troy told Laomedon that the only way to save Troy from disease, famine and disaster was to chain his daughter HESIONE naked to a rock in the floodplain, for the sea monster to feast uponfn26. This was the situation when Heracles arrived. He promised to free Hesione if he could have the horses that had been bred from Zeus’s gift to Tros.fn27 Laomedon agreed and Heracles promptly killed the monster and rescued Hesione. Once more Laomedon reneged on a deal. He refused to honour the agreement and give up his horses. There wasn’t time for Heracles to put this right. His year was nearly up and he needed to get to Eurystheus and be sent on his Tenth Labour. Vowing to return and have his revenge on Laomedon, he made his way back to Mycenae.

10. T HE C ATTLE OF G ERYON ‘There!’ Heracles flung the belt at Admete’s feet. ‘I hope it brings you luck.fn28 Now, mighty king, my tenth and final quest, if you please.’ Eurystheus shifted uncomfortably on his throne. He was sure a number of courtiers had tittered at the epithet ‘mighty king’. ‘Very well, Heracles,’ he said. ‘You will go to Erytheia and bring me back GERYON’s cattle. The entire herd.’fn29 You will remember that, when Perseus sliced off the head of the Gorgon, Medusa, two unborn children from her liaison with Poseidon flew from the gaping wound. One was the flying horse PEGASUS, the other Chrysaor, the young man with the golden sword. Chrysaor (by his union with CALLIRRHOË, the ‘sweet-flowing’ daughter of the sea Titans Oceanus and Tethys) had fathered the three-headed Geryon, a most terrible monster who fiercely protected an enormous herd of red cattle in the western island of Erytheia.fn30 To help him guard this rare and valuable breed, he had the giant EURYTION, a son of Ares, and a ferocious two-headed dog, brother to CERBERUS, called ORTHRUS. Erytheia lay so deep into the unexplored western reaches of the world that to reach it Heracles had to go further than he had ever travelled before. He became so hot and bothered while toiling across the Libyan desert that he shouted up in rage at the glaring sun and threatened to shoot Helios down from his chariot with his arrows. Helios may have been of the immortal Titan race but he still feared the terrible damage Heracles’ arrows could do him. ‘Don’t shoot, Heracles, son of Zeus,’ he yelled, in some panic. ‘Then help me!’ Heracles shouted back. Helios agreed not to fly so close to the land if only the hero promised not to shoot. What’s more, to help make the journey westwards easier he offered to lend Heracles his great Cup. Each day Helios would ride his sun-chariot from the lands of the distant eastfn31 across the sky until he settled in the far kingdom of Oceanusfn32. There he would spend the night reposing in his western palace, before setting out eastwards again in an enormous cup or bowl borne along Oceanus’ fast flowing current. This ‘River of Ocean’ circling the earth returned Helios to his eastern palace where he could prepare his horses and set out for another day. Heracles gratefully accepted the loan of the Cup, a seaworthy bowlfn33 in which he sat, knees up, in perfect comfort zooming towards Erytheia. At one point, the waters on which he was carried grew choppy and he threatened to turn his arrows on Oceanus. I think it is not that Heracles was arrogant in assuming he could best a god, more that he regarded all living things, divine or mortal, as his equals. In any case the threat alarmed Oceanus who, as frightened of those terrible arrows as his nephew Helios had been, quelled the waters. Heracles arrived on the island of Erytheia safe and dry in no time at all. He was welcomed on shore by the savage barking of Orthrus, the two-headed dog. ‘Orthrus!’ cried Heracles. ‘You, like so many of the world’s ugliest creatures, are a son of Typhon and Echidna. Don’t you know that the time is up for your kind? I have already killed your sister, the Lernaean Hydra, and your son, the Nemean Lion. Now it is your turn to be cleansed from the earth.’ With a roar from each throat the creature hurled itself at Heracles, who raised his club and smashed it down on one of the heads. The other turned with a startled yelp to look at its ruined companion, now dangling lifeless from the common neck. Before the second head had time to mourn, the club crashed down, ending the dog’s life. The herdsman Eurytion heard the commotion and approached, brandishing his own mighty club. ‘You will pay,’ he snarled. ‘I loved that dog.’ ‘Then join him!’ cried Heracles loosing an arrow into his throat. The Hydra’s venom did its work and Eurytion was dead before his body hit the ground. Heracles now set about trying to herd the cattle. Before long Geryon himself lumbered into view. So few mortals ever saw Geryon and lived to tell the tale that reports of his physical appearance are varied. All concurred that this son of Chrysaor and Callirrhoë had three heads. Most described him as having three distinct torsos too, although one source maintains the three heads sprang from a single neck and single torso. Where the disagreement is strongest is in how those torsos were connected to the ground. Some asserted that they tapered into one waist and that the giant therefore had one pair of legs; others, however, were sure that he had three sets. I tend to the two legs but three torsos and heads variant. What is beyond doubt is that Geryon was huge, tricephalous and possessed a vicious temper. ‘Who dares steal my cattle?’ roared the left head. ‘Heracles dares.’ ‘Then Heracles dies,’ said the middle head. ‘Slowly and in agony,’ said the right head. ‘When you die,’ Heracles replied, ‘it will be three times more painful than any death that has gone before.’ So saying he loosed an arrow right into Geryon’s navel. The Hydra poison made its way up each torso, up through the three necks and into the three heads, scalding and corroding as it went. ‘It burns!’ ‘It burns!’ ‘It burns!’ The screams were terrible. Quite how Heracles got the cattle across the sea is not recorded. We must assume he ferried as many as would fit with him in the Cup of Helios, shuttling back and forth until the whole herd stood on the North African shore. As a memorial of his great trip, he erected two vast pillars of stone, one on the northern, Iberian, side of the straits that open from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, the other on the southern, Moroccan, side. To this day the Pillars of Hercules greet travellers who pass through the straits. The African pillar is called Ceuta, the Iberian is known as the Rock of Gibraltar. It took Heracles an inordinately long time to get the cattle back to Eurystheus. He drove them up through Spain, and the Basque Country, across southern France and northern Italy and down the Dalmatian coast before the welcome mountains and valleys of Greece told him that he was nearing home. But Hera in her spite sent down clouds of gadflies whose painful stings caused the herd to buck, stampede and scatter all over mainland Greece.fn34 Heracles managed to retrieve most of them, but it was a weary and travel-stained Heracles who led the herd through the gates of Tiryns and into the palace courtyard of King Eurystheus. ‘Oh, dear me,’ said Eurystheus, stroking his beard. ‘Is this all? I had understood that Geryon’s herd numbered more than a thousand, and yet even to my untrained eye there seem to be no more than five or six hundred here.’ ‘It is all that remain,’ said Heracles. ‘And now, my service to you is over. I have accomplished all that you have asked of me, and more. It is time for you to release me from my bondage and allow me to go home a free man, expiated of my crime.’ Eurystheus gave a vicious crack of laughter. ‘Oh no. I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘No, no. You still owe me two more tasks.’ ‘You said ten tasks, and ten tasks have I performed.’ ‘Ah, but the Second Labour,’ said Eurystheus. ‘Your nephew Iolaus helped you defeat the Hydra. Without his searing the wounds of each severed head you would never have succeeded. The agreement was that you would complete each task alone and unaided. So we cannot count the Hydra.’ ‘That is outrageous!’ ‘Tsk tsk, hold that famous temper of yours, Heracles. You know what happened to Megara and your children.’ Eurystheus was enjoying this. He licked his lips as Heracles relapsed into a shamed silence. ‘Then there is the matter of those stables in Elis. You accepted a reward from King Augeas, did you not?’ ‘Well, yes, but …’ ‘That means you did not perform the duty as a part of your penance to me, but as a hired hand. It cannot possibly count.’ ‘He never paid me!’ ‘That is beside the point. By demanding payment you violated the terms of our agreement. Your Ten Labours have now become Twelve.’ Of course it had been Hera, through one of her priestesses, who had whispered these cruel technicalities into Eurystheus’s ear. Heracles dropped his head. He knew that if he lost his temper and lashed out or stalked away in a sulk, then all the effort and pain of the last ten years would have been for nothing. The immortality promised him by the Delphic oracle could only be his if he was cleansed of his guilt and only his coward cousin Eurystheus, this grinning despot, this cruel vessel of Hera, could do it. Immortality as such did not interest him, but as an immortal he could surely go down to the underworld and bring up Megara and his children. ‘Given the feeble number of cattle you’ve managed to bring me today, you’re lucky I don’t make it three more,’ said Eurystheus. ‘In reality I should, but luckily for you I’m triskaidekaphobic. So, if you’ve finished whining and complaining, I shall name your eleventh task. Bring me the Golden Apples of the Hesperides.’

11. T HE G OLDEN A PPLES OF THE H ESPERIDES The Hesperides, nymphs of the evening, were the three beautiful daughters of NYX, the goddess of Night and EREBUS, the god of darkness, who first sprang from formless Chaos. It was known that the Hesperides tended a garden in which grew an appletree whose golden apples conferred immortality on whomever might be lucky enough to eat one. Gaia herself, the earth goddess and mother of all, had presented some of the fruit to Zeus and Hera for their wedding feast, and now Hera had set another ghastly child of Typhon and Echidna, the hundred-headed dragon LADON, to guard the tree. The overwhelming problem that confronted Heracles was not the dragon coiled round the tree – such obstacles were incidental to him – it was that no one had the least idea where the Garden of the Hesperides was. Some said far north of the Mediterranean, in the icy realm of the Hyperboreans, others maintained that it lay to the west of Libya. In northern Europe Heracles encountered the nymphs of the river Eridanus.fn35 They urged him to seek the advice of NEREUS, one of the Old Men of the Sea.fn36 ‘If you can hold onto him, he will tell you all he knows,’ they chorused. As with most divinities of water, Nereus was capable of changing his shape at will. His knowledge was immense and, like all those blessed with the gift of prophecy, he always told the truth … But seldom the whole truth, and even more rarely a clear, uncomplicated and unvarnished truth. I don’t know how long it took Heracles to track Nereus down, but he did locate him at last on some remote shore, curled up asleep on the sand. The moment Heracles laid a hand on his shoulder Nereus transformed himself into a fat walrus. Heracles hugged him tight. Now Nereus was an otter. Heracles fell to the sand but still managed to clutch on to him. In rapid succession he found himself grappling a horseshoe crab, a manatee, a sea cucumber and a tunny fish. No matter what shape Nereus shifted into, Heracles held fast and refused to let go. At last Nereus gave up and turned himself into a bearded old fisherman – perhaps the closest to his real shape he ever came. ‘You must circle the mother sea,’ Nereus said, ‘until you find the one who calls out your name from a high place. You will help them and they will help you in return.’ Not a word more could Heracles get from Nereus, so he relaxed his grip and watched him soar away into the sky as a gliding seagull. Beginning with the coast of Africa, Heracles roamed the outer fringes of the known world, seeking clues. Along the way, being Heracles, he despatched a number of nuisances. In the lands between today’s Morocco and Libyafn37 he encountered the half-giant ANTAEUS, a son of Gaia and Poseidon whose major amusement in life was to challenge passers-by to wrestling matches. Whoever lost the bout had to die, and Antaeus had raised a temple to his father on the seashore constructed entirely from the skulls and bones of his innumerable victims. News had reached Heracles that his younger cousin Theseus had defeated King CERCYON on the road to Athens by using the new art of pankration, which combined the traditional close grappling, chopping, kicking and throwing with feinting, dodging and the use of the opponent’s weight and strength against himself. Heracles was used to sheer muscle being the only weapon he needed in weaponless fighting, but he had nonetheless trained himself in Theseus’s art and felt that a lumbering bully like Antaeus could present no threat, however fine a fighter he might be. Heracles made his way to the temple and called out his challenge. ‘Ho!’ cried Antaeus, with a roar of delight. ‘So I am to be the great one who lives on in history as the champion who defeated and killed the people’s hero Heracles? Let it be so!’ They stripped down in accordance with custom and faced each other, feet pawing the sand like bulls squaring up to charge. Heracles was the first to move in, bodychecking Antaeus, putting him in a choking headlock, then pivoting him over his hips and slamming him down with such force that the ground shook. The force of the throw would have killed or certainly incapacitated most of the opponents Heracles had ever fought. But to Heracles’ surprise, Antaeus leapt up and rushed at him as if nothing had happened. This was strange. For the Greeks the aim in wrestling was to throw your opponent and pin him to the ground until he submitted. Heracles managed easily to pin Antaeus down again and again, but instead of weakening and submitting he seemed to grow stronger and stronger each time. Heracles realised that he was the one tiring. He could not understand it. He had the full measure of his opponent. He swept his legs from under him and slammed him to the ground time and time again. Yet when he did, Antaeus merely sprang with renewed vigour as if nothing had happened. It was almost as if – of course! The truth dawned on Heracles. Antaeus was a son of Gaia. Every time he made contact with the ground he was able to draw strength from his mother Earth. Heracles knew what he must do. With a final grunt of effort he wrapped his arms around Antaeus in a bear hug and, squatting down to let his legs do the final push, lifted him bodily off the ground. He held him high over his head until he felt the strength start to drain from the giant’s frame. With a final heave he snapped his spine and threw him dead on the ground. Gaia’s touch could not bring her son back to life. His broad skull, Heracles found, made a fine centrepiece to the pediment of Poseidon’s temple. Resuming his journey eastwards, Heracles now encountered BUSIRIS, one of the fifty sons of Aegyptusfn38. The Greeks felt distaste for the human sacrifices performed by the priests of OSIRIS, from whom Busiris got his name. In order to put a stop to the vile practice, Heracles allowed himself to be captured and chained up as the next sacrificial victim. As the knife was descending on his chest, he burst his manacles and killed Busiris, along with all the priests of his order. Heracles renamed the town of Busiris in honour of the city of his birth, Thebes – which is why, from that moment on, geographers and historians have always needed to distinguish between Thebes, Greece and Thebes, Egypt.fn39 Despite the distraction of such incidental adventures, Heracles never lost sight of his need to locate the Garden of the Hesperides. Obeying the Old Man of the Sea’s injunction to ‘circle the mother sea’ (which he correctly took to mean circumnavigate the Mediterraneanfn40), Heracles arrived at last in the lands between the Black and Caspian seas. It was here, when he reached the Caucasus Mountains that, just as Nereus had prophesied, he was hailed by a voice from high above. ‘Welcome, Heracles. I have been expecting you.’ Heracles looked up and shaded his eyes against the sun. A figure was chained to the rock. ‘Prometheus?’ Who else could it be? Zeus had shackled the Titan to the side of a vast mountain and daily sent an eaglefn41 to tear out and devour the Titan’s liver. Each night, Prometheus being immortal, the liver grew back and the following day the torture began anew. Countless generations of the race of men and women had risen, fallen and risen since their creator and champion had been made to endure these agonies. Heracles knew who this figure chained to the rocks was, of course. Everybody did. But only Heracles dared to raise his bow and shoot down Zeus’s avenging eagle as it soared out of the sun towards them. ‘I can’t pretend that I am sorry to see him go,’ said Prometheus watching it plunge to its death. ‘He was only doing the Sky Father’s bidding, but I have to confess I had learned to hate that bird.’ It did not take Heracles long to shatter Prometheus’s manacles with a blow of his club. ‘Thank you, Heracles,’ said the Titan rubbing his shins. ‘You have no idea how much I have been looking forward to this moment.’ ‘I am not sure that my father will be so grateful.’ ‘Zeus? Don’t be so sure. You are his vessel in the race of men. I have heard of your feats. The voices of birds inform me of the goings on in the world and visions come to me in my dreams. I know that you, as your cousin Theseus is doing, are ridding the world of its foulest beasts, its dragons, serpents and many-headed monsters. Through the work of heroes like you the gods are clearing the world of the old order of beings.’ ‘Why would Zeus want to do that?’ ‘He is as subject to the laws of Anankefn42 as the rest of us. He knows that it is necessary for the world to be made safe for humankind to flourish. The day will come when even benign creatures will vanish from mortal sight – the nymphs, fauns and spirits of the woods, waters, mountains and seas; they will become no more than rumours. Yes, us Titans too. Even the gods on high Olympus will fade from man’s memory. I see it, yes, but it is yet a distant future. There is more to be done in the meantime. Soon you will be called upon to rescue Zeus and the gods from a great and urgent threat, the threat of the giants, who even now are preparing to rise up and conquer Olympus. It is why you were born.’ Heracles frowned. ‘Are you telling me that I am nothing but an instrument of the gods’ will? Have I no say myself?’ ‘Fate, Doom, Necessity, Destiny. These are real. But so are your mind, will and spirit, Heracles. You can walk away from it all. Find a beautiful companion with whom to spend the rest of your life in peace, tending your flocks, raising children and living a life of tranquil contemplation, love and ease. Forget Zeus’s plans for you. Forget Hera and Eurystheus. Forget their cruel exploitation of your remorse. You have more than paid. Do it. Go. You are free.’ ‘I would … I would like such a life. Oh, how I would …’ said Heracles. ‘Yet I know that is not what I was put on this earth to do or be. Not because you or the oracles have told me, but because I feel it. I know what I am capable of. To deny it would be a betrayal. I would end my days hating myself.’ ‘You see?’ said Prometheus. ‘It is your fate to be Heracles the hero, burdened with labours, yet it is also your choice. You choose to submit to it. Such is the paradox of living. We willingly accept that we have no will.’ This was all a touch too profound for Heracles. He saw, but did not see. In this he shared the same bemusement on the subject of free will and destiny that befuddles us all. ‘Yes, well, never mind all that, I have a job to do.’ ‘Ah yes. The eleventh of these tests that your cousin is setting you. The Golden Apples. You will not be able to pick them from the tree, no mortal can. My brother Atlas holds up the sky there. That was his punishment for his part in the war of the Titans against the Olympians.fn43 You must persuade Atlas to help you. The Garden of the Hesperides lies in the far west. You have a long journey ahead of you. Plenty of time to dream up a plan of action. Now …’ The Titan stood and stretched his legs. ‘I think I should go and find Zeus. I shall bow my head and beg his forgiveness. I am confident that he has softened in his anger against me. He may even realise that he needs me.’ ‘But you see the future, you know what happens next.’ ‘I think ahead. I consider and I imagine. It is not entirely the same thing. Go well, Heracles, and accept my blessing.’ As Heracles was making his way to the Hesperides, Prometheus turned his feet towards Olympus and Zeus’s throne. ‘Remind me,’ said Zeus. ‘Prothemus? Promedes? It’s Pro-something, I’m sure of it.’ ‘Funny,’ said Prometheus. ‘Very, very funny.’ ‘Your betrayal tore my heart out every day. A liver grows back more easily than a heart. I never loved a friend as much as I loved you.’ ‘I know that,’ said Prometheus, ‘and I’m sorry. Necessity is a hard …’ ‘Oh yes. Hide behind Necessity.’ ‘I’m not hiding behind anything, Zeus. I’m standing before your throne and offering my services.’ ‘Your services? I already have a cupbearer.’ Athena had been listening and came forward from behind a rock. ‘Come on, father. Let’s get this over with. Embrace him.’ There was a silence. Zeus stood up with a sigh. The pair edged towards each other. Prometheus opened his arms. ‘You’ve lost weight,’ said Zeus. ‘I wonder why. Is that a flash of white I see in that beard of yours?’ ‘The cares of office.’ ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Athena, ‘get on with it.’ ‘Athena, as ever, is wise,’ said Prometheus as the two extricated themselves from an unbearably awkward, unbearably male hug. ‘Never was the phrase “for heaven’s sake” more apt. The Giants are coming. You know they are coming?’ Zeus nodded. Some say Heracles, as he crossed the Black Sea and Mediterranean, once again sailed in the Cup of Helios. Whichever means of travel he chose, he did at last find the Garden of the Hesperides. Peering over the wall, he saw the tree with its gleaming crop of golden apples. Around its trunk was coiled the great serpent dragon Ladon. At the sight of a mortal peeping over the wall it raised its head and hissed. Heracles fired his arrow, the dragon screamed in pain and the coils slid slowly down the trunk. Another child of Echidna and Typhon lay dead. Heracles climbed over the wall and went to the trees. He found, as Prometheus had warned him, that being mortal he could not pick the apples. It was not that he lacked the strength, it was that every time he reached out to touch one it would vanish. After an hour of trying and failing, he left the garden and made towards the coast in search of Atlas. ‘The attempt,’ said Heracles to himself, with a rare stab at wit, ‘was fruitless.’ He found Atlas hunched, bunched and straining in the heat of the noonday sun. ‘Go away, sir. Go away. I hate being stared at.’ The sight of that great figure carrying such a burden on his shoulders was worth looking at. You will have seen versions of it in early maps of the world, which took the name of ‘atlas’ from him. The sea to the west of him, too, is still known as the ‘Atlantic’ Ocean in his honour. ‘I do apologise,’ said Heracles. ‘I send greetings from your brother Prometheus.’ ‘Ha!’ grunted Atlas. ‘That fool. He has learned the bitter lesson that to be a friend of Zeus is even more dangerous than to be his enemy.’ ‘He has told me that you could secure for me the golden apples that grow in the Garden of the Hesperides.’ ‘Go and fetch them yourselves, see where it gets you.’ ‘There was a dragon, but I killed it.’ ‘My, aren’t you clever? So why haven’t you got the apples?’ ‘Every time I tried to pick one, it disappeared.’ ‘Ha! That was the Hesperides. They are only visible in the evenings. They are my friends. They come and talk to me. They bathe my brow in the heat of the afternoon. Why should I help you steal from them? What would you do for me in return?’ Heracles explained the nature of his quest. ‘See, if I don’t return to Tiryns with those apples for my cousin Eurystheus, I will never be washed clean of my terrible crime. So your assistance would be of the greatest possible value to me. But I can do something for you too. For generations you have groaned under the weight of the heavens. I could relieve you of that burden while you fetch me the apples. I would have what I need and you would experience a blessed interlude without the sky bearing down upon you.’ ‘You? Carry the sky? But you’re a mortal. A well-muscled one, I grant you,’ he added, looking Heracles up and down. ‘Oh, I’m strong enough, I’m sure of it.’ Atlas considered. ‘Very well. If you think that you can hold up the heavens without being crushed, come alongside me and let’s give it a try.’ Heracles had performed many feats of superhuman strength in his time, but nothing to match this. When Atlas transferred the sky to his shoulders he staggered and fought for balance. ‘For heaven’s sake, man, do you want to cripple yourself? Your legs should take the weight, not your back. Don’t you know anything about lifting?’ Heracles did as he was told and let his thighs take the incredible strain. ‘I’ve got it,’ he gasped, ‘I’ve got it!’ ‘Not bad,’ said Atlas. He straightened himself up and arched his back. ‘Never thought I’d stand upright ever again. All the apples?’ ‘Bring me the Apples of the … Hesperides’ … that is what … I was … told …’ said Heracles. ‘So … yes, I suppose … all …’ ‘And the dragon is dead?’ ‘Couldn’t be deader.’ ‘Right. Well. Back in a tick.’ Atlas departed and Heracles concentrated on his breathing. Whatever happens, he told himself, I will be able to tell my children that I once carried the sky on my back. When he thought of his children, it was not the scores of sons and daughters he had fathered all round the world over many years which came to mind, but only the two that he had killed when under Hera’s spell. Having the weight of the heavens on your back, he thought, is nothing like so terrible a burden as having the blood of your children on your hands. What a long time Atlas was taking. Helios passed low overhead, dipping down into the redness of his western palace. Finally Atlas arrived carrying a basket crammed with golden apples. ‘Thank you, Atlas! Thank you. You are good and kind to do this.’ ‘Not at all,’ said Atlas, a crafty look coming into his eye. ‘It’s a pleasure to be of assistance. In fact, I can help you further by going to Tiryns and giving these to your cousin Eurystheus for you myself. Wouldn’t be any trouble at all …’ Heracles knew exactly what was in the Titan’s mind. But Heracles, as we have discovered, while not the subtlest man in the world, was far from a fool. He preferred to be direct and uncomplicated in his dealings but had learned over the years the hard lesson that simulation and deceit can be greater weapons than honest strength and raw courage. ‘Really?’ he said, in a tone of grateful excitement. ‘That would be most marvellously kind. But you will come back?’ ‘Of course, of course,’ Atlas assured him. ‘I’ll deliver the apples to Eurystheus and return directly – without so much as staying a single night at his palace. How’s that?’ ‘I can’t thank you enough! But before you go, I really need some padding for my neck … If you just take the weight for a second time, I can fold up my cloak and put it across my shoulders.’ ‘Yes, really can chafe around the upper back, can’t it?’ said Atlas, cheerfully relieving Heracles of the burden. ‘Even my calluses have got calluses … Wait! Where are you going? Come back! You traitor! Cheat! Liar! I’ll kill you! I’ll grind you into a thousand pieces! I’ll … I’ll …’ It was a full night and day before Heracles no longer heard the roaring, howling and cursing Titan. Many years later, when the days of the gods were coming to an end, Zeus relented and turned Atlas into the mountains that still bear his name. They shoulder the sky in Morocco to this day. Eurystheus knew that he could not keep the apples. The priestesses of Hera and of Athena all insisted they be returned. They were left in Athena’s temple overnight and in the morning they were gone. Athena herself restored them to the Garden of the Hesperides. But desirable golden apples had not yet finished with human history. Meanwhile, an unpleasant smile was curling on Eurystheus’s lips as he considered what the twelfth and final task should be. The twelfth and very final task. ‘Bring me … now, let me see … yes. Bring me …’ Eurystheus relished the tense silence that fell over the court as he stretched out his dramatic pause. ‘Bring me …’ he said, inspecting his fingernails, ‘bring me Cerberus.’ The gasp from his courtiers exceeded his expectations. Trust Heracles to ruin the moment. ‘Oh, Cerberus?’ he said, and if he had added ‘Is that all?’ he could hardly have punctured the drama of Eurystheus’s big reveal more completely. ‘Very well. Loose, or on a leash?’ ‘Either will suffice!’ snapped Eurystheus. Then, with a curt flick of the hand, ‘Now, out of my sight.’

12. C ERBERUS In truth Heracles’ insouciance had been a show of bravado. When he heard what Eurystheus was demanding of him, his heart leapt and banged against his ribs like a polecat trapped in a cage. Cerberus, the hound of hell, was yet another of the grotesque abominations bred from the union of Typhon and Echidna. Heracles had killed Cerberus’s sister the Hydra and brothers, Orthrus and Ladon. Perhaps Cerberus did not know this. Perhaps these monsters felt no affection for their siblings. Heracles did not doubt that he could subdue the savage three-headed dog, but getting him out of Hades’ realm was another matter. The King of the Dead would place insuperable obstacles before him. As he trudged away from Eurystheus’s palace a nebulous plan formed in Heracles’ mind. If he were safely to leave the underworld with Cerberus, he had better placate Hades. The nearest way to what counted as Hades’ heart was through his wife PERSEPHONE. For six months of the year she ruled by his side as Queen of the Underworld. In the world above, her mother Demeter, the goddess of fertility, mourned the loss of her beloved daughter and all the growth and life that were Demeter’s responsibility and gift to the world slowly withered into the dry death of autumn and the barren chill of winter. When, after six months below, Persephone ascended from the realm of the dead, the new life and buds of spring broke out, followed by full fertile fecund fruitful summer, until it was time for Persephone to return to the underworld and for the whole cycle to begin again. Over the years the Greeks had learned to celebrate this annual rhythm of death and renewal in the ritual known as the Eleusinian Mysteries, a dramatic and ceremonial playing out of the seizing of Persephone by Hades and her descent into his kingdom, the desperate search by Demeter for her daughter and finally her return to the upper world. Heracles believed that if he were initiated into this ritual it would endear him to the Queen of the Underworld and that through her he might win Hades’ permission to lead his favourite pet out into the light of day. The priests, priestesses and hierophants of Eleusis, led by Eumolpus, the founding celebrant of the order, granted Heracles’ request and duly inducted him into the mysteries of their cult of growth, death and regrowth.fn44 Heracles now journeyed to Cape Tainaron in the Peloponnese, the southernmost point of all Greece,fn45 where could be found a cave that formed one of the entrances to the underworld. Here he was met by the arch-psychopomp, the chief conductor of dead souls, Hermes himself, who offered to accompany him. No one knew their way about the caverns, passageways, galleries and halls of Hades better than he. It was on his way to the throne room of Hades and Persephone that Heracles happened upon his cousin Theseus locked in the Chair of Forgetfulness next to his friend PIRITHOUS. Unlike the other spectral shapes that flitted around they were not spirits, not incorporeal ghosts, but living men. Muted by the enchantment of Persephone and bound fast by two giant snakes that coiled around them, they held out their hands in a silent plea. Heracles extricated Theseus, who scrambled up to the daylight above, babbling thanks; but when he tried to do the same for Pirithous, the earth beneath them shook. His crime, after all, the attempted abduction of Persephone herself, was too great to allow forgiveness.fn46 As he progressed deeper into hell’s interior, Heracles saw the shade of Medusa. Revolted by her hideous appearance and the writhing of the snakes on her head, he drew his sword. Hermes stayed his hand. ‘She’s just a shade, a phantom and can do no harm to anyone now.’ Further along he saw the shade of his old friend MELEAGER, the prince who had led the Calydonian Hunt. Heracles had been one of the few heroes not to take part in that epic adventure, so Mealeager told him the tale – how it had resulted in his sad and agonizing end. How his mother, driven mad with rage at his actions, had cast onto the fire the log whose burning through meant his own death.fn47 ‘But your feats of heroism have reached even these sad caverns,’ said Meleager. ‘It does my heart good to know that there is one such as you in the world of the living. If I were alive I would invite you to join your bloodline to my own.’ ‘Why not?’ said Heracles, greatly moved. ‘Do you have a sister or daughter I could marry?’ ‘My sister DEIANIRA is a great beauty.’ ‘Then, when I am freed of the burden of these Labours, I shall take her as my wife,’ promised Heracles. Meleager smiled a ghostly smile of thanks and floated away. At last Hermes opened the gates to the throne room and announced to the King and Queen of the Underworld that they had a visitor. Persephone, flattered by Heracles’ pious submission to the Eleusinian Mysteries, welcomed her half-brother cordially. Her husband Hades was more grudging. ‘Why should I give you my dog?’ Heracles spread his hands. ‘Eurystheus has sent me for him, mighty PLOUTONfn48.’ ‘You’ll bring him back?’ ‘Once I am freed from my servitude, I will undertake to do so. You have my solemn oath.’ ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.’ ‘No, I can understand that,’ said Heracles. ‘Hera feels the same.’ ‘What’s that?’ said Hades, sharply. ‘It is Hera who has set me these tasks. She wants me to fail.’ ‘Are you saying that if I let you borrow my dog, Hera will be upset?’ ‘Upset? She’ll be furious,’ said Heracles. ‘Take him, he’s yours.’ ‘You mean that?’ ‘So long as you promise to bring him back. You’ll have to subdue him, of course. You can’t use any weapons. Not down here. No sword, no club, none of your famed poison arrows. Is that understood?’ Heracles bowed his assent. ‘Hermes here will take your arms from you, accompany you and ensure that you do not play foul. You are dismissed.’ On his way out Hermes nudged him. ‘And they say you’re an idiot. How did you know the way to get Hades to do something is to tell him Hera would hate it?’ ‘Who says I’m an idiot?’ ‘Never mind that, hand over your weapons and follow me. “Hera will be furious!” – you wait till I tell Zeus. He’ll love it.’ The fight with Cerberus was marvellous to behold. Hermes clapped his hands like an enchanted child and rose up in the air on fluttering heels, so entertained was he by the spectacle of Heracles, his Nemean Lion skin tightly wound about him, groping for a choke-hold around the three necks of the savagely furious hound, while all the time its serpent tail reared, spat and struck, trying to find open skin to pierce with its razor fangs. In the end Heracles’ sheer persistence paid off and the great hound fell back, exhausted. Heracles, who like many Greek heroes knew and loved dogs, knelt by his side and whispered in his ear. ‘You’re coming with me, Cerberus. All the children of Echidna and Typhon are gone now, save you, for you have a purpose and a role to play in the great mystery of death. But first I need your help in the world above.’ Cerberus put out his tongues and pulled a paw across Heracles’ arm. ‘You’re ready to come, then? You’re tired. I’ll carry you.’ Hermes’ amusement turned to astonished admiration when he saw Heracles pick Cerberus up and place him across his shoulders. ‘With no more effort than if he were a woollen scarf,’ Hermes said to nobody in particular. When Heracles strode into the throne room with Cerberus padding beside him, Eurystheus had occasion once more to jump into the stone pithos. ‘Take him back down, take him back down!’ his terrified voice echoed inside the jar. ‘Really?’ said Heracles. ‘You don’t want to say hello? See him do his tricks?’ ‘Go away!’ ‘Am I free of you? Have I done enough?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Louder, so the whole court can hear.’ ‘YES, damn you. You’re free. You have done all that was asked. I release you.’ Bestowing a kick to the jar which must have set Eurystheus’s ears ringing for a week, Heracles departed with Cerberus. They said farewell at the gates of hell.fn49 ‘Goodbye, you terrible brute,’ said Heracles affectionately. ‘The gods alone know what I shall do now.’ ‘No they don’t,’ said Hermes, stepping forward from the shadows with Heracles’ weapons. ‘It is for you to decide. All our father Zeus knows is that you will do many great things, perhaps even save Olympus.’

A FTER THE L ABOURS: C RIMES AND G RUDGES The first thing Heracles did, freed of his servitude to Eurystheus, was search for a wife.fn50 Word reached him that King Eurytus of Oechaliafn51 was holding an archery competition, the winner to claim the hand of his beautiful daughter IOLE in marriage. Heracles couldn’t have been more pleased. Eurytus was the very man who had taught him how to string a bow and shoot when he was a child and would make a delightful father-in-law. He entered the competition and (not using his Hydra-venom-tipped arrows, for once) he easily set about putting up the best scores. When Eurytus saw this, he disbarred Heracles from the competition. ‘But why?’ Heracles was downcast. ‘I thought you’d be proud of your pupil and happy to have me as a son-in-law.’ ‘After what you did to Megara and your own children?’ said Eurytus. ‘My beloved daughter Iole married to a wife-murderer? An infanticide? Never.’ Eurytus’s son IPHITUS admired Heracles and pleaded with his father on his behalf, but the king would have none of it. Heracles stormed off, promising to wreak a terrible revenge. He may, or may not, have taken some of Eurytus’s prize cattle with him. Certainly twelve of the herd went missing around that time. Iphitus came to Tiryns to stay with Heracles and negotiate for their return, but under the influence of another of his horrible fits, Heracles hurled the young man to his death from the city walls.fn52 The gods punished this crime against xenia, or ‘guest friendship’, by infecting Heracles with a disease.fn53 Once again in search of purification and atonement, Heracles visited king NELEUS of Pylos and asked him to perform the necessary rites, as anointed kings had the power to do.fn54 But Neleus was an old friend of Eurytus. Iphitus had been like a second son to him, and he pointblank refused to cleanse Heracles of the murder. Our hero left Pylos vowing revenge on Neleus, too. Heracles had marked up two new grudges. They were added to his old beef (literally) with Augeas, who had refused the promised payment of cattle for sluicing out his filthy stables; nor had Heracles forgotten how Laomedon of Troy had failed to stump up when he had rescued his daughter Hesione from the sea monster sent by Poseidon. ‘Eurytus, Neleus, Augeas and Laomedon,’ he muttered to himself as he made his way to Delphi. ‘They will all pay.’ He knelt before the oracle. ‘I need to be cleansed. Tell me what I must do.’ ‘You are impure,’ said the priestess, whose name was XENOCLEA.fn55 ‘You murdered a guest. We can say nothing to you until you are purified.’ ‘That’s why I’ve come to you. To tell me how I can be purified.’ Not a word more would Xenoclea say. At this point Heracles lost his famous temper and snatched the sacred tripod from her hands. ‘Damn you,’ he yelled. ‘I’ll go and set up my own oracle.’ Apollo came down from Olympus to restore order to his shrine. But before long Heracles was snarling at the god and spoiling for a fight. Only Heracles would have dared. Zeus split the pair apart with a thunderbolt. Reluctantly the half-brothers shook hands. Heracles returned the tripod and Xenoclea, at Apollo’s command, gave Heracles the advice he sought. ‘The only way you may be cleansed of Iphitus’s murder is by entering into slavery,’ she said. ‘For three years you must serve another without question. The wages you would have earned will go to Eurytus in compensation for the loss of his son.’ Would this never end? Twelve years he had been in bondage to Eurystheus and now he was sentenced to another three? One might say Heracles brought it all upon himself by killing Megara and his children and hurling the harmless Iphitus over a wall. Equally one might reply, in his defence, that he acted under the influence of delusions sent to him by the spiteful Hera. Or one might suggest that he was a man born with an illness of some kind that made him susceptible to fits and hallucinations. One could add that his remorse always drove him to seek honourable expiation. But however disposed one might be to forgive Heracles, one also has to accept that, fits or no fits, delusions or no delusions, remorse or no remorse, he was still capable of nursing the most implacable grudges. This new punishment only strengthened his vengeful resolve. Eurytus, Neleus, Augeas and Laomedon would all pay. But first Heracles had to submit to this fresh period of subjugation. Xenoclea’s arrangement was that he would become the property of Queen OMPHALE of Lydia,fn56 who had ruled her kingdom alone since the death of her husband, the mountain king TMOLUS.fn57 She seemed to take a perverse delight in humiliating her new slave. Above all, she enjoyed sporting both the great club and the pelt and head of the Nemean Lion that had long been Heracles’ signature costume. What’s more, she commanded that Heracles was to dress himself only in female attire while in her service. Despite this humiliation or – who knows? because of it – Heracles fell in love with Omphale, obediently wore women’s clothes, protected the kingdom of Lydia from such brigands and monsters as threatened its peace and even fathered a son by her.fn58 When the three years were up Omphale took the wages Heracles would otherwise have earned for his services and offered them, as instructed by Xenoclea, to Eurytus. He refused them with scorn. ‘I have lost a son and twelve cattle and you offer me three year’s wages?’ Free at last to pursue his vendettas, Heracles gathered an army and sailed off to exact his vengeance on the enemy who was nearest at hand: King Laomedon of Troy. He was accompanied by his old friends the brothers TELAMON and PELEUS, who had been present when Laomedon had refused to honour his debt to Heracles. They sacked the city and slaughtered the king and all the royal household save Hesione, who was given to Telamon as a bride.fn59 Heracles also spared the youngest of Laomedon’s sons, Prince PRIAM, who was left in charge of the smouldering ruins of a once fine city.fn60 Heracles now sailed back to Greece and gathered more allies for the invasion of Augeas’s kingdom of Elis. Augeas got wind of this and mustered his own force under the command of the conjoined twins, EURYTUS fn61 and CTEATUS.fn62. Fused together at the hip they might have been, but their combined strength and divine paternity made them a formidable enemy. They killed Heracles’ own brother Iphicles, the beloved twin with whom he had shared the cot to which Hera sent the snakes when they were newborns. This fully roused Heracles into one of the raging furies that turned him into a cyclone of unrelenting savagery. He split Eurytus and Cteatus apart with his sword and stamped on their dying bodies. Next he killed Augeas and all his children save one, the son Phyleus who had spoken up for Heracles when he had claimed payment for cleansing the stables and who had paid for his filial disobedience with banishment on the island of Dulichium. Heracles summoned him back from his exile to rule in his dead father’s place. It was here, in Elis, that Heracles now established athletic competitions to be held every four years, in honour of his father Zeus. He called them, after the name of his father’s mountaintop abode, the Olympic Games. Heracles next turned his attentions to Neleus of Pylos, who had refused to conduct his propitiation for the murder of Iphitus. He attacked the kingdomfn63 and once again he found and slaughtered all the members of an entire royal house. Except one. As in the case of Augeas, there was a single surviving son to take over the throne. Young Prince NESTOR had had the good fortune to be away at the time of Heracles’ onslaught. He returned to a devastated Pylos that, in time, he built into a peaceful and prosperous kingdom,fn64 earning himself a reputation as one of the wisest kings in the history of the Greek world. Nestor was famed not only for his sound judgement but also, in his later years, for his distinguished service during the quest for the Golden Fleece and as the valued counsellor and brave ally of AGAMEMNON in the Trojan War. Nestor’s father Neleus had been aided in his defence of Pylos by his ally HIPPOCOÖN, the King of Sparta. The unrelenting Heracles now attacked this king, too. Although such an assault may seem nothing more than a mean-spirited and vindictive temper tantrum, the attack on Sparta was to have consequences that would sound down through history. Heracles killed the king and his sons, installing on the throne his older brother TYNDAREUS, the rightful King of Sparta, whom Hippocoön had ousted years earlier. This detail is worth mentioning since Tyndareus and his wife Leda were to have such a vital part to play in the story of the Trojan War. Without Heracles placing Tyndareus on the throne of Sparta, it is doubtful there ever would have been a Trojan War. It may seem that all Heracles did was go about the place slaying and deposing, but in truth – as I have noted before – he was instrumental not only in clearing the natural world of ancient and savage threats but also in establishing new regimes and dynasties in the political sphere that were to be play crucial roles in Hellenic history. If Cadmus was the founder hero of Thebes and Theseus the founder hero of Athens, Heracles has a claim to be considered the founder hero of Greece.

T HE G IANTS: A P ROPHECY F ULFILLED It began, like many Greek stories, with some cattle rustling.fn65 The sun god Helios was jealous of his fine herd of cattle.fn66 Their theft by the giant ALCYONEUS proved the final provocation, the spark that lit the fuse in what the Greeks were to call the Gigantomachy – the War of the Giants. The giants, you might recall, sprang out of the earth in the earliest times from the blood that poured from the severed genitals of the primordial sky god Ouranos.fn67 This made them the generation of Gaia, the ‘Gaia-gen’, which over time became GIGANTES and, in our language, ‘giants’.fn68 Gaia had heard of Hera’s dream, the prophetic vision which forecast the rise of her gigantic children against the Olympian gods and their defeat at the hands of a mortal man. She tirelessly watched the exploits of the human heroes for a sign that the fatal individual had been born and the moment of the prophecy was nigh. Realising that the theft of Helios’s cattle heralded war, Gaia began to search for a rare medicinal herbfn69 that would protect her giants from any harm this human hero might do them. Zeus, however, was ahead of her: he told Selene and Helios not to drive their chariots of the moon and sun by night or day, and while the world was plunged into darkness he gathered the entire store of the herb for himself. The first manoeuvre over, Zeus summoned the twelve Olympians and Prometheus, with whom he had now been reconciled, for a council of war. ‘We must prepare ourselves for imminent attack,’ said Zeus. ‘Hera dreamt of this moment. Athena, go down and bring Heracles to us. We need him now.’ The violence started when the cattle thief Alcyoneus scaled Olympus, pushed the gods aside and forced himself on Hera. Heracles arrived in time to pull him off her and shoot him with one of his poisoned arrows. Alcyoneus fell, but raised himself up and rejoined the fray as if nothing had happened. No matter what Heracles did, Alcyoneus seemed always able to recover. Athena pulled Heracles aside. ‘Alcyoneus draws strength from his native soil. You can never kill him while he is in contact with it.’ ‘Ah, I fought someone like that once before,’ said Heracles, remembering his encounter with the wrestler Antaeus. He hurled Alcyoneus one more time to the ground and dragged him from Greece to Italy. There, at last, the power drained from him and Heracles buried him under Vesuvius, where he lies grumbling to this day, waiting to burst back up and spew his hot rage over the world of men. Now the other giants began to assail Olympus. How many fought isn’t agreed upon – from the large quantity of ceramics, sculptures, relief carvings and other representations it seems safe to suggest that there was a more or less equal number of gods and giants in the struggle. The earth all around the Mediterranean shook as Heracles, Prometheus and the gods fought long and hard to protect Olympus and especially Hera, whom the Giants forced themselves upon one after the other. After Alcyoneus, first EURYMEDON, the King of the Giants, tried to assault her, then PORPHYRION, the ‘purple one’. The giants seemed to believe that if they got her with child the offspring would be their great champion. Or perhaps they more brutishly hoped that her rape would so disgrace the gods that they would surrender in shame. At all events Heracles saved Hera from wave after wave of attacks. Never for a moment did he think of all the pain and suffering she had visited on him throughout his life. Zeus’s thunderbolts, as Hera had foretold, could not blast the giants, but they could at least stun them. As the battle raged, Zeus smote them one by one and Heracles took advantage of their dazed state to finish them off with his poisoned arrows. When it was all over, the most powerful giant of all, ENCELADUS, still steaming and smoking with fury, was imprisoned by Athena under Etna. His brothers lay dead. The giants would never rise again. Hera’s dream had seen it all. A mortal hero from the line of Perseus would arise to save the gods. Her hatred turned to grateful love and her enmity to amity. No more would she visit monstrous fits or delusions upon him. Heracles could live the rest of his life free from her curse.

T HE S HIRT OF N ESSUS Exactly as he did at the end of his Labours, Heracles now turned his thoughts to marriage. This time he called to mind his encounter in the kingdom of Hades with the shade of Meleager and the promise he had made to wed his old friend’s sister Deianira.fn70 Accordingly, he made his way to Deianira’s home of Calydon to win her hand, only to discover that she was being wooed, against her will, by the river god ACHELOUS. He had presented himself to her in three different guises:fn71 a bull, a snake and a creature that was half bull and half man. Achelous might have thought this a seductive courting ritual and one guaranteed to win a girl’s heart, but it filled Deianira with dread and disgust.fn72 Next to this shape-shifting river monster Heracles seemed a sweet, normal and eligible candidate for marriage and she welcomed his suit with relief. But to win her Heracles had first to defeat his rival. Achelous was immortal, of course, so Heracles couldn’t kill him, but he easily wrestled him into submission, breaking off one of the god’s horns in the process. To get it back, the defeated Achelous offered in exchange the fabled Horn of Plenty, which the Romans called the CORNUCOPIA. The young Zeus had accidentally snapped this off the head of his beloved AMALTHEA, the nanny-goat who suckled him during his infancy and childhood on Crete. fn73 To compensate, Zeus had magically filled it with food and drink. No matter how many times it was emptied, it always replenished itself. From then on Heracles carried it in his belt and never went hungry. Marriage to Deianira suited him. He hadn’t been happier or calmer since his life with Megara all those years ago in Thebes. They lived together in Calydon and had four sons, HYLLUS, GLENUS, CTESIPPUSfn74 and ONITES, and a daughter, MACARIA. All would have been harmony and bliss had not Heracles once again lost his temper with fatal results. One night, at a feast, the cupbearer of his father-in-law OENEUS accidentally spilled wine all down Heracles and he lashed out at the unfortunate youth, knocking him dead to the ground with one blow of his fist. Despairing at his own clumsiness Heracles decided to leave Calydon for a spell. Along with Deianira he headed for Trachis, which was ruled over by his friend CEYX and his wife ALCYONE.fn75 It was while they were on their way there that something happened which would, in the end, cause Heracles to die a terrible death. To reach Trachis, Heracles and Deianira had to cross the fast-flowing waters of the River Euinos. As they approached, they saw a centaur in a bright purple shirt standing on the near bank who kindly offered to ferry Deianira across. Heracles did not recognise him, but he recognised Heracles. For the centaur was Nessus, one of the herd Heracles had attacked while staying in the cave of Pholus on his way to hunt the Erymanthian Boar. Nessus and Deianira were halfway over when he attempted to molest her. Heracles heard her cries, saw what was happening and fired one of his arrows into the centaur’s back. It staggered through the water to the riverbank and deposited Deianira on the grass. Nessus had evaded the lethal arrows before, but now their poison was spreading through him. Even in his mortal agony, the outlines of a diabolical plan of revenge came to him. He did not admit to Deianira that he knew Heracles. Tender-hearted and compassionate, she was horrified that her husband had reacted so violently. She knelt by Nessus’s side, stroking his flanks and begging forgiveness. ‘No, no …’ he panted. ‘It was all my fault … I was just so captivated by your beauty. Your husband was right to punish me … Now listen … if I were married to you I would never leave your side, but you know what men are like. Take my shirt from me; it is charmed. Keep it with you always. Should the day come when you feel your husband has started to grow weary of you, make him wear it … You will find that his love for you will come flooding back …’ ‘Oh, you sweet thing!’ cried Deianira, filled with sympathy and very touched by his compliments. ‘So … little … time … Quick, take the shirt …’ She tenderly removed it from Nessus’s back, sodden with blood as it was, folded it up and was just tucking it into her satchel when Heracles came splashing across the river to join her. He aimed a kick at the dying centaur. ‘Damned brute. Laying hands on you like that.’ Deianira and Heracles settled at the court of King Ceyx, but after a year or so Heracles marched out to Oechalia to settle his final grudge. Despite his happy marriage to Deianira he had still not forgiven his old archery tutor Eurytus for denying him the right to compete for the hand of his daughter Iole. An insult was an insult and had to be paid for. He laid waste to Oechalia, slaughtered Eurytus and all his family save Iole, whom he decided to keep as a slave. He dragged her off home in triumph to Trachis along with the rest of his booty. When Deianira caught sight of her she was overcome with fear and jealousy. ‘This is the girl he always wanted to wed. She is so much younger and more beautiful than me. What chance do I have?’ She thought of the enchanted shirt that Nessus had given her. That was the way to win back Heracles’ affection. ‘Welcome home, my darling,’ she cried embracing him fondly. ‘You won another great battle, I hear?’ ‘Oh, you know. It was nothing really.’ ‘I have a present for you. A reward for your famous victory.’ ‘Really? What is it?’ Heracles loved presents. ‘Something for you to wear this evening. A shirt.’ ‘A shirt? Oh. A shirt. Thank you.’ Heracles tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice. ‘I’ll send Lichas to your room with it. You promise to come down to dinner wearing it?’ ‘If it pleases you,’ said Heracles, tickling her under the chin. Women were so funny. The smallest things upset them and the littlest things gave them pleasure. Half an hour later, Heracles’ servant Lichas came to his room carrying the shirt and helped him into it. For perhaps five or six seconds Heracles felt nothing. Then the skin on his back started to tingle and he idly scratched it. The tingling turned to fire and he leapt, twisting and bucking, as he tried to pull the shirt off. But the Hydra poison in the dried blood had been reactivated by his body heat and was already beginning to eat into his flesh and bones, burning and corroding as it went. No one had ever heard Heracles scream before. No one who heard him now would ever forget the sound. He lashed out in fury at Lichas, killing him instantly. His son Hyllus ran in. ‘Deianira … her shirt …’ yelled Heracles, tears streaming from his eyes as he stamped and threw himself around the room before staggering out into the garden and running around like a wild animal. Hyllus watched in horror as his father, all the while yelling in mortal pain, now started to uproot trees. Heracles’ nephew Iolaus and dozens of other friends and followers dashed outside, drawn by the appalling shrieks. They had all seen Heracles lose his temper before, they had witnessed his fits and foaming tantrums, but this was something new. Deianira too now rushed from the house and added her own screams. What had she done? The uprooting of the trees seemed to everyone to be a sign of madness, but even in his death agony Heracles was undertaking a labour. It became apparent that he was constructing a funeral pyre. He clambered on top of it and lay back. ‘Light it!’ he screamed. ‘Light it!’ No one moved. No one wanted to be remembered by history as the one who set fire to Heracles. ‘I’m begging you!’ Finally Philoctetes, trusted friend and comrade on many adventures, took a torch from its bracket on the wall of the house and stepped forward. ‘Do it, old friend,’ gasped Heracles. Philoctetes was weeping. ‘If you love me, do it for me.’ ‘But …’ ‘It’s my time. I know it.’ Philoctetes touched the flames of the torch to the pyre. ‘Now quickly,’ said Heracles, ‘take my bow and my arrows.’ Philoctetes took them and bowed his head. ‘They are … powerful’ panted Heracles. ‘Guard them with your life.’fn76 He arched his back as another spasm of pain went through him. The flames rose up. ‘The fire …’ he whispered, as they all came forward to make their farewells, ‘is not as painful as the poison … In fact … it is a blessed relief …’ ‘Oh, my friend …’ ‘Oh, my uncle …’ ‘Oh, my father …’ ‘Oh, my husband …’ With a shudder and a sigh the soul fled from Heracles. The great hero was finally at peace, freed from his life of almost unendurable torment and toil. Hyllus turned on his mother with a snarl. ‘You killed him. How could you do it? How?’ Deianira ran wailing back into the house and stabbed herself to death.