by Stephen Fry
‘Remind me,’ said Zeus. ‘Prothemus? Promedes? It’s Pro-something, I’m sure of it.’
‘Funny,’ said Prometheus. ‘Very, very funny.’
‘Your betrayal tore my heart out every day. A liver grows back more easily than a heart. I never loved a friend as much as I loved you.’
‘I know that,’ said Prometheus, ‘and I’m sorry. Necessity is a hard …’
‘Oh yes. Hide behind Necessity.’
‘I’m not hiding behind anything, Zeus. I’m standing before your throne and offering my services.’
‘Your services? I already have a cupbearer.’
Athena had been listening and came forward from behind a rock. ‘Come on, father. Let’s get this over with. Embrace him.’
There was a silence. Zeus stood up with a sigh.
The pair edged towards each other. Prometheus opened his arms.
‘You’ve lost weight,’ said Zeus.
‘I wonder why. Is that a flash of white I see in that beard of yours?’
‘The cares of office.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Athena, ‘get on with it.’
‘Athena, as ever, is wise,’ said Prometheus as the two extricated themselves from an unbearably awkward, unbearably male hug. ‘Never was the phrase “for heaven’s sake” more apt. The Giants are coming. You know they are coming?’
Zeus nodded.
Some say Heracles, as he crossed the Black Sea and Mediterranean, once again sailed in the Cup of Helios. Whichever means of travel he chose, he did at last find the Garden of the Hesperides.
Peering over the wall, he saw the tree with its gleaming crop of golden apples. Around its trunk was coiled the great serpent dragon Ladon. At the sight of a mortal peeping over the wall it raised its head and hissed.
Heracles fired his arrow, the dragon screamed in pain and the coils slid slowly down the trunk. Another child of Echidna and Typhon lay dead.
Heracles climbed over the wall and went to the trees. He found, as Prometheus had warned him, that being mortal he could not pick the apples. It was not that he lacked the strength, it was that every time he reached out to touch one it would vanish.
After an hour of trying and failing, he left the garden and made towards the coast in search of Atlas.
‘The attempt,’ said Heracles to himself, with a rare stab at wit, ‘was fruitless.’
He found Atlas hunched, bunched and straining in the heat of the noonday sun.
‘Go away, sir. Go away. I hate being stared at.’
The sight of that great figure carrying such a burden on his shoulders was worth looking at. You will have seen versions of it in early maps of the world, which took the name of ‘atlas’ from him. The sea to the west of him, too, is still known as the ‘Atlantic’ Ocean in his honour.
‘I do apologise,’ said Heracles. ‘I send greetings from your brother Prometheus.’
‘Ha!’ grunted Atlas. ‘That fool. He has learned the bitter lesson that to be a friend of Zeus is even more dangerous than to be his enemy.’
‘He has told me that you could secure for me the golden apples that grow in the Garden of the Hesperides.’
‘Go and fetch them yourselves, see where it gets you.’
‘There was a dragon, but I killed it.’
‘My, aren’t you clever? So why haven’t you got the apples?’
‘Every time I tried to pick one, it disappeared.’
‘Ha! That was the Hesperides. They are only visible in the evenings. They are my friends. They come and talk to me. They bathe my brow in the heat of the afternoon. Why should I help you steal from them? What would you do for me in return?’
Heracles explained the nature of his quest. ‘See, if I don’t return to Tiryns with those apples for my cousin Eurystheus, I will never be washed clean of my terrible crime. So your assistance would be of the greatest possible value to me. But I can do something for you too. For generations you have groaned under the weight of the heavens. I could relieve you of that burden while you fetch me the apples. I would have what I need and you would experience a blessed interlude without the sky bearing down upon you.’
‘You? Carry the sky? But you’re a mortal. A well-muscled one, I grant you,’ he added, looking Heracles up and down.
‘Oh, I’m strong enough, I’m sure of it.’
Atlas considered. ‘Very well. If you think that you can hold up the heavens without being crushed, come alongside me and let’s give it a try.’
Heracles had performed many feats of superhuman strength in his time, but nothing to match this. When Atlas transferred the sky to his shoulders he staggered and fought for balance.
‘For heaven’s sake, man, do you want to cripple yourself? Your legs should take the weight, not your back. Don’t you know anything about lifting?’
Heracles did as he was told and let his thighs take the incredible strain.
‘I’ve got it,’ he gasped, ‘I’ve got it!’
‘Not bad,’ said Atlas. He straightened himself up and arched his back. ‘Never thought I’d stand upright ever again. All the apples?’
‘Bring me the Apples of the … Hesperides’ … that is what … I was … told …’ said Heracles. ‘So … yes, I suppose … all …’
‘And the dragon is dead?’
‘Couldn’t be deader.’
‘Right. Well. Back in a tick.’
Atlas departed and Heracles concentrated on his breathing. Whatever happens, he told himself, I will be able to tell my children that I once carried the sky on my back. When he thought of his children, it was not the scores of sons and daughters he had fathered all round the world over many years which came to mind, but only the two that he had killed when under Hera’s spell. Having the weight of the heavens on your back, he thought, is nothing like so terrible a burden as having the blood of your children on your hands.
What a long time Atlas was taking.
Helios passed low overhead, dipping down into the redness of his western palace.
Finally Atlas arrived carrying a basket crammed with golden apples.
‘Thank you, Atlas! Thank you. You are good and kind to do this.’
‘Not at all,’ said Atlas, a crafty look coming into his eye. ‘It’s a pleasure to be of assistance. In fact, I can help you further by going to Tiryns and giving these to your cousin Eurystheus for you myself. Wouldn’t be any trouble at all …’
Heracles knew exactly what was in the Titan’s mind. But Heracles, as we have discovered, while not the subtlest man in the world, was far from a fool. He preferred to be direct and uncomplicated in his dealings but had learned over the years the hard lesson that simulation and deceit can be greater weapons than honest strength and raw courage.
‘Really?’ he said, in a tone of grateful excitement. ‘That would be most marvellously kind. But you will come back?’
‘Of course, of course,’ Atlas assured him. ‘I’ll deliver the apples to Eurystheus and return directly – without so much as staying a single night at his palace. How’s that?’
‘I can’t thank you enough! But before you go, I really need some padding for my neck … If you just take the weight for a second time, I can fold up my cloak and put it across my shoulders.’
‘Yes, really can chafe around the upper back, can’t it?’ said Atlas, cheerfully relieving Heracles of the burden. ‘Even my calluses have got calluses … Wait! Where are you going? Come back! You traitor! Cheat! Liar! I’ll kill you! I’ll grind you into a thousand pieces! I’ll … I’ll …’
It was a full night and day before Heracles no longer heard the roaring, howling and cursing Titan. Many years later, when the days of the gods were coming to an end, Zeus relented and turned Atlas into the mountains that still bear his name. They shoulder the sky in Morocco to this day.
Eurystheus knew that he could not keep the apples. The priestesses of Hera and of Athena all insisted they be returned. They were left in Athena’s temple overnight and in the morning they w
ere gone. Athena herself restored them to the Garden of the Hesperides.
But desirable golden apples had not yet finished with human history.
Meanwhile, an unpleasant smile was curling on Eurystheus’s lips as he considered what the twelfth and final task should be. The twelfth and very final task.
‘Bring me … now, let me see … yes. Bring me …’
Eurystheus relished the tense silence that fell over the court as he stretched out his dramatic pause.
‘Bring me …’ he said, inspecting his fingernails, ‘bring me Cerberus.’
The gasp from his courtiers exceeded his expectations.
Trust Heracles to ruin the moment. ‘Oh, Cerberus?’ he said, and if he had added ‘Is that all?’ he could hardly have punctured the drama of Eurystheus’s big reveal more completely. ‘Very well. Loose, or on a leash?’
‘Either will suffice!’ snapped Eurystheus. Then, with a curt flick of the hand, ‘Now, out of my sight.’
12. CERBERUS
In truth Heracles’ insouciance had been a show of bravado. When he heard what Eurystheus was demanding of him, his heart leapt and banged against his ribs like a polecat trapped in a cage. Cerberus, the hound of hell, was yet another of the grotesque abominations bred from the union of Typhon and Echidna. Heracles had killed Cerberus’s sister the Hydra and brothers, Orthrus and Ladon. Perhaps Cerberus did not know this. Perhaps these monsters felt no affection for their siblings. Heracles did not doubt that he could subdue the savage three-headed dog, but getting him out of Hades’ realm was another matter. The King of the Dead would place insuperable obstacles before him.
As he trudged away from Eurystheus’s palace a nebulous plan formed in Heracles’ mind. If he were safely to leave the underworld with Cerberus, he had better placate Hades. The nearest way to what counted as Hades’ heart was through his wife PERSEPHONE. For six months of the year she ruled by his side as Queen of the Underworld. In the world above, her mother Demeter, the goddess of fertility, mourned the loss of her beloved daughter and all the growth and life that were Demeter’s responsibility and gift to the world slowly withered into the dry death of autumn and the barren chill of winter. When, after six months below, Persephone ascended from the realm of the dead, the new life and buds of spring broke out, followed by full fertile fecund fruitful summer, until it was time for Persephone to return to the underworld and for the whole cycle to begin again.
Over the years the Greeks had learned to celebrate this annual rhythm of death and renewal in the ritual known as the Eleusinian Mysteries, a dramatic and ceremonial playing out of the seizing of Persephone by Hades and her descent into his kingdom, the desperate search by Demeter for her daughter and finally her return to the upper world. Heracles believed that if he were initiated into this ritual it would endear him to the Queen of the Underworld and that through her he might win Hades’ permission to lead his favourite pet out into the light of day.
The priests, priestesses and hierophants of Eleusis, led by Eumolpus, the founding celebrant of the order, granted Heracles’ request and duly inducted him into the mysteries of their cult of growth, death and regrowth.fn44
Heracles now journeyed to Cape Tainaron in the Peloponnese, the southernmost point of all Greece,fn45 where could be found a cave that formed one of the entrances to the underworld. Here he was met by the arch-psychopomp, the chief conductor of dead souls, Hermes himself, who offered to accompany him. No one knew their way about the caverns, passageways, galleries and halls of Hades better than he.
It was on his way to the throne room of Hades and Persephone that Heracles happened upon his cousin Theseus locked in the Chair of Forgetfulness next to his friend PIRITHOUS. Unlike the other spectral shapes that flitted around they were not spirits, not incorporeal ghosts, but living men. Muted by the enchantment of Persephone and bound fast by two giant snakes that coiled around them, they held out their hands in a silent plea. Heracles extricated Theseus, who scrambled up to the daylight above, babbling thanks; but when he tried to do the same for Pirithous, the earth beneath them shook. His crime, after all, the attempted abduction of Persephone herself, was too great to allow forgiveness.fn46
As he progressed deeper into hell’s interior, Heracles saw the shade of Medusa. Revolted by her hideous appearance and the writhing of the snakes on her head, he drew his sword. Hermes stayed his hand. ‘She’s just a shade, a phantom and can do no harm to anyone now.’
Further along he saw the shade of his old friend MELEAGER, the prince who had led the Calydonian Hunt. Heracles had been one of the few heroes not to take part in that epic adventure, so Mealeager told him the tale – how it had resulted in his sad and agonizing end. How his mother, driven mad with rage at his actions, had cast onto the fire the log whose burning through meant his own death.fn47
‘But your feats of heroism have reached even these sad caverns,’ said Meleager. ‘It does my heart good to know that there is one such as you in the world of the living. If I were alive I would invite you to join your bloodline to my own.’
‘Why not?’ said Heracles, greatly moved. ‘Do you have a sister or daughter I could marry?’
‘My sister DEIANIRA is a great beauty.’
‘Then, when I am freed of the burden of these Labours, I shall take her as my wife,’ promised Heracles. Meleager smiled a ghostly smile of thanks and floated away.
At last Hermes opened the gates to the throne room and announced to the King and Queen of the Underworld that they had a visitor.
Persephone, flattered by Heracles’ pious submission to the Eleusinian Mysteries, welcomed her half-brother cordially. Her husband Hades was more grudging.
‘Why should I give you my dog?’
Heracles spread his hands. ‘Eurystheus has sent me for him, mighty PLOUTONfn48.’
‘You’ll bring him back?’
‘Once I am freed from my servitude, I will undertake to do so. You have my solemn oath.’
‘I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.’
‘No, I can understand that,’ said Heracles. ‘Hera feels the same.’
‘What’s that?’ said Hades, sharply.
‘It is Hera who has set me these tasks. She wants me to fail.’
‘Are you saying that if I let you borrow my dog, Hera will be upset?’
‘Upset? She’ll be furious,’ said Heracles.
‘Take him, he’s yours.’
‘You mean that?’
‘So long as you promise to bring him back. You’ll have to subdue him, of course. You can’t use any weapons. Not down here. No sword, no club, none of your famed poison arrows. Is that understood?’
Heracles bowed his assent.
‘Hermes here will take your arms from you, accompany you and ensure that you do not play foul. You are dismissed.’
On his way out Hermes nudged him. ‘And they say you’re an idiot. How did you know the way to get Hades to do something is to tell him Hera would hate it?’
‘Who says I’m an idiot?’
‘Never mind that, hand over your weapons and follow me. “Hera will be furious!” – you wait till I tell Zeus. He’ll love it.’
The fight with Cerberus was marvellous to behold. Hermes clapped his hands like an enchanted child and rose up in the air on fluttering heels, so entertained was he by the spectacle of Heracles, his Nemean Lion skin tightly wound about him, groping for a choke-hold around the three necks of the savagely furious hound, while all the time its serpent tail reared, spat and struck, trying to find open skin to pierce with its razor fangs.
In the end Heracles’ sheer persistence paid off and the great hound fell back, exhausted. Heracles, who like many Greek heroes knew and loved dogs, knelt by his side and whispered in his ear. ‘You’re coming with me, Cerberus. All the children of Echidna and Typhon are gone now, save you, for you have a purpose and a role to play in the great mystery of death. But first I need your help in the world above.’
Cerberus put out his tongues and pulled a
paw across Heracles’ arm.
‘You’re ready to come, then? You’re tired. I’ll carry you.’
Hermes’ amusement turned to astonished admiration when he saw Heracles pick Cerberus up and place him across his shoulders.
‘With no more effort than if he were a woollen scarf,’ Hermes said to nobody in particular.
When Heracles strode into the throne room with Cerberus padding beside him, Eurystheus had occasion once more to jump into the stone pithos.
‘Take him back down, take him back down!’ his terrified voice echoed inside the jar.
‘Really?’ said Heracles. ‘You don’t want to say hello? See him do his tricks?’
‘Go away!’
‘Am I free of you? Have I done enough?’
‘Yes’
‘Louder, so the whole court can hear.’
‘YES, damn you. You’re free. You have done all that was asked. I release you.’
Bestowing a kick to the jar which must have set Eurystheus’s ears ringing for a week, Heracles departed with Cerberus. They said farewell at the gates of hell.fn49
‘Goodbye, you terrible brute,’ said Heracles affectionately. ‘The gods alone know what I shall do now.’
‘No they don’t,’ said Hermes, stepping forward from the shadows with Heracles’ weapons. ‘It is for you to decide. All our father Zeus knows is that you will do many great things, perhaps even save Olympus.’
AFTER THE LABOURS: CRIMES AND GRUDGES
The first thing Heracles did, freed of his servitude to Eurystheus, was search for a wife.fn50 Word reached him that King Eurytus of Oechaliafn51 was holding an archery competition, the winner to claim the hand of his beautiful daughter IOLE in marriage. Heracles couldn’t have been more pleased. Eurytus was the very man who had taught him how to string a bow and shoot when he was a child and would make a delightful father-in-law.
He entered the competition and (not using his Hydra-venom-tipped arrows, for once) he easily set about putting up the best scores. When Eurytus saw this, he disbarred Heracles from the competition.
‘But why?’ Heracles was downcast. ‘I thought you’d be proud of your pupil and happy to have me as a son-in-law.’