Heroes: Volume II of Mythos

10. T HE C ATTLE OF G ERYON ‘There!’ Heracles flung the belt at Admete’s feet. ‘I hope it brings you luck.fn28 Now, mighty king, my tenth and final quest, if you please.’ Eurystheus shifted uncomfortably on his throne. He was sure a number of courtiers had tittered at the epithet ‘mighty king’. ‘Very well, Heracles,’ he said. ‘You will go to Erytheia and bring me back GERYON’s cattle. The entire herd.’fn29 You will remember that, when Perseus sliced off the head of the Gorgon, Medusa, two unborn children from her liaison with Poseidon flew from the gaping wound. One was the flying horse PEGASUS, the other Chrysaor, the young man with the golden sword. Chrysaor (by his union with CALLIRRHOË, the ‘sweet-flowing’ daughter of the sea Titans Oceanus and Tethys) had fathered the three-headed Geryon, a most terrible monster who fiercely protected an enormous herd of red cattle in the western island of Erytheia.fn30 To help him guard this rare and valuable breed, he had the giant EURYTION, a son of Ares, and a ferocious two-headed dog, brother to CERBERUS, called ORTHRUS. Erytheia lay so deep into the unexplored western reaches of the world that to reach it Heracles had to go further than he had ever travelled before. He became so hot and bothered while toiling across the Libyan desert that he shouted up in rage at the glaring sun and threatened to shoot Helios down from his chariot with his arrows. Helios may have been of the immortal Titan race but he still feared the terrible damage Heracles’ arrows could do him. ‘Don’t shoot, Heracles, son of Zeus,’ he yelled, in some panic. ‘Then help me!’ Heracles shouted back. Helios agreed not to fly so close to the land if only the hero promised not to shoot. What’s more, to help make the journey westwards easier he offered to lend Heracles his great Cup. Each day Helios would ride his sun-chariot from the lands of the distant eastfn31 across the sky until he settled in the far kingdom of Oceanusfn32. There he would spend the night reposing in his western palace, before setting out eastwards again in an enormous cup or bowl borne along Oceanus’ fast flowing current. This ‘River of Ocean’ circling the earth returned Helios to his eastern palace where he could prepare his horses and set out for another day. Heracles gratefully accepted the loan of the Cup, a seaworthy bowlfn33 in which he sat, knees up, in perfect comfort zooming towards Erytheia. At one point, the waters on which he was carried grew choppy and he threatened to turn his arrows on Oceanus. I think it is not that Heracles was arrogant in assuming he could best a god, more that he regarded all living things, divine or mortal, as his equals. In any case the threat alarmed Oceanus who, as frightened of those terrible arrows as his nephew Helios had been, quelled the waters. Heracles arrived on the island of Erytheia safe and dry in no time at all. He was welcomed on shore by the savage barking of Orthrus, the two-headed dog. ‘Orthrus!’ cried Heracles. ‘You, like so many of the world’s ugliest creatures, are a son of Typhon and Echidna. Don’t you know that the time is up for your kind? I have already killed your sister, the Lernaean Hydra, and your son, the Nemean Lion. Now it is your turn to be cleansed from the earth.’ With a roar from each throat the creature hurled itself at Heracles, who raised his club and smashed it down on one of the heads. The other turned with a startled yelp to look at its ruined companion, now dangling lifeless from the common neck. Before the second head had time to mourn, the club crashed down, ending the dog’s life. The herdsman Eurytion heard the commotion and approached, brandishing his own mighty club. ‘You will pay,’ he snarled. ‘I loved that dog.’ ‘Then join him!’ cried Heracles loosing an arrow into his throat. The Hydra’s venom did its work and Eurytion was dead before his body hit the ground. Heracles now set about trying to herd the cattle. Before long Geryon himself lumbered into view. So few mortals ever saw Geryon and lived to tell the tale that reports of his physical appearance are varied. All concurred that this son of Chrysaor and Callirrhoë had three heads. Most described him as having three distinct torsos too, although one source maintains the three heads sprang from a single neck and single torso. Where the disagreement is strongest is in how those torsos were connected to the ground. Some asserted that they tapered into one waist and that the giant therefore had one pair of legs; others, however, were sure that he had three sets. I tend to the two legs but three torsos and heads variant. What is beyond doubt is that Geryon was huge, tricephalous and possessed a vicious temper. ‘Who dares steal my cattle?’ roared the left head. ‘Heracles dares.’ ‘Then Heracles dies,’ said the middle head. ‘Slowly and in agony,’ said the right head. ‘When you die,’ Heracles replied, ‘it will be three times more painful than any death that has gone before.’ So saying he loosed an arrow right into Geryon’s navel. The Hydra poison made its way up each torso, up through the three necks and into the three heads, scalding and corroding as it went. ‘It burns!’ ‘It burns!’ ‘It burns!’ The screams were terrible. Quite how Heracles got the cattle across the sea is not recorded. We must assume he ferried as many as would fit with him in the Cup of Helios, shuttling back and forth until the whole herd stood on the North African shore. As a memorial of his great trip, he erected two vast pillars of stone, one on the northern, Iberian, side of the straits that open from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, the other on the southern, Moroccan, side. To this day the Pillars of Hercules greet travellers who pass through the straits. The African pillar is called Ceuta, the Iberian is known as the Rock of Gibraltar. It took Heracles an inordinately long time to get the cattle back to Eurystheus. He drove them up through Spain, and the Basque Country, across southern France and northern Italy and down the Dalmatian coast before the welcome mountains and valleys of Greece told him that he was nearing home. But Hera in her spite sent down clouds of gadflies whose painful stings caused the herd to buck, stampede and scatter all over mainland Greece.fn34 Heracles managed to retrieve most of them, but it was a weary and travel-stained Heracles who led the herd through the gates of Tiryns and into the palace courtyard of King Eurystheus. ‘Oh, dear me,’ said Eurystheus, stroking his beard. ‘Is this all? I had understood that Geryon’s herd numbered more than a thousand, and yet even to my untrained eye there seem to be no more than five or six hundred here.’ ‘It is all that remain,’ said Heracles. ‘And now, my service to you is over. I have accomplished all that you have asked of me, and more. It is time for you to release me from my bondage and allow me to go home a free man, expiated of my crime.’ Eurystheus gave a vicious crack of laughter. ‘Oh no. I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘No, no. You still owe me two more tasks.’ ‘You said ten tasks, and ten tasks have I performed.’ ‘Ah, but the Second Labour,’ said Eurystheus. ‘Your nephew Iolaus helped you defeat the Hydra. Without his searing the wounds of each severed head you would never have succeeded. The agreement was that you would complete each task alone and unaided. So we cannot count the Hydra.’ ‘That is outrageous!’ ‘Tsk tsk, hold that famous temper of yours, Heracles. You know what happened to Megara and your children.’ Eurystheus was enjoying this. He licked his lips as Heracles relapsed into a shamed silence. ‘Then there is the matter of those stables in Elis. You accepted a reward from King Augeas, did you not?’ ‘Well, yes, but …’ ‘That means you did not perform the duty as a part of your penance to me, but as a hired hand. It cannot possibly count.’ ‘He never paid me!’ ‘That is beside the point. By demanding payment you violated the terms of our agreement. Your Ten Labours have now become Twelve.’ Of course it had been Hera, through one of her priestesses, who had whispered these cruel technicalities into Eurystheus’s ear. Heracles dropped his head. He knew that if he lost his temper and lashed out or stalked away in a sulk, then all the effort and pain of the last ten years would have been for nothing. The immortality promised him by the Delphic oracle could only be his if he was cleansed of his guilt and only his coward cousin Eurystheus, this grinning despot, this cruel vessel of Hera, could do it. Immortality as such did not interest him, but as an immortal he could surely go down to the underworld and bring up Megara and his children. ‘Given the feeble number of cattle you’ve managed to bring me today, you’re lucky I don’t make it three more,’ said Eurystheus. ‘In reality I should, but luckily for you I’m triskaidekaphobic. So, if you’ve finished whining and complaining, I shall name your eleventh task. Bring me the Golden Apples of the Hesperides.’