In the myths of Hercules, he is said to have been the son of the god Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, and was the greatest hero among the gods. Because Hercules was born to Alcmene, Hera (queen of the gods) did not like him and did everything in her power to make Hercules miserable. The myths of Hercules stand out from his birth. But the best known are the 12 labors performed by this Greek demigod.
The myths of Hercules begin with a misfortune. Legend has it that the goddess Hera made Hercules go mad with rage and hurt several of those close to him, including his wife and children, killing them with his great strength. After coming to his senses, the hero realized that he had murdered his family.
Disappointed by what he had done, he went to the oracle to ask for redemption. Then King Eurystheus of Tiryns tasked Hercules with twelve labors. Among these labors were killing the invulnerable lion, as well as the multi-headed hydra, and retrieving Cerberus, the guard of the underworld.
Upon completing the twelve superhuman labors, Hercules was undoubtedly the greatest hero Greece had ever known. For this reason, he was placed among the stars. In this article, we will show you nine of the most well-known myths about Hercules and the most outstanding of the twelve labors of Hercules.
1. Killing the Nemean Lion
In the myths of Hercules, Hercules was initially required to complete ten labors, not twelve. King Eurystheus asked him to kill the Nemean lion as his first labor. This lion had skin like steel, and no weapon could cut it.
Starting with a seemingly impossible task, Hercules arrived at a village called Cleonae, where he stayed at the home of a poor laborer named Molorchus. When his host offered to sacrifice an animal to pray for a safe hunt, Hercules asked him to wait 30 days.
When Hercules arrived in Nemea, he began to track the terrible lion, soon discovering that his arrows were useless against the beast. Hercules picked up his club and went after the lion. Following it to a cave with two entrances, Hercules blocked one of the doors, then approached the ferocious lion from the other.
He surprised the beast with his olive wood club and then strangled it with his bare hands. It is said that he skinned the lion, using the lion’s sharp claws, and that he always wore its skin.
After completing his first task, Hercules returned to Mycenae, where King Eurystheus was surprised that the hero had achieved the impossible and had not died in the process. The king was afraid of Hercules and forbade him from entering the city gates. In addition, Eurystheus had a large bronze jar made and buried halfway into the ground, where he could hide from Hercules if necessary.
After that, Eurystheus sent his orders to Hercules through a herald, refusing to see the mighty hero face to face.
2. Killing the Lernaean Hydra
In the mythology of Hercules, another of the legends about the twelve labors was the second labor: killing the Lernaean Hydra. A monstrous snake with nine heads, the Hydra attacked with poisonous venom.
The evil Hydra had nine heads. If one of its heads was cut off, two would grow back in its place. Hercules set out to hunt down the nine-headed threat, but he did not go alone. His trusted nephew, Iolaus, was by his side.
In the myths of Hercules, it is said that Iolaus won a victory in the chariot races at the Olympic Games and is often depicted as Hercules’ charioteer. So, the pair drove to Lerna and, near the springs of Amymone, discovered the lair of the repulsive Hydra.
Beginning the fight, Hercules drew the fierce creature’s attention by shooting it with flaming arrows. Once it emerged from its cave, the hero began to strike the heads one after another. He cut off the heads, and instantly two more grew from the stump.
While Hercules quickly cut off the heads, his cousin Iolaus burned the wounds with a torch to prevent new heads from growing back. Until only the last head remained, and by cutting it off, he killed the hydra.
Then Hercules made his arrows poisonous by dipping them in the Hydra’s blood. However, Eurystheus was not impressed with Hercules’ feat. He claimed that his nephew Iolaus had helped him and did not count this task among the 12.
3. Capture the golden deer
The third task in the mythology of Hercules was to capture the golden-horned deer. The goddess Artemis loved and protected this stubborn little deer, which had golden horns. Hercules found it challenging to capture the delicate creature. In order to catch it, Hercules followed it for a year.
According to the myths of Hercules, there was one condition for catching the elusive creature: he must not spill a single drop of the deer’s blood. One of the characteristics of the hero Hercules was his great skill with a bow and arrow. Seeing the deer, he managed to hit it in the thigh, right between the tendon and the bone. And so he did not spill the animal’s blood without angering Artemis. After following it for a whole year, he was victorious and took the prize.
4. Capturing the Erymanthean boar
In the myths of Hercules, the fourth labor consisted of capturing another terrible creature. The people of Mount Erimanthus lived in fear of this deadly animal. On his way to hunt the boar, Hercules stopped to visit his friend Pholus, who was a centaur and lived in a cave near Mount Erimanthus. Everyone knows that centaurs are human from the waist up and horse from the waist down.
Tired from his long journey, Hercules asked his friend to cook him something and give him something to drink. His friend kindly cooked him some meat and gave him wine. Shortly after, the rest of the centaurs smelled the wine and came to Pholus’ cave. They were angry because someone was drinking all their wine. The first two who dared to enter were armed with rocks and fir trees, ready to kill Hercules. But Hercules shot them with arrows poisoned with the blood of the hydra and killed them.
He then shot arrows at the rest of them and chased them for about twenty miles. One of the centaurs, named Chiron, received a wound that no medicine could heal. The curious Pholus took one of the arrows from one of the dead centaurs. But unfortunately for him, it slipped from his hands, fell on his foot, and killed him instantly. When Hercules returned, he found Pholus dead. He buried his centaur friend and proceeded to hunt the boar.
Finding the beast was very easy because he could hear it snorting and stomping as it searched for something to eat. Hercules chased the boar around and around the mountain, shouting as loud as he could. The boar, frightened and out of breath, hid in some bushes. Hercules stuck his spear into the bush and drove the exhausted animal into a deep patch of snow.
Hercules chased the boar up the mountain and into a snowdrift. He then caught it in a net and took it to King Eurystheus, who was so frightened of the beast that he hid in a huge bronze jar.
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5. Cleaning the Augean stables
According to the myths of Hercules, for his fifth labor, Eurystheus ordered Hercules to clean the stables of King Augeas. Eurystheus then made Hercules’ task even more difficult: he had to clean Augeas’ cattle in a single day.
The mythology of Hercules says that King Augeas was the son of one of the great gods, and others say that he was the son of a mortal; whoever his father was, Augeas was very rich and had many herds of cows, bulls, goats, sheep, and horses. Every night, the shepherds took the thousands of animals to the stables.
Hercules went to King Augeas and, without telling him anything about Eurystheus, said he would clean the stables in a day. To accomplish this impossible feat, the hero first tore a large opening in the wall of the corral where the stables were and made another opening on the other side of the stable.
Then he dug wide trenches in two rivers that flowed nearby, causing the rivers to overflow their natural course. The rivers rushed through the stables, cleaning up all the mess and flowing through the hole in the wall on the other side of the courtyard.
6. Killing the Stymphalian birds
After Hercules returned from his success in the Augean stables, Eurystheus came up with an even more difficult task. For the sixth labor, Hercules had to drive away a huge flock of birds that had gathered on a lake near the city of Stymphalos.
This myth of Hercules tells that when he arrived at the lake, which was deep in the forest, the hero had no idea how to drive away the huge gathering of birds. The goddess Athena came to his aid, providing him with a pair of bronze bells that made terrifying noises; these were no ordinary noises. They had been made by an immortal craftsman, Hephaestus, the god of the forge. And so he drove the birds away.
7. Capturing the horses of Diomedes
Another of Hercules’ well-known myths was his eighth labor. Eurystheus sent him to find the man-eating mares of Diomedes, the king of a Thracian tribe called the Bistones, and return them to Mycenae.
According to the myths of Hercules, the hero sailed across the Aegean Sea with his crew. There, he and his companions subdued the natives of Bistones who were tending the horses and drove them into the sea. During the crossing, they sent Abderus to look after the beasts.
Unfortunately, the mares dragged him away, killed him, and devoured him. Meanwhile, Hercules was fighting the Bistones, killed Diomedes, and put the rest to flight. Afterward, the hero took the mares to Eurystheus, but Eurystheus set them free.
8. Capture Geryon’s cattle
The tenth labor in the myths of Hercules tells of Geryon, a winged monster with three human bodies, who had a herd of beautiful red cattle. This monster guarded his precious herd with the help of a giant and a vicious two-headed dog.
To complete his tenth labor, the hero Hercules had to go on an adventure to the end of the world. Geryon lived on an island called Erythia, which was near the border between Europe and Libya. On this island, Geryon kept his herd of red cattle guarded by Cerberus’ brother, Orthus, a two-headed dog, and the shepherd Eurytion.
Hercules set out for Erythia, quickly finding and killing many wild beasts along the way, and arrived at the place where Libya met Europe.
Hercules arrived on the island of Erythia. Shortly after his arrival, Orthus, the two-headed dog, attacked Hercules, so the hero struck him with his club and killed him. Eurytion followed, with the same result. Another shepherd from the area reported these events to Geryon. Hercules fought him and killed him with his arrows.
The theft of the cattle was not such a difficult task compared to the problem Hercules had in bringing the herd to Greece. In Liguria, two sons of Poseidon, the god of the sea, tried to steal the cattle, so he killed them.
He then took Geryon’s cattle to Eurystheus, who sacrificed the herd to Hera. The ancients do not tell us how long it took Hercules or Europa to recover from this eventful adventure.
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9. Capture Cerberus
The last of the labors imposed on Hercules was the most dangerous of all. King Eurystheus ruled that Hercules must go to the Underworld and capture the beast guardian of the god Hades called Cerberus. Eurystheus must have been sure that Hercules would never succeed in this impossible task.
This myth of Hercules tells that the hero ventured forth unarmed and set out to find Cerberus. Undaunted, the hero threw his strong arms around the beast, grabbing all three heads at once, and fought Cerberus until he submitted.
The dragon in the tail of the ferocious carnivorous guard dog bit Hercules, but that did not stop him. Cerberus had to submit to the hero’s strength, and Hercules brought Cerberus back to Eurystheus. Unlike other monsters that crossed the legendary hero’s path, Cerberus was returned safely to Hades, where he continued to guard the entrance to the Underworld.
