The only one left to punish was Hippocoon of Sparta, the other king who had refused to purify Heracles of the murder of Iphitus. Hippocoon’s sons, moreover, had added fuel to the flame of the demigod’s hatred, for when he had come to Sparta with Oeonus, his uncle and friend, a large Molossian shepherd dog attacked his kinsman while he was looking at the palace. Oeonus threw a stone at the animal, whereupon the sons of the king rushed toward the stranger and killed him with cudgels. So now, to avenge his friend’s death along with his own grievance, Heracles assembled a host to go against Sparta. When they were marching through Arcadia, he invited King Cepheus and his twenty sons to join the expedition, but at first he refused, for he feared an invasion from his neighbors, the Argives. Now Athene had given Heracles a lock of the Medusa’s hair, enclosed in a brazen urn. This he gave to Sterope, the daughter of King Cepheus, saying to her: “When the Argive armies approach, all you need to do is raise this lock three times above the walls of the city, without looking at it yourself, and your enemies will take to flight.” When Cepheus heard this, he let himself be persuaded to take part in the campaign, but though the Argives were indeed forced to flee, he himself suffered disaster after disaster, and was finally slain with all his sons. Iphicles, the brother of Heracles, also fell, but Heracles himself conquered Sparta, killed Hippocoon and his sons, brought Tyndareus, the father of Castor and Polydeuces, back to that city, and reinstated him as king. But he retained the right to have his own descendants inherit the realm he had handed over to Tyndareus.
HERACLES AND DEIANIRA
After the hero had done many bold deeds in the Peloponnesus, he came to Calydon, in Aetolia, to King Oeneus, who had a beautiful daughter, Deianira. She, more than any other woman in Aetolia, was much annoyed by the attentions of a most unwelcome suitor. Before coming to Calydon, she had lived in Pleuron, another city in her father’s realm, and there a river, called Achelous, had come to woo her in three different shapes. First he appeared in the form of a bull, then as a dragon with glittering coils, and lastly in human form, but with the head of a bull, from whose shaggy jowls fresh streams broke forth. Deianira could not but look upon this strange suitor with great distress! And she prayed the gods that she might die. For a long time she persisted in her rejection of him, but he grew more and more wild and insistent, and her father did not seem disinclined to marry her to the deity of the river, who was descended from an ancient line of gods.
But now, though late, a second wooer arrived upon the scene, and fortunately he was still in time. It was Heracles, to whom his friend Meleager had described the loveliness of the king’s daughter. The hero had divined that this fair girl would not be lightly won, and he had come equipped for battle. As he walked toward the palace, the wind fluttered the lion’s skin on his back, his quiver clanged with arrows, and he swung his club in the air. When the river-god saw him coming, the veins swelled in his bull’s head, and he tried out his horns for the thrust. King Oeneus saw these two, in their great strength and lust for battle, and not wishing to offend either of them, promised his daughter to the one who would overcome the other in combat.
The furious contest began, with the king, the queen, and their daughter as spectators. Heracles’ fists dealt sounding blows, arrows whirred from his bow, but through it all the huge bull’s head of the river-god emerged again and again and sought out its opponent with deadly lunging horns. In the end the combat turned into a wrestling match. Arm was locked in arm, foot twined with foot. The brows and limbs of the wrestlers glistened with sweat, and both groaned aloud while they strove with panting breath. Then the son of Zeus gained the upper hand and hurled the strong god to earth. He at once changed himself into a serpent. Heracles, however, was well versed in the handling of snakes and would have crushed him had not Achelous suddenly assumed the shape of a bull. But even this did not find Heracles at a loss. He gripped the monster by the horn and forced him down with such might that one horn broke off in his hand. The river-god declared himself defeated, and Deianira became the victor’s prize. As for Achelous’ horn: long ago the nymph Amalthea had given him a horn of plenty, spilling over with fruits of every kind, with pomegranates and grapes. Now he gave this horn to Heracles in exchange for his own.
The marriage of Heracles changed nothing in his way of life. Just as before he roamed from quest to quest. Once when he returned to the palace of Oeneus, he had the misfortune to kill a boy about to hand him a bowl of water to wash his hands at the board, and again he was forced to flee. His young wife and Hyllus, the son she had borne him, accompanied him on his wanderings.
HERACLES AND NESSUS
Their journey took them from Calydon to his friend Ceyx in Trachis. It was the most perilous Heracles had ever undertaken, for when he reached the river Euenus, he came upon Nessus, the centaur, who for a stated fee carried travellers across on his shoulders. He claimed that the gods themselves had assigned this post to him in recognition of his honesty. Now Heracles himself had no need of such a service, for he could stride through the swirling waters with great and powerful steps. But Deianira he left to Nessus, who took her upon his shoulder and bore her sturdily through the river. Midway across, however, he was so beguiled by her delicate beauty that he began to embrace her. Heracles, on the opposite shore, heard her cry for help and quickly turned to go back. When he saw her in the power of this shaggy half-man, he did not stop to consider but snatched a winged arrow from his quiver and shot Nessus, just coming ashore, in the back, and the dart came out through his breast. Deianira had escaped from the arms of the centaur and was about to run to her husband when Nessus, burning for revenge even on the threshold of death, called her back, and tricked her with lying words.
“Hear me, daughter of Oeneus! Since you are the last to be carried on my back, you shall have some profit from my service, provided you do as I say. Collect the fresh blood which flows from the wound of which I am dying. At the very spot where the arrow, poisoned with the venom of the Lernean Hydra, entered my body, you will find it clotted and easy to take up. Use it as magic to yoke the fancy of your husband. If you dye his tunic with it, he will never love any woman more than yourself.” As soon as he had uttered this treacherous counsel, he died of the poisoned wound. And Deianira, though she had no doubt of her husband’s love for her, did as she was told, collected the clotted blood in a vial she carried with her, and preserved it without the knowledge of Heracles, who was too far away to see what she was doing. After other adventures, they reached Trachis and made their home with the king, and with them were the men from Arcadia, who followed Heracles wherever he went.
HERACLES, IOLE, AND DEIANIRA. HIS END
The last venture which Heracles undertook was an expedition against Eurytus, king of Oechalia, for whom he cherished an ancient grudge for having refused him his daughter Iole. He assembled a mighty host of Greeks and marched to Euboea to besiege Eurytus and his sons in their city. And he was victorious. The lofty palace was shattered and lay in the dust, the king and his three sons slain, and the entire city destroyed. Iole, who was still young and fair, was the captive of Heracles.
Deianira had anxiously been awaiting news of her husband. At last a joyful clamor broke out in the palace. A messenger had come at full speed and gave his news to eager listeners. “Your husband lives, O princess,” he cried. “He will return in all the glory of conquest, and even now is bringing the first fruits of the battle to his native gods. His servant Lichas, whom he sent to follow me, is proclaiming the victory to the people out on the open plain. He himself delayed only because he is making offerings of thanks to Zeus on the promontory of Cenaeum in Euboea.”
Soon after, Lichas, the attendant of Heracles, arrived, and with him the captives. “Hail to you, wife of my lord,” he addressed Deianira. “The immortals abhor wrongdoing. They have prospered the just cause of Heracles. They who lived sumptuously and boasted with an evil tongue have all been speeded to Hades. But these prisoners whom we have brought with us your husband commends to your m
ercy, above all this unhappy girl, who has thrown herself at your feet.”
Deianira gazed compassionately on the lovely young creature, radiant with beauty, raised her from the ground, and said: “I have always ached with pity whenever I saw luckless people who had lost their homes dragged through alien lands, and the free-born suffering the lot of slaves. O Zeus, O conqueror, may you never lift your arm to inflict such sorrow upon my house! But who are you, poor girl? You are still a virgin, it seems, and the child of a noble house. Tell me, Lichas, who are her parents?”
“How should I know? Why do you ask?” he replied evasively, but his face betrayed that he was harboring a secret. After a brief pause he continued: “She certainly does not come from one of the humble homes in Oechalia.”
Since the girl herself only sighed and kept silence, Deianira refrained from further questioning and had her taken into the house and treated with courtesy and kindness. While Lichas carried out her commands, the messenger who had been first to arrive approached his mistress, and when he thought himself unobserved, whispered: “Do not trust the man your husband sent, Deianira. He is concealing the truth from you. I, in the middle of the market place of Trachis, in the presence of countless witnesses, heard him say that your husband Heracles destroyed the lofty palace of Oechalia solely because of this girl. She whom you have welcomed into your house is Iole, the daughter of Eurytus, Iole, for whom Heracles burned with love before he ever knew you. Now she is come, not as your slave, but as your rival and his concubine.”
When Deianira heard this she broke into loud lament, but quickly composed herself and sent for Lichas, her husband’s servant. At first he swore by Zeus, the king of all the gods, that he had told her the truth, that he did not know who the girl’s parents were. For a long time he obstinately clung to his lie. But—by that same Zeus—Deianira implored him not to mock her any longer. “Even if it were possible for me to resent my husband’s faithlessness,” she told him tearfully, “I am not so ignoble as to cherish hatred for this girl, who has never done me any harm. For her I have nothing but compassion, for her beauty has not only wrought havoc with her own happiness but has even caused her country to become enslaved.”
When Lichas heard her express such kindly feelings, he confessed everything. Deianira dismissed him with no hint of reproach and only told him to wait until she had prepared a gift for her husband as a gracious return for the train of captives he had sent her.
Far from any ray of light, in strict obedience to the centaur’s directions, Deianira had hidden the clotted blood she had collected from around his poisonous wound. Now for the first time since she had so carefully concealed it in a secret place did the princess, in her torment of jealousy, think of the magic ointment. Ignorant of the snare spun by the vengeful Nessus, she thought it a mere love-charm that would effect nothing but the regaining of her husband’s heart. She must act at once! Softly she crept to that chamber and with a tuft of white lamb’s wool, which she had dipped in the salve, she secretly dyed a gorgeous tunic to be sent to Heracles. While she busied herself with this work she scrupulously shielded from the sun both the wool and the stuff she was dying, laid the crimson garment in fair folds, and locked it in a box. When all was done, she threw the tuft of wool, which was of no further use, on the floor, summoned Lichas, and put in his hands the gift for Heracles. “Take this to my husband,” she said. “It is a garment I wove with my own hands. None shall wear it but he; nor shall he expose the stuff to fire or the light of the sun before the day of offerings, when he shall solemnly adorn himself in it for the gods. For I made a vow that all this should be so, if he returned to me a victor. And that this is really my wish and message, he shall see by this signet which I entrust to you.”
Lichas promised to do as his mistress had bidden him. Not an instant longer did he remain in the palace, but he hurried to Euboea, so that his lord, who was performing the rites of offering, might receive the greetings from home as soon as possible. A few days passed, and Hyllus, the eldest son of Heracles and Deianira, went to join his father, to describe to him his mother’s impatience, and urge him to hasten his return. In the meantime Deianira happened to enter the chamber where she had dyed the tunic with the magic ointment. She found the tuft she had carelessly tossed aside lying on the floor in the full light of the sun and warmed by its beams. But she recoiled at the sight of it, for the wool had crumbled to dusty fragments, and from these brittle shreds a poisonous foam bubbled forth with a hissing sound. Weighed down by a dim premonition of what she had done, the wretched woman wandered through the rooms of her palace in an agony of unrest.
At last Hyllus returned, but he came alone. “O mother,” he called to her, and his voice was harsh with hatred, “I wish you had never lived, that you were not my mother, or that the gods had imbued you with another spirit!” The queen, who was already troubled by vague forebodings, started at the words of her son. “What is there so hateful about me, child?” she asked.
“I come from the promontory of Cenaeum, mother,” her son answered and paused because he was shaken with sobs. “It is you who have robbed me of my father!”
Deianira grew pale as death, but she collected her strength sufficiently to ask: “And who tells you this, my son? Who dares accuse me of so terrible a crime?”
“No one,” said her son. “No one told me. There was no need, for with my own eyes I saw my father’s pitiful end. I reached him on Cenaeum just as he was about to rear an altar to conquering Zeus and slaughter victims for thank-offerings. Then Lichas, his attendant, came bearing your gift, the death-bringing tunic. Obedient to your wish, my father at once put it on, and thus adorned, began the sacrifice of twelve stately bullocks. At first, pleased with the beautiful garment you sent, he prayed joyfully and serenely. But when the flames at the altars leaped heavenward, he broke into sweat. The tunic seemed welded to his body as though by a smith, and tremors shook him from head to foot. As if an adder were feeding on his flesh, he called aloud for Lichas, the guiltless bearer of the poisoned tunic. He came, and innocently repeated what you had bidden him say. My father seized him by the foot, dashed him to death on the cliffs near the sea, and hurled his shattered limbs into the beating waves. All the people were horror-stricken at this mad deed, but no one dared approach raving Heracles. Now he rolled on the ground, now he sprang up, screaming with pain, and the rocks and wooded mountains echoed his cries. He cursed you and the marriage which was now to end in his death. Finally he turned to me and said: ‘My son, if you feel pity for your father, carry me aboard at once, so that I need not die on alien soil.’ Thereupon we bore him into the ship and now, writhing with pain, he has reached his own land. Soon you will see him—perhaps alive, perhaps dead. And all this is your work, mother! You have shamefully done to death the most glorious hero of all time.”
Deianira made no reply to his bitter charge. She did not try to clear herself but left her son Hyllus in silent despair. Then some of the house servants, to whom she had once confided the secret of how the magic ointment given her by Nessus would insure her husband’s faithfulness, told the boy that his rage toward his mother was unjust. He ran after her, but he came too late. She lay in her chamber, stretched dead on her husband’s bed, a double-edged sword in her breast. Hyllus threw his arms about her and flung himself across the bed, regretting his impetuous words. His father’s coming interrupted his self-reproaches. “Son,” he cried, “where are you? Unsheathe your sword; use it against your father! Sever my neck from my body and heal the frenzy with which your godless mother has stricken me. Do not delay! Have pity on me, a hero crying like a girl!” Then he turned to those around him, stretched out his arms in agony, and moaned: “Do you still recognize these, though the strength has been taken from them? They are the same that slew the terror of shepherds, the Nemean Lion, that strangled the Lernean Hydra, that helped put an end to the Erymanthian Boar, and carried Cerberus out of Hades. No spear, no wild beast of the forest, no host of giants could overwhelm me; but now I a
m destroyed by a woman’s hand. My son, kill me, and punish your mother.”
But when Hyllus told his father—swearing to the truth of his words—that his mother had never intended disaster for her husband, and that she had atoned for her thoughtless act by inflicting death upon herself, the wrath of Heracles ebbed and turned to sorrow. He betrothed his son Hyllus to Iole, his captive, whom he himself had once loved, and since an oracle had been issued from Delphi that he was to end his life on Mount Oeta, in the region of Trachis, he had himself carried up to the peak, in spite of the intensity of his pain. At his command, his people heaped a funeral pyre on which he had himself laid. And now he bade them light the woodpile from below, but no one was willing to obey him. Desperate with pain, the hero urged his request until his friend Philoctetes agreed to do what he asked. In gratitude, Heracles handed him his ever-victorious bow and the arrows which no one could withstand. The instant the pyre was lit, lightning flashed from heaven and quickened the flames. Then a cloud floated down, encircled the pyre, and bore the immortal hero to Olympus, while the air shook with thunder. When the pyre had burned to the ground, Iolaus and other friends approached to gather the remains of the hero out of the ashes, but they found not a single bone. No longer could they doubt that, true to the decree of the gods, Heracles had been taken from the bounds of earth and set among the immortals. They prepared the sacrifice and tendered him the honors due to a god. All of Greece worshipped him as a deity.
Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece Page 21