Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [110]
11. The Apples of the Hesperides
While looking for the golden apples that grew on a magical tree of life, Heracles finds Prometheus nailed to the rock. He kills the eagle that torments the Titan and sets Prometheus free. In gratitude, Prometheus tells Heracles how to get the apples from the Hesperides, the daughters of Atlas, who possess them. Heracles offers to hold up the sky while Atlas gets the apples. Freed from his backbreaking and onerous task, Atlas decides to leave Heracles where he is, stuck with his job. Heracles outsmarts the rather dimwitted Titan by asking him to hold the sky for just a moment. Atlas obliges and Heracles takes back the apples.
12. Cerberus, the Hound of Hades
In his most daunting feat, Heracles must descend into Hades to steal the three-headed dog Cerberus, who guards the gates of the underworld. There are different versions of how Heracles does this. In one account, he fights with the lord of the underworld himself and wounds him. While Hades is off getting his wound healed, Heracles captures the dog, and brings it back to the upper world. In “defeating” death, Heracles supposedly gains immortality. But in another version, Hades is more compliant, and allows Heracles to take the dog as long as he uses no weapons. Protected by his lion skin, Heracles wrestles the dog, chains it, and drags it to the land of the living. Having accomplished this, he returns Cerberus to Hades.
After completing the twelve labors, Heracles marries the princess Deianira—a name that means “man-killer.” As they travel together, they come to a river where they meet the centaur Nessus—one of the group that Heracles had fought with during the labors. For a small fee, Nessus ferries travelers across the river. While carrying Heracles’ bride, Nessus tries to rape Deianira, and Heracles shoots him with a poisoned arrow. As he lies dying, the centaur convinces Deianira to take some of his now-poisoned blood and semen and smear it on Heracles’ robe if she ever wants a love potion to keep her husband faithful.
After Heracles falls in love with another princess, Deianira follows the centaur’s advice. But when Heracles puts on the robe, now poisoned with the centaur’s tainted blood, it burns him so terribly that he begs to be placed on a funeral pyre. Heracles then leaps into the flames. His grief-stricken wife also kills herself by jumping into the funeral pyre when she realizes what she has done.
Ascending to the home of the gods, Heracles resolves his differences with Hera, marries Hera’s daughter Hebe (“Youth”), and enjoys immortality among the gods on Olympus.
Which great hero gets “fleeced”?
Heracles plays a bit part in a tale of family feuding and power-grabbing that takes to the high seas in the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, one of the first nautical adventures in Western literature. This much-loved tale has parts recounted by Homer, the playwrights Aeschylus and Euripides (whose Medea covers Jason’s later years), as well as the philosopher Socrates. But the most familiar version was compiled in Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, a third-century BCE account of the legend of the young prince Jason, who is forced to flee his home in the city of Iolcus after the throne there is unlawfully seized by his uncle. Fearing for Jason’s life, his mother tucks him away in the cave of the wise centaur Chiron, who has tutored some of the greatest heroes in Greek myth.
When Jason returns to his home sometime later, his wicked uncle Pelias is in power and poised to kill his young rival. But there is one small problem—it’s a feast day, and the ancient laws of hospitality are in force. Ever resourceful, Pelias tries another tactic. He tells Jason he will step down if the young man can bring back the Golden Fleece, which hangs from a tree in Colchis and is guarded by a dragon that never sleeps.
The fearless Jason recruits a crew of fifty