Two Labors of Heracles

Twelve labors. Not twelve small chores like sweeping the house or lighting the kitchen fire, but twelve trials. Each one was enough to make an ordinary person falter and give up before even starting.

A year has twelve months. It would be like a whole long year in which every month brought a task so hard that no one had ever managed it, with the next one arriving before there was time to breathe. Hardship after hardship, one following another without end.

The ancient Greeks told of the man who had to carry all of those labors. His name was Heracles. This telling follows only two of them: the very first, and another famous one further along his long road.

The tale begins when Heracles could not yet speak. He was the son of the god Zeus, the greatest god at the top of the heavens, and a mortal woman. For that reason the goddess Hera, wife of Zeus, hated the boy from the moment he was born.

One night, when Heracles was still a baby asleep in his cradle, two snakes slid silently up beside him. But the newborn did not scream. His tiny hands reached out and gripped both snakes, squeezing so hard that they could no longer move at all. In the morning, everyone who saw it stood still in shock. A child who could not yet walk already had such unusual strength.

That strength grew with the years. But Hera had a hand in his fate as well. By her arrangement, Heracles had to become the servant of a king named Eurystheus. The king had the right to order him to do anything he wished. Eurystheus set him twelve of the hardest tasks of all. Later generations called them the twelve labors of Heracles.

The first labor began in a valley called Nemea.

In that valley lived a fierce lion. It was enormous, and each time its roar rang out, the whole region fell silent with fear. No one in the area dared go near. Every house kept its doors shut tight, and the fields were left bare and abandoned. King Eurystheus ordered Heracles to go there himself, bring the lion down, and carry back its skin.

Heracles set out. When the lion appeared, he swung the great club in his hand and brought it down with all his strength. But strangely, the club bounced back, and the lion stood there unharmed. He quickly drew his bow and shot. The arrow did nothing to the thick hide of the beast either. The club failed, the arrows failed. Not a single weapon could touch it.

So Heracles set all his weapons aside. He rushed straight at the lion with nothing but his bare hands. Man and beast wrestled in the middle of the valley, and dust flew up in thick clouds. The lion thrashed and roared, straining with all its might to break free of his grip. But Heracles held tighter and tighter, his arms hard as stone, never loosening for a moment. At last the lion could fight no more, and the whole valley suddenly went quiet.

Heracles lifted the giant lion, settled it across his shoulders, and walked back at an easy pace.

When he arrived, King Eurystheus was standing there waiting. The moment the king saw the huge lion slung across the shoulders of Heracles, he thought of the strength that had just brought such a beast down, and he went pale with fear. He hurried back several steps, not daring to stand close a second longer. From that day on, each time Heracles finished a labor, Eurystheus made him report from outside the city walls. The king never again dared to let him in to meet face to face.

Heracles, for his part, kept the skin of the Nemean lion. From then on he always wore it, so that anyone who saw the lion skin from far away knew at once that the man coming was Heracles.

But among the twelve labors, not every one needed the strength of his arms. There was one labor that Heracles won with his wits, not with muscle.

In the land of Elis there was a king named Augeas. He kept a herd of 3,000 bulls, penned in long rows of vast stalls. The trouble was that for 30 whole years, no one had bothered to clean those stalls.

The smell of those 30 years was hard even to think about. The cattle ate every day and dropped dung every day, and it piled up year after year. The mud and manure settled into thick, dense layers that gave off a stench strong enough to choke. It was hard to bear even from far away, let alone up close with sleeves rolled up to clean it. Shoveling it out one scoop at a time, a person might work a whole lifetime and still not finish.

Heracles stood looking at the mess for a long while, then raised his eyes and looked around. Nearby, two great rivers were rolling past, one called the Alpheus and the other the Peneus. And an idea suddenly flashed into his mind.

Instead of picking up a shovel, Heracles broke open a channel and turned both rivers from their course. The water roared like thunder as it tore through the earthen walls, and the rivers surged straight into the rows of stalls. The flood rushed through and swept away every layer of mud and dung left over the years, leaving bare, clean ground shining in the sun. A job that seemed to need a whole lifetime, Heracles finished neatly in a single day.

The lion in the valley of Nemea, and the rows of stalls beside the two rivers of Elis. Two labors were done. The tawny lion skin still hung on the shoulders of Heracles, swaying with each step he took, still holding the scent of sunshine and grass from a long day.

Heracles had twelve labors in all to complete. The two just told were only two of them. The other ten were ten more roads and ten more trials, each a story of its own. He kept walking, the lion skin draping his shoulders in gold, heading straight for a horizon that had no name yet. And those will be the stories of other days.