‘I leave that to you, dear boy. Atlas was never the smartest giant on the planet and I doubt if his brain has been quickened by the weight of the sky.’
‘No. He must have a very sore head by now.’
‘Bear that in mind!’
Herakles took friendly leave of Nereus and his 50 daughters and boarded a ship sailing to Libya, where he encountered another competitive wrestler. Like Nereus, Antaios was a son of Poseidon and Gaia, but whereas Nereus was immortal and lived in the sea, his father’s element, Antaios was mortal and depended on his mother’s element, the earth, for his extraordinary strength. He did not wrestle for amusement but in order to kill his opponents. He was building a temple to his father Poseidon and his favourite materials were the bones of the passing travellers he had beaten, especially their skulls, with which he was decorating the roof. The sailors on Herakles’ ship had warned him about Antaios and had no intention of going anywhere near his part of Libya, but Herakles was intrigued and asked to be landed on a beach near the temple of skulls. The sailors who took him ashore in a small boat made Herakles wade the last several metres and swiftly rowed back to their ship.
Antaios came out from his workshop near the temple and welcomed Herakles enthusiastically, taking him on a tour of the racks where the skulls and other bones were drying and then to the temple itself, with its macabre roof, glistening white under the brilliant African sun.
‘Impressive!’ said Herakles.
‘My life’s work,’ said Antaios.
‘Still a few gaps,’ said Herakles.
‘It’s slow work. People don’t come by as often as they used to.’
‘I daresay they would if the entrance fee wasn’t so expensive.’
‘I charge nothing,’ said Antaios.
‘Nothing but their lives. It’s hard to go home and tell your neighbours what you’ve seen on your travels if you have to leave your skull behind.’
‘Well, at least you’ve turned up to leave yours.’
‘We’ll see about that.’
Then they both stripped off and came to grips. Antaios was if anything taller and broader than Herakles, but they were almost equally matched in strength, and the struggle was intense. Herakles had landed in the early morning and by late afternoon he was beginning to tire. Every time he wrestled his opponent to the ground, Antaios came up with renewed vigour.
‘This is the Hydra’s heads all over again,’ Herakles thought. ‘The more I throw him, the stronger he gets. What does that tell me?’
It told him that Antaios, the son of Gaia, was being refreshed by contact with his mother earth and that if he, Herakles, continued this way he would soon be contributing his skull to Antaios’ grisly roof. So exerting all his reserves of strength, Herakles lifted Antaios off the ground, held him there clasped in both his arms like a lover as Antaios struggled wildly to get his feet on the earth, and then, as he felt the man weaken, tightened his grip, squeezed harder and harder until at last Antaios’ ribs cracked and gave way, the air was forced out of his lungs and with a fearful moan of despair he gave up his last breath. Herakles flung him down dead on the sandy soil and, almost exhausted to death himself, collapsed and lay beside the corpse.
When he recovered he dragged Antaios to the workshop where, near the drying racks, was a high platform on which fresh bodies were placed for the vultures to pick clean before the bones were transferred to the racks.
‘I’d very much like to add you to your roof,’ he told Antaios as he carried him up the steps and laid him on the platform, ‘and I’ll look in, if I can, on my way back with the golden apples in case the birds have finished with you. But I’m afraid the temple will never be completed now and your life’s work will only be remembered because I aborted it.’
Then he picked up his lion skin, his weapons and the knapsack in which he kept his snakeskin loincloth for public appearances, together with a flask of water and some dried crusts of the kind Greek villagers still take with them into the mountains, and set off towards the setting sun. He thought he would prefer to sleep at some distance from Antaios and his tourist-trophies and he was too tired to shoot anything, let alone cook it, for his supper.
After many days he came in sight of the Atlas mountains and, nearing the summit, saw what at first looked like a great pillar reaching into the sky but gradually resolved into the figure of the giant. Herakles approached, laid down his weapons and his knapsack and sat on a rock to rest. When he had sat there in silence for some time, Atlas, who had glanced at him several times from the corners of his eyes, said:
‘Who are you, little fellow?’
‘I am Herakles, son of Zeus.’
‘Never heard of you.’
‘Most people have.’
‘After my time. What do you want?’
‘I’ve been sent to fetch some of the golden apples from Hera’s garden.’
‘Have you just? Then you might as well pick up your things and go home to wherever you came from, because those apples are private and very well guarded.’
‘But you know where they are?’
‘Of course I do. I planted the tree and I was the gardener until things went wrong.’
‘What went wrong?’
Atlas gave a long, laboured account of the war of the giants with the Olympians, full of still smouldering resentment and self-justification, especially against Hera for not making any allowances for him personally, although he had served her faithfully as her gardener.
‘But then you joined the Giants’ Rebellion,’ said Herakles. ‘And surely this punishment is better than being buried under a mountain like the other giants? I may tell you that I am a victim of Hera’s anger, too, not for anything I’ve done myself, but solely because Zeus fathered me on a mortal woman.’
‘But at least you’re free to get about,’ said Atlas. ‘You can’t imagine the boredom of standing here forever, rooted to the spot with a permanently aching head.’
‘You’d welcome a break?’
‘Gods above, don’t even make me think about it!’
‘Well this is what I suggest: you fetch me some golden apples and I’ll take your place in the meantime.’
‘You’d do that?’
‘I would. With pleasure.’
‘But there’s the dragon, curled round the tree, a dangerous fire-breathing creature. It wouldn’t let me anywhere near the apples. Only my daughters, the Hesperides, can go past the dragon.’
‘Then ask your daughters to fetch the apples!’
‘They’d never do it. They once took some apples on their own account and were given a severe warning by Hera that if it happened again they’d be shut in a cave for the rest of time.’
‘Nothing for it, then,’ said Herakles. ‘I’ll have to kill the dragon and fetch the apples myself and you won’t get your break. Which way do I go to find the garden?’
Atlas was silent. Giant tears rolled down his giant cheeks.
‘Three points,’ said Herakles. ‘Hera can hardly blame your daughters for taking the apples, if they do so because their father tells them to. What would the world come to if daughters disobeyed their fathers? Secondly, you can take the blame on yourself, since what can Hera do worse to you than what you’re already suffering and who would she get to take your place? Thirdly, the real blame lies with me and I swear by all the gods that I shall only borrow the apples. They will be returned to the garden as soon as I’ve shown them to my cousin Eurystheus.’
Atlas began to look more cheerful and asked for clarification. Herakles repeated what he had said several times, until the giant had fully understood all three points.
‘I’ll do it,’ he said at last.
‘Then give me the sky!’ said Herakles, ‘but first you must swear by the River Styx, whose oaths bind all immortals, even Father Zeus, that once you have brought me the apples you will take the sky back.’
Eager now to get rid of his burden as soon as possible, Atlas swore the oath. Herakles piled up a few rocks
beside Atlas to make a cairn the size of a small mountain peak, and climbed on top of it so as to approximate to the giant’s height, while Atlas, sliding carefully sideways, transferred the weight to Herakles’ head. Then, rubbing his own head with both hands, flexing his shoulders, swinging his arms, Atlas skipped down the mountain, kicking loose rocks aside in his joy as if they were pebbles.
The sky was the strangest weight Herakles had ever borne. It had no substance or hardness or edge, but only pressure, and the pressure was at first almost intolerable, giving him a headache far beyond any hangover he had ever suffered, making his lungs feel as if they would burst and his heart beat as if he were running up hill, inviting his legs to buckle, hurting the soles of his feet as they gripped the pile of rocks. But gradually, as he resisted the desire to crumple and lie down, his body and head adapted to the pressure and he began to feel a strange normality, almost a comfort in being wedged between earth and sky. It was as if he were awake and asleep at the same time, except that he had no dreams.
‘So this is what it’s like to be the top of a mountain,’ he thought. ‘Everlasting endurance and sameness, without any sense of past or future, without memory or anxiety. In many ways it’s harder to be a man than a rock.’
And when, after several hours, Atlas returned with three apples, Herakles felt an odd reluctance to hand back his burden and return to his old self. Atlas was equally reluctant to change places.
‘I tell you what, little fellow,’ he said, juggling the apples, which were made of solid gold, ‘you’re doing this job so well that I’ve had an idea. Why don’t I take the apples and show them to your cousin, then I can make sure they come safely back here afterwards?’
‘Yes, that’s a very good idea,’ said Herakles, and for a moment he almost meant it. But then he reflected that unlike Atlas he was mortal and would die of hunger and thirst long before the giant returned. ‘But I must say that I’ve got a tremendously sore head. And what if winter sets in before you’re back? I might perish of cold and the sky would fall. So before you go, would you mind just holding it a minute while I fetch my lion skin?’
‘No sweat!’ said Atlas.
He put down the apples and they swapped places.
‘Thanks,’ said Herakles, climbing down from the cairn, collecting his lion skin, weapons and knapsack. ‘On second thoughts, though, I fancy I’d better do the job myself. My cousin’s a stickler for the rules and he might discount this Labour altogether if he saw that you’d helped me.’
He picked up the apples and put them in his knapsack.
‘See you!’ he said with a friendly wave, but got no reply.
Atlas just stared at him with hopeless reproach. Nor did Herakles ever see him again. He returned to Tiryns by way of Libya and Egypt, calling at Antaios’ place on the way so as to add his skull, by now picked clean, to the temple roof.
‘And no one will ever know which was yours,’ Herakles said to it. ‘You look just like all your victims and you take up no more space, in spite of your arrogance and your boastful ugly architecture. Let this be a lesson to you! You had every advantage. Your father was the god of the sea and your mother the goddess of the earth and yet you completely wasted your life wasting other people’s.’
After Eurystheus had been shown the golden apples, Athene delegated Iris, the gods’ messenger, to return them to Hera’s garden.
10. THE DOG
The twelfth and last Labour was the hardest. Eurystheus had determined not to have any more live monsters brought to Tiryns, but he was almost entirely certain that this Labour would not only defeat Herakles but be the death of him. He was to go down to the kingdom of Hades and bring back Cerberos, the three-headed dog which guarded its gate. He had to prepare himself by becoming an initiate of the Mysteries in Demeter’s temple at Eleusis. When Demeter’s beloved daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades, who ruled the underworld as his brother Zeus ruled the earth and sky, Demeter in her grief devastated the earth with rain and cold. The crops failed, the cattle died, famine and disease spread among men and the service of the gods was neglected. It was agreed then between Zeus and Hades that Persephone should spend the winter with Hades in the underworld and the rest of the year on earth with her mother. So the worship of Demeter, the goddess of harvest and plenty, became associated with her daughter Persephone’s part-time job as queen of the underworld, and her worshippers could prepare themselves for their future as flittering shades and perhaps gain some advantage over non-initiates by going through a series of rituals at Eleusis. But since Eleusis was dominated by the nearby city of Athens, this opportunity was normally offered only to Athenian citizens and Herakles was no such thing.
It happened, however, that the current King of Athens, the hero Theseus, had preceded Herakles on a live expedition into the underworld and failed to return. The priests of Eleusis were ready to accept Herakles as an initiate on condition that he brought Theseus back, and evidently he would more easily accomplish that if he was also bringing back the fearsome dog that guarded the gate and prevented anyone leaving once they had entered the underworld.
There were various entrances to Hades’ kingdom. The one chosen by Herakles on Athene’s advice was Tainaron, better known now as Cape Matapan, where in more recent times, during the Second World War, the British defeated the Italians in a naval battle. This is the most southerly point of the Peloponnese, the tip of the mountainous Mani peninsula. Hermes, whose business it was to conduct dead souls to the underworld, accompanied Herakles to the cave mouth at this desolate spot and Athene was there too. They were both disguised as local villagers, but Herakles was not deceived and thanked them warmly before turning to go into the dark.
‘Be careful how you behave, Herakles!’ said Athene. ‘Be stern with Charon, who will not want to ferry you across the River Styx, but don’t lose your temper down there and be particularly polite to Persephone and Hades themselves. The reason they are keeping Theseus and his friend Peirithoös, king of the Lapiths, is that there was a stupid oath sworn between the two of them. Having both recently lost their wives, they thought they would like to marry daughters of Zeus, so Theseus was to abduct Helen of Sparta and Peirithoös Persephone. The oath required them to assist each other and since the first abduction succeeded, Theseus had to go to the underworld to help Peirithoös abduct Persephone. What childish bravado! My uncle Hades naturally took it as a serious insult to himself and his queen and has kept both of them prisoner for the last four of your years. You may be able to free Theseus, who was only an accomplice, but I don’t think there’s much chance for Peirithoös. Now is there anything you want to ask of me before you go?’
‘I have my lion skin, my club and my bow. Those are all I ever need, except for patience, strength, courage and your advice and good wishes, great goddess.’
‘Think more carefully!’
‘A flaming torch, of course!’ he said, contemplating the pitch-black passage he was to descend.
‘It would hardly last you to the bank of the Styx, let alone beyond.’
‘Well, I shall have to feel my way and perhaps my eyes will gradually become used to the darkness. They must have light of some sort down there, even if the sun never touches them.’
‘I have never been there myself, but I don’t think so. Deeper down, of course, is Pyriphlegethon, the river of fire, which divides black Erebos and the palace of Hades from Tartaros, where the Titans are imprisoned. There must be light enough there, but you will not be going as far as that.’
‘How shall I manage, then?’
Herakles leant against the wall of the cave. All his usual confidence deserted him. He felt suddenly weak and disconsolate. His great shoulders drooped, his knees bent, tears welled in his eyes. Athene smiled, not with disdain for a hero faced with failure, but with the tenderness she always felt for a few particular men whose intelligence and determination fought constantly against their own mortal weaknesses as well as the hostility of one or other of her fellow immortals. She
loved Herakles as later she loved Odysseus.
‘I’m sure you will manage.’
‘How can I rescue Theseus and overpower Cerberos if I can’t see them?’
‘Close your eyes, Herakles!’
He did so, releasing the tears, so that they ran down his cheeks. At the same time he felt a gentle puff of air on each of his eyelids.
‘Open your eyes now and go down to Hades!’ said Athene. ‘I have given you what you need.’
But when he looked to thank her, he found he was alone, facing only the sea and the evening sky, the surf lapping on the rocks below him, a seagull crying. The two gods disguised as mountain villagers had disappeared. He wiped his cheeks with his hand, checked his weapons, shouldered his pack of provisions and turned again towards the dark passage. It no longer seemed so dark and as he descended he had no difficulty in seeing his way. Athene had given him night vision.
Arriving after many hours at the bank of the Styx, he found a jostling crowd of shadows, the recently dead, waiting to be ferried across by Charon, who was in no hurry to oblige them and was testing every coin presented to him for his fare between his mouldering teeth. Being newly dead in those days was a little like going through security in an airport today, except that these shadows did not form an orderly queue, had no bags to be searched, no jackets or belts or shoes to remove, nothing at all, in fact, except their miserable naked semblances and the coins their relatives had placed between their cold lips. And there was only ever one self-important official on duty who, if he rejected your coin or if you had none, barred your passage and left you to wander for ever on that bleak shore, a soul lost between life and death. Airport security would seem almost pleasant by comparison.
The crowd scattered as Herakles walked straight up to Charon.
‘Wait your turn, scum!’ said the boatman without looking up from the coin he was examining.
Herakles knocked the coin out of his hand. Charon fell back into his boat and, looking up at the aggressor on the bank with his lion skin and his club, instantly changed his expression from fury to fear.
Arcadian Nights Page 16
