Heroes of Olympus

by Philip Freeman

Meanwhile, Hera sent Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to Alcmene. Eileithyia crossed her legs and fingers to make sure that Alcmene’s son would be born second. Alcmene’s screams went on and on. At last one of her servants noticed Eileithyia in the shadows and understood what the goddess was doing. She shouted, “Rejoice, a child is born! Alcmene has given birth!”

  “Impossible,” cried out Eileithyia. That was enough to break her spell. Alcmene gave birth to not one but two sons. One was Iphicles, fathered by Amphitryon. The other was the son of Zeus. His name was Hercules.

  Despite the trick played on Eileithyia, Sthenelus’s son, Eurystheus, was born before Hercules and would one day rule the plain of Argos.

  After Hercules was born, Alcmene was afraid that Hera would kill her. She left the baby to die in a deserted field, hoping that this would satisfy the goddess. Athena took the infant to Mount Olympus and asked Hera to nurse the baby. Hera didn’t know who the boy was, and she agreed. All went well until Hercules bit his nursemaid. Hera screamed in pain and jumped, spurting milk across the heavens. This came to be known as the Milky Way.

  Athena then took Hercules back to Alcmene and talked her into raising him.

  Hercules was just a few months old when Hera first tried to kill him. He was in his crib with his brother Iphicles. The goddess sent two poisonous serpents to their home. They slithered across the floor and climbed into the crib. Iphicles awoke and screamed, but Hercules grabbed a serpent in each of his chubby hands. Alcmene and Amphitryon rushed in to find baby Hercules laughing and holding two dead snakes.

  Hercules’s teachers were the best Greece had to offer. His mortal father taught him to drive a chariot, while a king named Eurytus instructed him in the use of the bow. Helen’s brother Castor taught him to fight with a sword, and Hermes’s son Harpalycus showed him how to wrestle.

  Linus, the brother of Orpheus, tried to teach Hercules to sing and play the lyre, but Hercules wasn’t good at music. Linus boxed the boy’s ears and Hercules smashed the lyre on top of his teacher’s head, killing him. Young Hercules was put on trial for murder but argued that a man was allowed to kill anyone who struck him first. The judges set Hercules free.

  Amphitryon then sent Hercules into the country to use his energy doing farm chores. The boy outdid all of his friends in farming and hunting. By the time he was a young man, Hercules was a head taller than all his friends. No one could beat him in contests, whether shooting arrows or throwing the javelin.

  When Hercules was eighteen, word reached him that an enormous lion was eating the flocks of King Thespius on nearby Mount Cithaeron. The beast was hard to track, so Hercules spent fifty nights in the palace while he hunted. Finally, he killed the lion.

  In the days when young Hercules lived in Thebes, the city was controlled by the Minyans to the north. The king of the Minyans, Erginus, demanded that each year the Thebans send him a hundred of their best cattle. As Hercules was returning home after killing the lion, he met the Minyan heralds on their way to Thebes. Hercules was angry about this shame on his town. He cut off the ears, noses, and hands of the heralds and sent them back to King Erginus. The king gathered his army to march against Thebes. When he reached the walls of the city he demanded that King Creon send out Hercules to be punished.

  The Thebans had long ago dedicated their weapons to the gods and hung them on a temple wall. Hercules gathered the young men of the town and broke into the temple. They took up the ancient arms and marched against the Minyans. They not only killed Erginus and almost everyone in the Minyan army, but they also burned the Minyan capital to the ground. Thanks to Hercules, the people of Thebes were free.

  King Creon was so grateful to Hercules that he gave him his daughter, Megara, to be his bride. The young couple lived happily together and had three sons, but Hera had not forgotten her anger. She whispered in Hercules’s ear that he was a nobody and a disappointment to his father. A true son of Zeus would have done more than kill a lion and defeat the Minyans. She told Hercules he was no hero.

  Hercules longed for danger and adventure. The conflict between his dreams and the duties of family life confused him. Hera encouraged this confusion until at last Hercules lost his mind.

  One day he was performing a sacrifice to the gods. His wife and children looked up at him as he carried the sacred basket of barley around the altar. Hercules was ready to drown the flame of the altar torch and sprinkle the holy water on his family when he froze. His eyes rolled wildly and drool dribbled into his beard. Then he screamed: “Why should I sacrifice before I slay Eurystheus, son of Sthenelus, king of Mycenae? Throw away the basket, pour out the water, and someone get my bow! I’m off to Mycenae. I’ll knock down those mighty walls with my bare hands.”

  Hercules grabbed his bow and club and climbed into an imaginary chariot. He whipped invisible horses to a gallop. He cried out that he was nearing his goal, and then jumped to the ground to look for his enemies. His children were terrified. Hercules drew his bow on his eldest son, thinking he was a child of Eurystheus.

  Megara threw herself in front of her son. “You gave this child life. Will you now take it away?”

  Hercules could not hear her. He chased the boy around the yard and then stabbed him through the heart. The blood of the young child spurted from his body as he collapsed into his mother’s arms.

  “That’s one of your family, Eurystheus,” cried Hercules. “Now for the rest!”

  His second son tried to hide behind the altar, but his father found him and dragged him away. The boy grasped his father’s knees and begged: “Daddy, please, don’t hit me! I’m your own little boy.”

  Hercules brought down his club and crushed the boy’s skull.

  Megara grabbed her last child and ran into their house. But Hercules burst through the door and drew his bow on mother and child. Without a word, he shot them both with a single arrow.

  Athena suddenly appeared before him and tossed a huge stone at his chest. The stone knocked the breath from his body and drove away the madness Hera had brought on him. Hercules gazed in horror at what he had done.

  Hercules could not forgive himself. As the months passed, he realized he would have to move on or die. He left Thebes to seek the counsel of the oracle at Delphi. When he came to the temple of Apollo beneath Mount Parnassus, he asked the priestess what he must do to find forgiveness. The message she gave him was not pleasing. He must return to his home in Argos and serve his uncle Eurystheus. Hercules would have to perform whatever twelve labors this hated king would ask of him.

  This was a bitter pill for Hercules to swallow. Not only would he be a slave, but his master would be the very man who had stolen the throne of Argos from him. Still, he had to follow the will of the god. Hercules left the slopes of Parnassus and walked slowly down the road to Argos.

  Eurystheus was terrified when he heard that Hercules was coming. He thought that his nephew was planning to kill him and steal the throne. As Hercules entered the massive gates of the palace with stone lions on each side, Eurystheus hid in a large bronze jar buried in the ground. Hercules marched in and tore the lid off the jar. The king begged for mercy but calmed down when Hercules explained his mission. The ruler of Argos gave his nephew the most dangerous task he could think of. He hoped that Hercules would be killed and never enter Mycenae again.

  Eurystheus commanded Hercules to slay a lion that was destroying the country around Nemea to the north. Hercules had already killed a fierce lion on Mount Cithaeron and thought this task would be easy. He strolled toward Nemea and found the lair of the beast. The lion made its home in a cave stretching through the rock to the other side of the mountain. He found the lion outside the cave and notched his arrow for an easy kill. The arrow flew straight at the animal but only bounced off his hide. This lion was a child of the ancient monsters Typhon and Echidna. Its skin could not be pierced.

  Hercules came up with a plan. He went to the far side of the mountain and blocked the cave’s exit. Then he returned to the entrance where
the lion slept. Hercules cut a huge club from a tree and rushed at the animal. The lion made its way into the cave and Hercules followed. He grabbed the lion around the throat and choked it to death with his bare hands. Since no knife could cut its hide, he used one of the lion’s razor-sharp claws to skin the animal. He wore the lion’s skin as a cloak, and its head as a helmet. This skin and the club he used became his symbols.

  Hercules returned to Mycenae where the foolish Eurystheus was once again hiding in his jar. He was even more terrified of Hercules now and told him he couldn’t enter the city gates. The king would give the hero his orders through a herald named Copreus. This was an insult because Copreus meant “manure man.”

  Eurystheus quickly sent Hercules away on his second labor. He had to kill the enormous monster that lived in the swamps south of Mycenae. This monster, the Hydra, had a hundred heads and a wicked temper. Hercules, along with his nephew Iolaus, made his way to the swamp where the Hydra lived along with a giant crab. Hercules used burning arrows to drive the monster from its hiding place and sliced off one of its heads in a single stroke of his sword.

  Suddenly two new heads burst from the wound. Hercules attacked the Hydra again and cut off more heads, but from each cut two more heads grew. He finally discovered that the Hydra’s central head was immortal and could not be destroyed. To make things worse, the giant crab began biting Hercules’s foot.

  Hercules ran from the swamp and found Iolaus. He ordered the young man to grab a torch and follow him. The pair made their way back to the Hydra and its angry heads. Hercules killed the giant crab, and then told Iolaus to stand by with the torch. He cut off one of the Hydra’s heads and yelled at his nephew to burn the wound. That worked—no new heads grew from the burned stump. One by one Hercules cut and burned the monster until only the immortal head remained. He buried it alive under a giant rock. Then he dipped his arrows into the Hydra’s poisonous blood.

  Hercules’s third labor was to track down and bring back alive the deer with golden horns. This deer was sacred to Artemis. Hercules spent a whole year chasing the deer over the mountains. At last he crept up on it while it slept near a stream and threw it over his shoulders for the journey back to Mycenae.

  Artemis was furious that Hercules had caught her deer. Hercules explained that he was acting under orders of the king. Artemis let him continue on his way with a warning that he was to free her deer as soon as he reached Mycenae. Hercules agreed. As soon as he showed the deer to Copreus, he let it go.

  For his fourth labor, Eurystheus ordered Hercules to return to Arcadia and bring back another live animal. The terrible boar of Mount Erymanthus was destroying the countryside, and killing anyone who came near.

  Hercules followed mountain paths until he came to the cave of the centaur Pholus. The centaur cooked a fine meal for his guest, and Hercules asked for wine. The only wine available was in a jar that belonged to all the centaurs. If Pholus opened it, the other centaurs would smell it and go wild. Hercules promised Pholus everything would be fine, so the centaur broke the seal on the jar.

  The smell spread throughout the countryside. Centaurs came from all directions ready to kill anyone who stood between them and the wine. Hercules shot all who dared to enter the cave, then ran out to chase the rest away. The centaurs tore whole trees from their roots to use as clubs. The battle lasted for hours until Hercules finally killed the last of the wine-crazed centaurs and returned to the cave.

  Hercules found Pholus burying the bodies of the centaurs. Pholus pulled an arrow from one of the creatures and marveled at how such a small thing could have killed his companions. Then he accidentally let the point, poisoned by the Hydra’s blood, fall on his foot. Pholus died in agony, after which Hercules buried him beside his kinsmen and continued his hunt for the boar.

  He found the huge beast in its mountain hideout and chased it until it got stuck in a deep snow bank. Hercules wrestled the boar and carried it back to Eurystheus alive. The king could not believe Hercules had survived another dangerous mission. He tried to think of a labor that would be both impossible and embarrassing. If Hercules were too embarrassed to do the job, Eurystheus would be rid of him forever.

  No job in ancient Greece was more shameful than cleaning up after farm animals. Only slaves and the poorest workers shoveled dung. So, Eurystheus ordered Hercules to clean the stables of King Augeas. Augeas, son of the god Helios, had vast herds of cattle. He let the animal dung build up for years in his barn. The piles were deeper than a man’s knees and the smell was terrible. Eurystheus insisted that Hercules accomplish this fifth labor alone.

  Hercules knew it was impossible for him to clean the stables of Augeas alone just by shoveling. He didn’t dare offend the oracle at Delphi by refusing to try. So, he made his way to the palace of Augeas. As he passed the swift Alpheus River along the way, Hercules had a marvelous idea.

  When he reached the palace, Hercules told Augeas he would clean his stables in one day in exchange for a tenth of his cattle. The king knew this was impossible, but he decided to let the young fool try. Phyleus, son of Augeas, witnessed the agreement. Hercules conveniently forgot to tell them that he was acting under the orders of Eurystheus.

  The next morning Hercules knocked a large hole in one of the stable walls. Then he strolled through the muck to the other end and made another opening. After this, he went to the banks of the Alpheus and changed the course of the river into a channel he had dug. Fresh water poured through the stables and washed away years of dung in a matter of minutes. Hercules then closed the channel, patched up the holes in the barn, and demanded his payment.

  Meanwhile, Augeas had discovered that Hercules was under orders of Eurystheus. The king said Hercules had tricked him and refused to give him a single cow. Hercules called on Phyleus as witness, and the king’s son agreed that his father should pay. Augeas ordered both Hercules and Phyleus to leave his kingdom.

  Hercules made his way back to Mycenae without any cattle. He stopped at the home of a local king named Dexamenus. This ruler had been bullied into promising his daughter in marriage to a centaur, named Eurytion, who was coming that very day to claim her. Hercules had no use for centaurs after his battle with them during the hunt for the boar. He killed the centaur and then made his way back to Mycenae.

  The sixth labor of Hercules was not dangerous, but Eurystheus thought it was impossible. In Arcadia there was a lake in a forest near the town of Stymphalus. A huge flock of birds had settled on this lake and dirtied it beyond use. The people had tried many times to drive them away, but nothing worked. The king ordered Hercules to clear the lake, believing he would fail.

  Hercules made his way to the lake and gazed at the number of birds. He could never kill them all, so he sat down on the shore and came up with a plan. He fashioned a pair of bronze rattles that made a horrible sound. Then he ran around the lake creating such a noise that the birds took to the sky and never came back.

  By now Eurystheus must have thought he would never get rid of Hercules. The king decided to send him on a mission across the sea to Crete for his seventh labor. Hercules was to capture the bull that had once risen from the sea when Minos prayed to Poseidon. Minos refused to sacrifice the bull, and the god made Queen Pasiphae fall in love with it. She then gave birth to the murderous Minotaur. The bull had escaped the fields of Minos and was now terrorizing the island.

  Hercules found the bull and wrestled it to the ground. Then he borrowed a trick that his father Zeus had used with Europa. He rode the bull across the sea and back to the mainland. Once he had shown it to Copreus, he released it to wander around Greece. At last it settled on the plain of Marathon and was slain by Theseus.

  Eurystheus was sorry Hercules wasn’t killed in Crete. For his eighth labor, he sent the hero to the wild land of Thrace. This time Hercules had to bring back the man-eating mares of King Diomedes. These horses had been raised on human flesh. They were so fierce that their feeding troughs were made of bronze and so strong that they were held
in their stables by iron chains. Eurystheus hoped that Hercules would be their next meal.

  On his way to Thrace, Hercules passed through the kingdom of Admetus who ruled over Thessaly. He noticed that the palace was in mourning. When he asked why, he was told that a woman had died. Hercules couldn’t understand why there should be such a fuss over someone who was not a family member. He spent the evening laughing and joking with the tearful king.

  Finally Admetus explained that his wife, Alcestis, had died that day, but he had tried to hide his sorrow because he did not want to be a poor host. Hercules was sorry and asked how such a young woman had died. Admetus told him the story.

  Zeus had been angry with Apollo for killing some of the Cyclopes, so the ruler of the gods made Apollo a slave of Admetus for a whole year. The king had been kind to the god, so Apollo granted him a special favor. He didn’t have to die at his rightful time if he could find someone to take his place.

  Admetus searched for a person to die for him. He went to wealthy nobles and to poor beggars, but no one would take his place. His brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, and nephews and nieces all refused to journey to Hades. He hoped that his parents, nearing the end of their lives, would be willing. His father said: “Admetus, the light of the sun is all the more sweet to us because it is fading fast. We gave you life, but we will not die for you.”

  The king had finally given up when his wife Alcestis came to him: “My husband, you have searched high and low for someone to take your place in Hades, but you did not ask the one who loves you most. Admetus, I will die for you.”

  The king sadly agreed, then sat beside her as she breathed her last.

  Hercules swore to help the sad king. He rushed to the tomb and found Death, who had come to claim the queen’s spirit. He wrestled Death to the ground and reunited the soul of Alcestis with her body. He then presented the living queen to Admetus. Both the king and his queen had escaped death.