The Labors Of Heracles

11” X 14”

400.00

After many adventures, Heracles returned to his home city of Thebes only to find it’s king Creon dead, and his rule usurped by Lycus. After deposing the villain, Thebes was in celebration. It was then that Hera, the bane of Heracles’ life struck him with a fit of madness. In the course of his rampage, he killed his wife Megara, his three sons, and many others. Athena intervened, striking him unconscious. When he came to, and saw what he had done, he was overcome with guilt, horror, and revulsion. On the verge of suicide, Athena convinced him to seek purification, which was granted to him by his friend King Thespius, of Thespiae. Despite the purification, he still felt tormented, and sought the council of the Oracle of Delphi. The Oracle told him he must go to Tiryns, and complete ten tasks for it’s king, and his cousin, Eurystheus, a humiliating prospect given that Eurystheus was a weak man, even among mortals, and because Hera had orchestrated a delay in Heracles’ birth, while hastening the birth of Eurystheus, which incidentally, is why Eurystheus sat on the throne, and not Heracles. In short summation, the labors were the slaying of the Nemean lion, the slaying of the Lernian Hydra, the capture of the Cerynitian Hind, the capture of the Erymanthian Boar, the cleaning of the Augean Stables, driving off the Stymphalian Birds, the capture of the Cretan Bull, the capture of the Mares of Diomedes, fetch the Amazon Hippolyta’s war belt, stealing the Cattle of Geryon, fetching the golden Apples of the Hesperides, and finally, bringing Cerberus from Hades to Tiryns.