The Greek Myths, Volume2

by Robert Graves

  g. The Pillars of Heracles are usually identified with Mount Calpe in Europe, and Abyle, or Abilyx in Africa. Others make them the islets near Gades, of which the larger is sacred to Hera. All Spaniards and Libyans, however, take the word ‘Pillars’ literally, and place them at Gades, where brazen columns are consecrated to Heracles, eight cubits high and inscribed with the cost of their building; here sailors offer sacrifices whenever they return safely from a voyage. According to the people of Gades themselves, the King of Tyre was ordered by an oracle to found a colony near the Pillars of Heracles, and sent out three successive parties of exploration. The first party, thinking that the oracle had referred to Abyle and Calpe, landed inside the straits, where the city of Exitani now stands; the second sailed about two hundred miles beyond the straits, to an island sacred to Heracles, opposite the Spanish city of Onoba; but both were discouraged by unfavourable omens when they offered sacrifices, and returned home. The third party reached Gades, where they raised a temple to Heracles on the eastern cape and successfully founded the city of Gades on the western.9

  h. Some, however, deny that it was Heracles who set up these pillars, and assert that Abyle and Calpe were first named The Pillars of Cronus’, and afterwards ‘The Pillars of Briareus’, a giant whose power extended thus far; but that, the memory of Briareus (also called Aegaeon) having faded, they were renamed in honour of Heracles – perhaps because the city of Tartessus, which stands only five miles from Calpe, was founded by him, and used to be known as Heracleia. Vast ancient walls and ship-sheds are still shown there.10 But it must be remembered that the earliest Heracles had also been called Briareus. The number of Heracles’s Pillars is usually given as two; but some speak of three, or four.11 So-called Pillars of Heracles are also reported from the northern coast of Germany; from the Black Sea; from the western extremity of Gaul; and from India.12

  i. A temple of Heracles stands on the Sacred Promontory in Lusitania, the most westerly point of the world. Visitants are forbidden to enter the precinct by night, the time when the gods take up their abode in it. Perhaps when Heracles set up his pillars to mark the utmost limits of legitimate seafaring, this was the site he chose.13

  j. How he then drove the cattle to Mycenae is much disputed. Some say that he forced Abyle and Calpe into temporary union and went across the resultant bridge into Libya; but according to a more probable account he passed through the territory of what is now Abdera, a Phoenician settlement, and then through Spain, leaving behind some of his followers as colonists.14 In the Pyrenees, he courted and buried the Bebrycan princess Pyrene, from whom this mountain range takes its name; the river Danube is said to have its source there, near a city also named in her honour. He then visited Gaul, where he abolished a barbarous native custom of killing strangers, and won so many hearts by his generous deeds that he was able to found a large city, to which he gave the name Alesia, or ‘Wandering’, in commemoration of his travels. The Gauls to this day honour Alesia as the hearth and mother-city of their whole land – it was unconquered until Caligula’s reign – and claim descent from Heracles’s union with a tall princess named Galata, who chose him as her lover and bred that warlike people.15

  k. When Heracles was driving Geryon’s cattle through Liguria, two sons ofPoseidon named Ialebion and Dercynus tried to steal them from him, and were both killed. At one stage of his battle with hostile Ligurian forces, Heracles ran out of arrows, and knelt down, in tears, wounded and exhausted. The ground being of soft mould, he could find no stones to throw at the enemy – Ligys, the brother of Ialebion, was their leader – until Zeus, pitying his tears, overshadowed the earth with a cloud, from which a shower of stones hailed down; and with these he put the Ligurians to flight. Zeus set among the stars an image of Heracles fighting the Ligurians, known as the constellation Engonasis. Another memorial of this battle survives on earth: namely the broad, circular plain lying between Marseilles and the mouths of the river Rhône, about fifteen miles from the sea, called ‘The Stony Plain’, because it is strewn with stones the size of a man’s fist; brine springs are also found there.16

  l. In his passage over the Ligurian Alps, Heracles carved a road fit for his armies and baggage trains; he also broke up all robber bands that infested the pass, before entering what is now Cis-alpine Gaul and Etruria. Only after wandering down the whole coast of Italy, and crossing into Sicily, did it occur to him: ‘I have taken the wrong road!’ The Romans say that, on reaching the Albula – afterwards called the Tiber – he was welcomed by King Evander, an exile from Arcadia. At evening, he swam across, driving the cattle before him, and lay down to rest on a grassy bed.17 In a deep cave near by, lived a vast hideous, three-headed shepherd named Cacus, a son of Hephaestus and Medusa, who was the dread and disgrace of the Aventine Forest, and puffed flames from each of his three mouths. Human skulls and arms hung nailed above the lintels of his cave, and the ground inside gleamed white with the bones of his victims. While Heracles slept, Cacus stole the two finest of his bulls; as well as four heifers, which he dragged backwards by their tails into his lair.18

  m. At the first streak of dawn, Heracles awoke, and at once noticed that the cattle were missing. After searching for them in vain, he was about to drive the remainder onward, when one of the stolen heifers lowed hungrily. Heracles traced the sound to the cave, but found the entrance barred by a rock which ten yoke of oxen could hardly have moved; nevertheless, he heaved it aside as though it had been a pebble and, undaunted by the smoky flames which Cacus was now belching, grappled with him and battered his face to pulp.19

  n. Aided by King Evander, Heracles then built an altar to Zeus, at which he sacrificed one of the recovered bulls, and afterwards made arrangements for his own worship. Yet the Romans tell this story in order to glorify themselves; the truth being that it was not Heracles who killed Cacus, and offered sacrifices to Zeus, but a gigantic herdsman named Garanus, or Recaranus, the ally of Heracles.20

  o. King Evander ruled rather by personal ascendancy than by force: he was particularly reverenced for the knowledge of letters which he had imbibed from his prophetic mother, the Arcadian nymph Nicostrate, or Themis; she was a daughter of the river Ladon, and though already married to Echenus, bore Evander to Hermes. Nicostrate persuaded Evander to murder his supposed father; and, when the Arcadians banished them both, went with him to Italy, accompanied by a body of Pelasgians.21 There, some sixty years before the Trojan War, they founded the small city of Pallantium, on the hill beside the river Tiber, later called Mount Palatine; the site having been Nicostrate’s choice; and soon there was no more powerful king than Evander in all Italy. Nicostrate, now called Carmenta, adapted the thirteen-consonant Pelasgian alphabet, which Cadmus had brought back from Egypt, to form the fifteen-consonant Latin one. But some assert that it was Heracles who taught Evander’s people the use of letters, which is why he shares an altar with the Muses.22

  p. According to the Romans, Heracles freed King Evander from the tribute owed to the Etruscans; killed King Faunus, whose custom was to sacrifice strangers at the altar of his father Hermes; and begot Latinus, the ancestor of the Latins, on Faunus’s widow, or daughter. But the Greeks hold that Latinus was a son of Circe by Odysseus. Heracles, at all events, suppressed the annual Cronian sacrifice of two men, who were flung into the river Tiber, and forced the Romans to use puppets instead; even now, in the month of May, when the moon is full, the chief Vestal Virgin, standing on the oaken-timbered Pons Sublicius, throws whitewashed images of old men, plaited from bulrushes, and called ‘Argives’, into the yellow stream.23 Heracles is also believed to have founded Pompeii and Herculaneum; to have fought giants on the Phlegraean Plain of Cumae; and to have built a causeway one mile long across the Lucrine Gulf, now called the Heracleian Road, down which he drove Geryon’s cattle.24

  q. It is further said that he lay down to rest near the frontier of Rhegium and Epizephyrian Locris and, being much disturbed by cicadas, begged the gods to silence them. His prayer was immediately granted; a
nd cicadas have never been heard since on the Rhegian side of the river Alece, although they sing lustily on the Locrian side. That day a bull broke away from the herd and, plunging into the sea, swam over to Sicily. Heracles, going in pursuit, found it concealed among the herds of Eryx, King of the Elymans, a son of Aphrodite by Butes.25 Eryx, who was a wrestler and a boxer, challenged him to a fivefold contest. Heracles accepted the challenge, on condition that Eryx would stake his kingdom against the runaway bull, and won the first four events; finally, in the wrestling match, he lifted Eryx high into the air, dashed him to the ground and killed him – which taught the Sicilians that not everyone born of a goddess is necessarily immortal. In this manner, Heracles won Eryx’s kingdom, which he left the inhabitants to enjoy until one of his own descendants should come to claim it.26

  r. Some say that Eryx – whose wrestling-ground is still shown – had a daughter named Psophis, who bore Heracles two sons: Echephron and Promachus. Having been reared in Erymanthus, they renamed it Psophis after their mother; and there built a shrine to Erycinian Aphrodite, of which today only the ruins remain. The hero-shrines of Echephron and Promachus have long since lost their importance, and Psophis is usually regarded as a daughter of Xanthus, the grandson of Arcas.27

  s. Continuing on his way through Sicily, Heracles came to the site where now stands the city of Syracuse; there he offered sacrifices, and instituted the annual festival beside the sacred chasm of Cyane, down which Hades snatched Core to the Underworld. To those who honoured Heracles in the Plain of Leontini, he left undying memorials of his visit. Close to the city of Agyrium, the hoof marks of his cattle were found imprinted on a stony road, as though in wax; and, regarding this as an intimation of his own immortality, Heracles accepted from the inhabitants those divine honours which he had hitherto consistently refused. Then, in acknowledgement of their favours, he dug a lake four furlongs in circumference outside the city walls, and established local sanctuaries of Iolaus and Geryon.28

  t. Returning to Italy in search of another route to Greece, Heracles drove his cattle up the eastern coast, to the Lacinian Promontory, where the ruler, King Lacinius, was afterwards able to boast that he had put Heracles to flight; this he did merely by building a temple to Hera, at the sight of which Heracles departed in disgust. Six miles farther on, Heracles accidentally killed one Croton, buried him with every honour, and prophesied that, in time to come, a great city would rise, called by his name. This prophecy Heracles made good after his deification: he appeared in a dream to one of his descendants, the Argive Myscelus, threatening him with terrible punishments if he did not lead a party of colonists to Sicily and found the city; and when the Argives were about to condemn Myscelus to death for defying their embargo on emigration, he miraculously turned every black voting-pebble into a white one.29

  u. Heracles then proposed to drive Geryon’s cattle through Istria into Epirus, and thence to the Peloponnese by way of the Isthmus. At at the head of the Adriatic Gulf Hera sent a gadfly, which stampeded the cows, driving them across Thrace and into the Scythian desert. There Heracles pursued them, and one cold, stormy night drew the lion pelt about him and fell fast asleep on a rocky hillside. When he awoke, he found that his chariot-mares, which he had unharnessed and put out to graze, were likewise missing. He wandered far and wide in search of them until he reached the wooded district called Hylaea, where a strange being, half woman, half serpent, shouted at him from a cave. She had his mares, she said, but would give them back to him only if he became her lover. Heracles agreed, though with a certain reluctance, and kissed her thrice; whereupon the serpent-tailed woman embraced him passionately, and when, at last, he was free to go, asked him: ‘What of the three sons whom I now carry in my womb? When they grow to manhood, shall I settle them here where I am mistress, or shall I send them to you?’

  v. ‘When they grow up, watch carefully!’ Heracles replied. ‘And if ever one of them bends this bow – thus, as I now bend it – and girds himself with this belt – thus, as I now gird myself – choose him as the ruler of your country.’

  So saying, he gave her one of his two bows, and his girdle which had a golden goblet hanging from its clasp; then went on his way. She named her triplets Agathyrsus, Gelonus, and Scythes. The eldest two were unequal to the tasks that their father had set, and she drove them away; but Scythes succeeded in both and was allowed to remain, thus becoming the ancestor of all royal Scythian kings who, to this day, wear golden goblets on their girdles.30 Others, however, say that it was Zeus, not Heracles, who lay with the serpent-tailed woman, and that, when his three sons by her were still ruling the land, there fell from the sky four golden implements: a plough, a yoke, a battle axe, and a cup. Agathyrsus first ran to recover them, but as he came close, the gold flamed up and burned his hands. Gelonus was similarly rejected. However, when Scythes, the youngest, approached, the fire died down at once; whereupon he carried home the four golden treasures and the elder brothers agreed to yield him the kingdom.31

  w. Heracles, having recovered his mares and most of the strayed cattle, drove them back across the river Strymon, which he dammed with stones for the purpose, and encountered no further adventures until the giant herdsman Alcyoneus, having taken possession of the Corinthian Isthmus, hurled a rock at the army which once more followed Heracles, crushing no less than twelve chariots and double that number of horsemen. This was the same Alcyoneus who twice stole Helius’s sacred cattle: from Erytheia, and from the citadel of Corinth. He now ran forward, picked up the rock again, and this time hurled it at Heracles, who bandied it back with his club and so killed the giant; the very rock is still shown on the Isthmus.32

  1. Pausanias: iv. 36. 3; Apollodorus: ii. 5.10; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid vi. 289; Hesiod: Theogony 981.

  2. Hesiod: Theogony 287 ff.; Lucian: Toxaris 72; Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Livy: i. 7; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid viii. 300; Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius: iv. 1399.

  3. Apollodorus: ii. 5. 10; Diodorus Siculus: iv 18; Pomponius Mela: i. 5. 3 and ii. 6. 6.

  4. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Pherecydes, quoted by Athenaeus: xi. 39; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid vii. 662 and viii. 300.

  5. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Hyginus: Fabula 30; Euripides: Heracles 423; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid vii. 662; Pausanias: x. 17. 4; Ptolemy Hephaestionos, quoted by Photius: p. 475; Pindar: Fragment 169.

  6. Solinus: xxiii. 12; Pomponius Mela: iii. 47; Hesiod: Theogony 287 ff.; Pliny: Natural History iv. 36.

  7. Pherecydes, quoted by Strabo: iii. 2. 11; Strabo: iii. 5. 3–4 and 7; Timaeus, quoted by Pliny: loc. cit.; Polybius, quoted by Strabo: iii. 5.7; Pausanias: i. 35. 6.

  8. Diodorus Siculus: iii. 55 and iv. 17–19.

  9. Pliny: Natural History iii. Proem; Strabo: iii. 5. 5.

  10. Eustathius on Dionysius’s Description of the Earth 64 ff.; Scholiast on Pindar’s Nemean Odes iii. 37; Aristotle, quoted by Aelian: Varia Historia v. 3; Pliny: Natural History iii. 3; Timotheus, quoted by Strabo: iii. 1. 7.

  11. Erasmus: Chiliades i. 7; Zenobius: Proverbs v. 48; Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound 349 and 428; Hesychius sub stelas distomous.

  12. Tacitus: Germania 34; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid xi. 262; Scymnius Chius: 188; Strabo: ii. 5.6.

  13. Strabo: iii. 1.4; Pindar: Nemean Odes iii. 21 ff.

  14. Avienus: Ora Maritima 326; Apollodorus: ii. 5. 10; Strabo: iii. 4. 3; Asclepiades of Myrtea, quoted by Strabo: loc. cit.

  15. Silius Italicus: iii. 417; Herodotus: ii. 33; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 19 and 24.

  16. Apollodorus: ii. 5. 10; Tzetzes: Chiliades ii. 340 ff. and On Lycophron 1312; Aeschylus: Prometheus Unbound, quoted by Hyginus: Poetic Astronomy ii. 6 and by Strabo: iv. 1.7; Theon: On Aratus p. 12, ed. Morell.

  17. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 21; Ovid: Fasti v. 545 ff.; Livy: i. 7.

  18. Propertius: Elegies iv. 9. 10; Ovid: Fasti i. 545 ff.; Livy: loc. cit.; Virgil: Aeneid viii. 207–8.

  19. Livy: loc. cit.; Virgil: Aeneid viii. 217 and 233 ff.; Ovid: loc. cit.

  20. Plutarch:
Roman Questions 18; Ovid: loc. cit.; Livy: loc. cit.; Verrius Flaccus, quoted by Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid viii. 203; Aurelius Victor: On the Origins of the Roman Race 8.

  21. Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid viii. 51; 130 and 336; Livy: i. 7; Plutarch: Roman Questions 56; Pausanias: viii. 43. 2; Dionysius: Roman Antiquities i. 31.

  22. Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid viii. 130 and 336; Ovid: Fasti v. 94–5 and i. 542; Hyginus: Fabula 277; Juba, quoted by Plutarch: Roman Questions 59.

  23. Plutarch: Roman Questions 18 and 32; Dercyllus: Italian History iii, quoted by Plutarch: Parallel Stories 38; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 1232; Justin: xliii. 1; Hesiod: Theogony 1013; Ovid: Fasti v. 621 ff.

  24. Solinus: ii. 5; Dionysius: i. 44; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 21–2 and 24; Strabo: vi. 3. 5 and 4.6.

  25. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 22; Strabo: vi. 1. 19; Apollodorus: ii. 5. 10; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid i. 574.

  26. Pausanias: iv. 36. 3; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 23; Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 866; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid x. 551.

  27. Tzetzes: loc. cit.; Pausanias: viii. 24. 1 and 3.

  28. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 23–4 and v. 4.

  29. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 24; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid iii. 552; Ovid: Metamorphoses xv. 12 ff.

  30. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 25; Herodotus: iv. 8–10.