Hercules' Labors

The Sources - 500 B.C. through the Classical Period

More of this Feature • Twelve Labors: Eurystheus • Part 1: Canonical Labors • Part 2: Archaic Period • Part 4: Roman Period • Hercules Labors Table of Contents •  More You Should Know About Hercules

Join the Discussion "The thing that stuck with me was how [Hercules] wrecked the walls of Troy with one stroke of his club. It was a nice contrast to the 10-year war that the Atreidai & Co. would later have to fight to sack the city..." DIENEKES1

Related Resources • Sophocles • Euripides • Pindar • Hercules Links

Elsewhere on the Web • Carlos Parada Heracles • Pausanias on the Temple of Zeus

Pindar (c. 522 - c. 446), a Theban poet celebrated even in his own time for his odes, praised the victors of panhellenic games and related them to mythology and ancestral history. In the context of an ode for an Olympic victor in boys' boxing in 476 B.C., Pindar describes Hercules and provides the earliest mention of the hero's cleansing of the Augean Stables, which are said to have once occupied the site of the Olympian Temple of Zeus.

The laws of Zeus urge me to sing of that extraordinary contest-place which Heracles founded by the ancient tomb of Pelops [25] with its six altars, after he killed Cteatus, the flawless son of Poseidon [ant. 2] and Eurytus too, with a will to exact from the unwilling Augeas, strong and violent, the wages for his menial labor. [30] Heracles lay in wait in the thicket below Cleonae, and in his turn overcame those men by the roadside; for once before those arrogant Moliones had destroyed his Tirynthian army, when it was encamped in the valley of Elis.
Olympian 10.5

O hands, my hands, O shoulders and breast and trusty arms, ye, now in this plight, are the same whose force of old subdued the dweller in Nemea, the scourge of herdsmen, the lion, a creature that no man might approach or confront; ye tamed the Lernaean Hydra, and that monstrous host of double form, man joined to steed, a race with whom none may commune, violent, lawless, of surpassing might; ye tamed the Erymanthian Beast, and the Three-Headed Whelp of Hades underground, a resistless terror, offspring of the dread Echidna; ye tamed the dragon that guarded the Golden Fruit in the utmost places of the earth.
Sophocles' Trachiniae 1089-1100.

For the praise of noble toils accomplished is a glory to the dead. First he cleared the grove of Zeus of a Lion, and put its skin upon his back, hiding his auburn hair in its fearful gaping jaws;
antistrophe 1
Then on a day, with murderous bow he wounded the race of wild Centaurs, that range the hills, slaying them with winged shafts; Peneus, the river of fair eddies, knows him well, and those far fields unharvested, and the steadings on Pelion and they who haunt the glens of Homole bordering thereupon, whence they rode forth to conquer Thessaly, arming themselves with pines for clubs; likewise he slew that dappled Hind with horns of gold, that preyed upon the country-folk, glorifying Artemis, huntress queen of Oenoe;
strophe 2
Next he mounted on a car and tamed with the bit the Steeds of Diomede, that greedily champed their bloody food at gory mangers with jaws unbridled, devouring with hideous joy the flesh of men; then crossing Hebrus' silver stream he still toiled on to perform the hests of the tyrant of Mycenae, till he came to the strand of the Malian gulf by the streams of Anaurus, where he slew with his arrows Cycnus, murderer of his guests, the savage wretch who dwelt in Amphanae;
antistrophe 2
Also he came to those minstrel maids, to their orchard in the west, to pluck from the leafy APPLE-tree its golden fruit, when he had slain the tawny dragon, whose awful coils were twined all round to guard it; and he made his way into ocean's lairs, bringing calm to men that use the oar; moreover he sought the home of Atlas, and stretched out his hands to uphold the firmament, and on his manly shoulders took the starry mansions of the gods;
strophe 3
Then he went through the waves of heaving Euxine against the mounted host of AMAZONS dwelling round Maeotis, the lake that is fed by many a stream, having gathered to his standard all his friends from Hellas, to fetch the gold-embroidered raiment of the warrior queen, a deadly quest for a girdle. And Hellas won those glorious spoils of the barbarian maid, and safe in Mycenae are they now. On Lerna's murderous hound, the many-headed HYDRA, he set his branding-iron, and smeared its venom on his darts, wherewith he slew the shepherd of Erytheia, a monster with three bodies....
Euripides Heracles

None of the extant literary sources from this period lists all twelve, although the carvings on the metopes of Temple of Zeus at Olympia show them. It isn't until later, in the Roman period, that we find the complete list.

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More You Should Know About Hercules