by Stephen Fry
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. THE AUGEAN STABLES
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. THE STYMPHALIAN BIRDS
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. THE CRETAN BULL
‘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 san
ctioned. 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. THE MARES OF DIOMEDES (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.
