by Unknown
In a panic Deianira jumped to her feet, screaming for Hyllus, and when he came she told him what had happened and begged him to go as swiftly as he could to where his father was performing the sacrifice.
Off went Hyllus in his fastest chariot: but when he reached the place, he realized that he was too late. Heracles had put on the robe; and as soon as the sun melted the Hydra’s poison in the blood of Nessus with which the robe was anointed, it spread all over him and began to burn like liquid fire.
In vain Heracles tried to tear off the robe; when he did, it was only to tear the very flesh from his bones with it, while his blood hissed and bubbled like water when a red-hot iron is dropped into it.
Yelling with pain, Heracles flung himself into the nearest stream: but the poison burned ever more fiercely, and that stream has been hot ever since, and is still called ‘Thermopylae’, or the ‘hot ways’. Out of the boiling water sprang Heracles, mad with pain, and catching the unfortunate herald Lichas, who had brought him the robe, he swung him round his head and hurled him far out to sea. Then he went rushing through the woods, tearing boughs off the trees, until he came to Mount Oeta; where his strength forsook him and he sank to the ground.
Here Hyllus found him, and told him what had caused his terrible plight.
‘I thought that Deianira had done this to slay me!’ groaned Heracles. ‘If she had, I would have killed her before I died.’
‘She is dead already,’ said Hyllus sadly. ‘When she knew what she had done, she stabbed herself. But you may rest assured that she never dreamt the blood of Nessus was anything but a charm to retain your love.’
‘Then my death is upon me,’ said Heracles, ‘for Athena warned me that the dead should slay me, though no living creature could. Now swear to do what I bid you: swear by the head of Zeus.’
Hyllus swore this most solemn of oaths, and then Heracles bade him heap a mighty pyre of wood on the mountain top. When this was done, Heracles dragged his tortured body on to it, lay down upon the skin of the Lion, with the Club under his head, and spoke to Hyllus:
‘All is finished,’ he said, ‘and in a little while I shall be with the Immortals, as Zeus, my father, promised. Go now, wed Iole, and live happily. But first, set a light to this pyre!’
But Hyllus drew away, weeping sorely, and no one dared obey the dying Hero. At last Heracles saw a young man driving a flock of sheep, and called to him:
‘Young man, come here and I will give you a great reward if you do what I command you!’
The youth came and stood beside the pyre, and when he saw who lay upon it, he began to tremble and said:
‘My lord Heracles, I know you well: for my father Poeas the Argonaut has often spoken of you, and of how he alone of mortals once held your bow and loosed an arrow from it, to lay low Talos the Brass Man of Crete.’
‘Then, by the friendship that was between your father and me,’ gasped Heracles, ‘I charge you to set a light to this pyre. Take my bow and arrows as your reward – for you must be Philoctetes, the only son of Poeas. Take them, and remember that without those arrows the city of Troy can never fall to mortal invaders.’
Weeping as he did so, Philoctetes took the bow and arrows. Then he kindled fire and set a light to the great heap of wood. Then he drew back, while the flames roared upwards.
Suddenly there was a loud peal of thunder, and a cloud seemed to pass across the pyre, putting out the flames. And when Philoctetes drew near to the blackened wood, there was no trace of Heracles.
But on Olympus, with his earthly, mortal part burned away, Zeus was welcoming Heracles – henceforth an Immortal. And now at last Hera forgot her jealousy and made him welcome also; and to show that she too honoured the Hero who had saved the Immortals, she gave him her daughter Hebe to be his wife in Olympus.
Meanwhile, on earth, Alcmena died of grief when she heard that her son Heracles was dead: and her grandsons put her body in a coffin to carry her to her grave. But by command of Zeus the cunning Immortal thief, Hermes, stole away the body and put a stone in its place: and so Alcmena was brought to live in the happy islands of the Elysian Fields.
But the sons of Heracles, thinking that the coffin was remarkably heavy, opened it and discovered what had happened. So they set up the stone near Thebes as a monument to Alcmena: but, like Heracles himself, she had no grave anywhere on earth.
EPILOGUE
Although the Age of the Heroes did not end with the death of Heracles, the end was drawing very near, and almost all the tales of the Heroes were told – except for one.
That strange time of myth and legend – of history which was more than half a fairy tale and fairy tales that might have been true – ended in the greatest adventure of all, one of the world’s most famous romances, ‘the Tale of Troy divine’.
Already some of its heroes were born and growing up: Philoctetes, who lit the pyre for Heracles, was one of them, and the sons of the Argonauts, of Peleus and Laertes, of Heracles himself, were to play their parts and win immortal fame before Troy.
But that story is a whole book in itself, and is told in The Tale of Troy, another volume in the Puffin series.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The stories of the ancient Greek myths and legends have been told and re-told times without number and in every way, from short poems to long novels. And the adventures of the Heroes may be found in simple form in numberless volumes, the most famous of which are perhaps Charles Kingsley’s The Heroes and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales.
In the present book I have, however, tried to present the old tales in a new way. My predecessors have taken isolated stories and re-told them at various lengths – but they have, as a rule, remained isolated. Here I have tried to tell the tale of the Heroic Age as that single whole which the Greeks believed it to be.
The result, which takes the story from the myths of the making of the universe down to the death of Heracles, has been to gather into a sequence some of the world’s most famous stories. As this is not a mere outline of Greek Mythology, however, the stories, as they weave in and out of one another, have grown or shrunk in importance. Thus the great tales such as those of Perseus, Theseus, or the Argonauts have demanded whole chapters to themselves, while brief adventures, however famous, such as those of Orpheus and Eurydice, or King Midas, become incidents or ‘inset’ stories. I do not think, however, that many of the well-known tales have been omitted, except for the misfortunes of Oedipus and the subsequent expeditions against Thebes; and a few of the ‘metamorphosis’ legends such as those of Narcissus or Hyacinthus – which are really items in a Classical Dictionary, even though some re-tellers who use Ovid as their main source spin them out into separate tales.
One story, and that the most famous of all, is missing – the Tale of Troy. But that, being a subject of such size and importance, it has seemed best to tell separately, and it is to be found in The Tale of Troy. The story of the Heroic Age divides naturally at the death of Heracles; all the tales of later heroes form part of the great saga of Helen of Sparta, of the siege and fall of Troy, and of the wanderings and returns of Odysseus and the other Heroes – and that demands a volume to itself.
A detailed list of the sources which I have used for this book would be out of place – a vast list of authors and reference numbers ranging backwards and forwards throughout the two thousand years of Greek literature which separate Homer from Eustathius. Sometimes the dialogue is modelled on the original Greek, and sometimes it is my own: but I have, to the best of my ability, used my multitudinous sources honestly. I have selected, but I hope that I have never falsified my originals; I may have assumed dialogue, but I have added no single incident, so far as I am aware, nor made any alteration in a legend, though I have sometimes omitted where desirable.
There are two small exceptions to this rule. The first is the suppression of the name of the ‘witch-wife’ who tried to poison Theseus when he came to Athens: if she were Medea, Theseus could hardly have been an Argonaut! The othe
r is that I have followed Kingsley in allowing an old servant, the only man who ever fitted the Bed of Procrustes exactly, to warn Theseus: Kingsley may have had an authority for this, but I have not been able to trace it.
Otherwise I have full Classical authority for everything in this book. Indeed, though I have sometimes used a Latin author for details or descriptions, I can say that I have ancient Greek authority for everything except the adventure with Cacus.
Finally, it is hardly necessary to do more than remark on my use throughout of the correct Greek names for the gods of Ancient Greece. The habit of using their Latin equivalents has been broken completely during the last hundred years, though it lingers still in reprints of Hawthorne. In deference to general literary tradition, however, I have used the Latinized spellings – Phoebus Apollo for Phoibos Apollon, Eurydice for Eurydike – and so on. I have added a list of the Latin versions of the names of the gods and goddesses lest any reader should be puzzled by meeting them in this alien disguise.
But indeed the gods and heroes of Ancient Greece can never seem as aliens to us. Their stories are a part of the world’s heritage, they are part of the background of our literature, our speech, of our very thoughts. We cannot come to them too early, nor are we ever likely to outgrow them as we pass from such simple re-tellings as this to the Greek authors themselves – at first in the English versions of Lang or Murray or Rieu, and then, if we are lucky, to the lovely echoing phrases of the Greek itself. Once found, the magic web of old Greek myth and legend is ours by right – and ours for life. Through good or ill –
Old shapes of song that do not die
Shall haunt the halls of memory.
ROGER LANCELYN GREEN
THE GODS AND GODDESSES OF
ANCIENT GREECE
Greek Latin
CRONOS SATURN
RHEA CYBELE
HELIOS SOL (The Sun)
EOS AURORA (The Dawn)
SELENE LUNA (The Moon)
ZEUS JUPITER OR JOVE
POSEIDON NEPTUNE
HADES PLUTO OR DIS
DEMETER CERES
HESTIA VESTA
HERA JUNO
PERSEPHONE PROSERPINE
ARES MARS
DIONYSUS BACCHUS
HERMES MERCURY
HEPHAESTUS VULCAN
ATHENA MINERVA
ARTEMIS DIANA
APHRODITE VENUS
ASCLEPIUS AESCULAPIUS
HERACLES HERCULES OR ALCIDES
APOLLO, PAN, and HECATE are the same in both.