The Story of Hercules Read online

Having thrown the ram over his horsy back, the centaur came up the valley to see who I was. He had some doubt about me, being that I was “one of those rickety-legged creatures”—that is, a man.

  “What do you want?” he called out.

  “Nothing, friend. I was admiring your sure-footed hunting.”

  He smiled at the compliment and at a distance of thirty or forty yards introduced himself. “I am Pholos, one of the race of centaurs. If you care to join me for supper, please follow me.”

  He loped away, through dense forest, challenging me to keep up. It was not long before we came to a mountainside wall of rough boulders. He moved one aside, revealing a cave, and beckoned me within. “Welcome, Hercules!” Pholos said. “Yes, I know your name, for who else among the rickety-legged could possibly keep up with a centaur?”

  His cave was lit and warmed by a large fire. A hole in the cave-top drew up the smoke, keeping the cave well-aired. When I sat upon my haunches near Pholos, next to the fire, he offered me a piece of the ram’s meat. I was surprised that he had not bothered to cook it, even for a moment.

  Seeing my surprise, he said, “We like our meat raw,” and sighed with pleasure just before he stuffed a piece of bloody flesh into his toothy, grinning mouth.

  I picked up a long stick, sharpened it with my sword, and then fastened the meat upon it. As my appetite began to grow, Pholos offered me a cup of wine, which I drank off in an instant. Then, his mouth still hardily chewing raw ram, he seemed to panic as he said, “Oh, oh, dear me, Hercules, we are out of wine, and I have no more to offer you or to drink myself.”

  But I, now to my regret, spied a barrel in the high reaches of his rocky cave. “What about that, what’s in there?” I asked. To point out drink that a host does not offer is bad manners, yet I did so.

  “Oh, no,” he stammered. “That is sacred wine, to be opened only upon a solemn occasion and offered to the gods. Besides, it is too strong for mortals like ourselves.”

  “Nonsense!” I said. I was a young man, sure of my strength to resist potent drink. “Let’s have it!”

  I had put him in an awkward position. Was it preferable to deny a guest, or to risk the effects of sacred wine? Pholos, good-hearted, weak-willed centaur, gave in to my insistent requests. I was without mercy for his qualms.

  “What are we?” I said. “Children of immortal beings! Your mother a cloud, my father the god of gods. If we cannot drink it without fear of catastrophe, who can?”

  Pholos weakened. “Just a half cup each, how about that? As I said, it’s supposed to be very strong. We’ll weaken it by adding three or four parts water.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  Pholos clambered up the cave walls. The cave entrance was sealed by a boulder, but, as I told you, there was a hole at the top of the cave so the smoke could escape. We forgot this in our lust for the wine. We admired ourselves for limiting the outpouring of the fragrant wine to one cup before we sealed and returned the barrel to its hiding place.

  “Fragrant”? Have you walked through a meadow of flowers on a warm, still spring day? Its fragrance is thicker than air, sweeter than honey. This wine, even in our mixture of it in a bucket of water, sent delicious fumes into our heads and into the air and out the smoke-hole. Within moments, as bees are drawn to flowers, Pholos’ brother centaurs swarmed to the cave, some on top near the hole, others outside the bouldered entrance.

  “Pholos!” they yelled. “Let us in! Let us have some of that wine!”

  Pholos’ brother centaurs swarmed to the cave, and yelled, “Let us have some of that wine!”

  They burst through the hole atop the ceiling, falling to the floor of the cave. They pushed and moved aside the boulder and came in that way as well. There were a dozen, the youngest and rowdiest of the high-spirited centaurs, filled with desire for the wine. “Let us have it!” they cried.

  Had we not already opened the barrel, they would not have found the wine, but the fragrance turned them into bloodhounds, and with no trouble they scrambled up the rocks and began their unwatered-down drinking. They became crazed, quarrelsome, and as soon as the wine was polished off, and the empty barrel came crashing onto the floor, a riot broke out. Pholos and I found ourselves attacked, accused of holding out on further supplies of wine.

  We denied it, but try arguing with a gang of drunken centaurs! Pholos and I attempted to leave the cave and let them fight among themselves. Instead they encircled us as if we were their enemy, so I warned them. “Step back and let us pass. Continue, if you like, with your drunken party, but let us go in peace.”

  At that Pholos was struck by two of his brothers, and I was shoved by another. I pushed them away, pulled Pholos to me and gave us cover behind the boulder while I strung my bow. The centaurs thought they were invulnerable to my death-dealing arrows. I shot one, I shot another, and still they rushed at us.

  Cheiron, the great noble centaur, teacher of heroes, came to the cave, having heard our battle, and called out, “Let this fighting stop!”

  His brother, Xenop, drunkenly rushed at him, and so I shot my never-erring bow. The arrow clipped Xenop through the throat, a fine shot, except that it continued and found a second mark—Cheiron’s thigh.

  Cheiron fell, and as I fought off the rowdy centaurs, I made my way to him. But what mortal can resist the death that lives in the hydra’s poison? Cheiron, a master healer, instructed me and Pholos to mix various leaves and herbs and apply them to his wound. “Death will come,” he said, “but not with such agony as the hydra’s poison gives.”

  On seeing the fate of Cheiron, the other centaurs fled, and so Pholos and I were able to make the numbing medicine. Poor Cheiron! Wretched Hercules! Had I not demanded the wine, this death would not have happened. I cursed myself and prayed to Hermes, deliverer of souls, to make Cheiron’s journey into Hades an easy one.

  I erected an altar to Hermes and then bade farewell to unhappy Pholos. I then began my overdue labor.

  Not once but dozens of times over the course of the next year, as I tracked the boar through forests, across ravines and rivers and into the mountains, he turned and faced me, his pursuer, his throaty voice squealing. He had slobberingly whetted his tusks till they were sharp as spears. He would charge me, surprised when I set down my weapons and dodged his thrusts. For I could not kill him or I would violate the rules set down by Eurystheus. But such a beast could not be harnessed or roped. No, only my bare hands could possibly take him alive and hold him.

  Shall I tell you of the long weary nights and the hot, slow days wherein I tracked the boar? No, for that would be no gift, but a chore, a labor on your mind as it was on my body. My only recreation was eating. Never did I have so much time in my life for hunting. Athene, divine, wise goddess, would come to me on occasion, disguised always as a young boy or old woman, pretending to have been searching the woods on Mount Erymanthos for nuts.

  “Hello,” she would say, a basket in hand.

  She always fooled me, at first, and I would say, “Beware, young man (or old woman), the terrible boar has just passed by. You are in danger of its dreadful spear-like tusks.”

  And the child (or old woman), eyes shining in that owlish way of Athene’s, would laugh, and reply, “Have no fear for me, hero. I come from Olympos, home of the gods, to watch your progress.”

  “Athene!” I would say.

  Laughing, then twittering like the bird she suddenly became, she would fly away.

  A look of fear—the first and last time, I am sure—crossed the boar’s face.

  Such visits gave me the will to go on.

  It was nearly a year before I had pressed the boar to exhaustion. Still, had not Zeus, my father, delivered a snowstorm over the peaks of Mount Erymanthos, the boar might have eluded me for months more. The snow fell in beautiful flakes, creating a soft world of whiteness, a blanket of powder higher than the boar’s glistening tusks. Whenever he tried to run he sank. I easily followed his track. He was as tired as I, yet blindly pushed on. At last I
saw my chance to get my hands on him.

  A look of fear—the first and last time, I am sure—crossed that animal’s face. He made a show of turning, snorting, but he had no intention of trying to charge. He could not. The snow made his movements slow and awkward.

  I continued in his track and then made my move. Have you seen a bird dive for the surface of a lake, where it clips up into its mouth a long, flopping fish? I charged at the boar and then dove under his belly, and rose as quick as a bird, the boar not in my mouth but atop my shoulders, my hands cupping his feet together in front of my chest. The boar snorted—what an absurd picture he made! A fearsome killer riding atop a man’s shoulders like any gentle deer or child!

  He snorted all the two-day-long journey back to Eurystheus’ palace, during which journey I met a handsome boy named Hylas, the princely son of King Theiodamas. He told me about the expedition in quest of the Golden Fleece that noble Jason was planning. Hylas was eager to join, though he was hardly fifteen years old. I could not bear the thought of missing out on adventures to distant lands with other young heroes, and so when I returned to Tiryns, I left the boar tied to the gate of the king’s throne room and told a guard to tell Eurystheus I would be back in a year to complete my labors.

  6. I Clean the Augean Stables

  JASON WAS the son of Aeson and the grandson of Aeolos, the lord of the island of Aeolia and Zeus’s keeper of the winds. Jason needed to set sail to the distant Black Sea to kill the dreaded dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece. The possession of this fleece would restore his father’s kingdom to him.

  When Hylas and I arrived at the port in Thessaly, however, Jason accepted us but was not as pleased to recruit us as I had expected. Being that I was already famed for my strength and courage, and he was comparatively unknown, he feared that his assembled heroes would elect me as their captain.

  When the vote came, it went as he expected. Jason, that luckless man, who lived to regret his life, conceded the captaincy to me, but I refused the honor.

  “This quest is Jason’s!” I declared, “and so he shall lead us.”

  My decision was for the best, as I abandoned the voyage when tragedy claimed my dear friend Hylas.

  I will not describe the amazing ship, the Argo, which sailed as if by magic, or the monsters we battled after our passage through the Hellespont, that narrow strait between Asia and Europe. Instead, I shall speak of when we lost the wind for a time and had to rely on our oars. “I did not know my own strength” is a common expression, and that is just what I said when I snapped my oar in two in the blue-green waters. My comrades suggested we pull ashore to a wooded land beside a river on the Asian side of the Sea of Marmara.

  While our shipmates made camp, Hylas and I wandered into the woods, he to find water, I to find the best tree to make into an oar.

  As fond as I was of lolaos, who was nearly a nephew of mine, I was just as fond of Hylas. I must now relate the details of his death, a task which seems beyond any Eurystheus assigned me.

  What happiness he and I might have shared on the voyage of the Argonauts! How proud we were to be helping Jason. But tragedy came when I least expected it. He had gone up the river canyon, carrying jugs and pitchers, to fetch the purest fresh water. He leaned over a sweet-smelling spring and a nymph, those divine women who live in the waters and woods and thereby give them the spirit of life, was so attracted to his beauty that she reached out from the waters and pulled him in.

  I did not see this and I only learned the details much later when I entered Olympos as an immortal. No, at the time Hylas was made the bridegroom of the spring’s nymph, I was busily uprooting a massive tree to make into my oar. I do remember hearing a surprising splash. I looked up and called out, “Hylas!”

  There was no answer.

  I walked along the canyon where I knew he had gone and saw no sign of him but saw his jugs and pitchers on the grassy bank beside the spring. Have you ever seen a lost hound searching for his master? He is frantic, sniffing everywhere, not finding any clue. Just so was I, running through the woods, calling to my shipmates, who, less fearful than I, less concerned, tried to reassure me. “He’s followed another trail to another spring. He’ll be back,” said Jason.

  The fool! Hylas never came back. I passed by the spring a dozen times, I peered into its depths, and I lowered myself into its icy waters. But the nymph knew the value of the boy she had stolen and did not let me detect him.

  I refused to leave, even the next day, when Jason ordered the men back on the ship. “Without Hylas, I can sail no more,” I told him.

  “So be it,” he said. “The wind has come back to us. We must sail.”

  I bade him farewell. Some say that Zeus, watchful father, did not want me to dally away from my labors any longer, and that he thereby encouraged the nymph in her kidnapping of Hylas. But Zeus tells me no, that he was content to let me continue with Jason’s voyage, and that the true story is that Hylas was stolen because of his beauty.

  In any case, I returned with sadness to Eurystheus, who, it turned out, resented my long absence and had come up with a labor with which he meant to shame me.

  “I command you——” Eurystheus said, before laughing so hard he could not speak another word for several moments. He took up a piece of his kingly robe and wiped his eyes before he was able to go on. “Go to King Augeas, he of the famous cattle yards . . . and, in a single day, clear out the dung from his stables! That is your labor, Hercules!”

  I, Hercules, cart away tons of manure! In one day? Had I known ahead of time the immensity of the heaps of dung I might have retired from the labors then and there. But, after all, what labor not of one’s will is ever a complete pleasure?

  Augeas was the king of Elis, that northwestern region of the Peloponnese, and though he was rich on account of his herds of cattle, he had allowed their stables to fill so high with manure they had become impassable and unusable.

  I did not inform Augeas that I came to his land to fulfill a task for Eurystheus. Instead I held my nose and told him, “Allow me, wealthy king, to clean out your stables today.”

  “Help yourself,” said Augeas. “Zeus knows I couldn’t do it in a year! I’ll grant you a tenth of my herds should you succeed.”

  “One tenth of all your wealth!” I said.

  “That’s about right,” he said. “And good luck. Now over there you’ll find a shovel.”

  I dragged my feet to the hut where he had pointed, and looked with helplessness on such a tool. I leaned on the shovel and gazed out at the lovely view of the countryside and beyond to the Menius River, a blue ribbon winding past Elis.

  “If I should somehow succeed in shoveling this manure away, I will bathe for hours in those cleansing waters!” I remarked to myself.

  For once it was not Athene who supplied me with a good idea—I inspired myself. Tossing away the shovel, I rushed back into the hut, where I found halters for yoking cattle. I picked out the four largest bovine beasts and arranged them in a team, with me standing atop the widest plow I could find, and a sharp-edged boulder in addition dragging behind. We would cut a channel to the river.

  “Onward!” I cried, and snapped the reins. The cattle, only too happy to be driven out of the messy stable-yard, pulled me along. The channel was no wider than a creekbed, but it was well-shaped and deep. In the afternoon we reached the river, and in the next phase of the sun after that, with only a short while to go until sundown and failure, I set about damming the river to divert its flow into my empty creekbed.

  Other men may be more clever than I, but this was one time I was justly proud of my wisdom. The dammed river found my creekbed and then raced along it, faster almost than I could run alongside. In little time it arrived at the stableyards, where, with that lonesome shovel, I directed the stream in the directions it was most needed. The water washed through the stables and the yard, collecting the manure with it, and then coursed down out of the yard and into a low pocket of wooded land between the pasturelands, w
here it formed a somewhat muddy and smelly lake.

  When the yard was cleaner than it had been since creation, I hurried back to the spot where I had dammed the river and broke it free once again, giving thanks to the guardian nymph of its crystal waters. I shored up the creek and drove Augeas’ fine cattle back to the stables.

  For once I was the hero of animals instead of their hunter. Augeas, on the other hand, turned pale when he returned that evening and saw the tremendous feat I had performed.

  “I believe you said one-tenth of your cattle, king,” I reminded him.

  Was I wrong to expect payment when it had been promised to me? Though Eurystheus would soon hold me blameworthy, I hope you do not. For what man offered a prize without having asked for it does not begin to dream of that prize as expectantly as a man who has demanded it?

  But Augeas was a cheat and said, “I never would have offered you such a stake of my cattle had I thought you capable of cleaning the stables in a day! You deceived me into thinking it impossible!”

  “I did not trick you, king, by words or action.”

  “I cannot pay you what you ask,” he countered. “Please, instead, accept with my warmest appreciation ... you walked here, didn’t you, from Tiryns?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, I grant you . . . ” At this moment we heard a braying from the barn, and Augeas smiled and said, “ . . . my trusty, humble yet dependable mule, Rocky.”

  I was angry, but what could I do? I had many more labors to perform and killing Augeas was not part of the labor Eurystheus required of me. I took the mule, poor broken down work-animal, but after a dozen yards I had to give up riding it, it moaned so. It could not take my pack or weapons as a load either, so I carried those and let him follow in my tracks.

  Eurystheus was amused at the image I presented when I arrived at his court.

  “Do you return with a donkey because you have failed and are ashamed, Hercules?” he asked.