Twelve Labors of Hercules

### Prerequisites

Heracles kills his family, and Hera forces him to do 10 tasks to redeem himself.

### Rewards

None

The **Twelve Labors** were a series of seemingly impossible tasks given to Heracles by Eurystheus and Hera. After Heracles was driven mad by the goddess Hera and killed his family, he was forced to complete twelve labors as repentance. There were originally ten labors, but Hera tricked King Eurystheus into making him to replace two, because Heracles had help and also because he had cheated (in their eyes; using rules that they made up after the labor).

## Labors

### 1. Nemean Lion

After hearing his description of the Nemean Lion, Heracles was able to confront it, and did not use any weapons at first; instead he strangled it to death. When he tried to cut its skin, his knife shattered, and eventually Athena told Heracles to use the lion's claws to skin it. Upon arriving with the pelt, Eurystheus got scared and hid in a pithos.

### 2. Lernean Hydra

Iolaus, nephew of Heracles and the only member of his family he didn't kill, drove him out to Kingdom of Lerna. Heracles couldn't seem to cut off the immortal head, so he had Iolaus cauterize each stump of the Hydra with a torch after he had cut it to prevent two heads from regenerating. Hera sent a Giant Crab to assist the Hydra but Heracles crush it with his foot. After tearing off the immortal head with his bare hands and crushing it under a giant rock, Heracles dipped the tips of his arrows in the Hydra's bile, rendering the weapons extremely venomous. However, Eurystheus said that labor did not count as he had help, so he Heracles had to do an extra labor make up for it.

### 3. Cerynian Hind

The Cerynian Hind was a female red deer sacred to Artemis that lived in Keryneia and was said to be able to run faster than an arrow in flight. There are several recountings of how Heracles caught the deer, but one accounting says that Heracles chased the deer around Greece for a full year before finally catching it.

### 4. Erymanthian Boar

Instead of slaying the boar, Heracles had to bring it back to Eurystheus. He subdued the beast by driving it into a snowbank and then tying it in chains. In the primitive highlands of Arcadia, where the old practices lingered, the Erymanthian Boar was a giant fear-inspiring creature of the wilds that lived on Erymanthos. Eurystheus was again frightened and hid in his jar, begging Heracles to get rid of the beast; Heracles obliged.

### 5. Augean stables

This task was meant to humiliate Heracles and make him lose his fame instead of killing him. Since he couldn't clean the stables by himself, Heracles rerouted two nearby rivers of Alpheis and Peneios through the stable, clearing out the dung rapidly. But Eurystheus saw that the rivers were the ones that did the work and Heracles got paid for the labor, so didn't count this labor either.

### 6. Stymphalian Birds

To defeat the Stymphalian Birds, Heracles used brass bells given to him by Athena to scare them into the air, and when the birds took off from the swamp that they rested in, Heracles shot many of them down with his bow and arrows. Although some escaped, they never returned to the area that they were terrorizing.

### 7. Cretan bull

Heracles thought this task would be hard, but King Minos of Crete allowed him to simply take the bull as it had been wreaking havoc on the island by uprooting crops and leveling orchard walls. The bull later broke loose and wandered into Marathon, soon afterwards Theseus captured and sacrificed it to Athena and/or Apollo.

### 8. Mares of Diomedes

Heracles captured these animals and left them in the care of his young squire Abderos, while he went to deal with Diomedes. During his absence, the boy was devoured. Heracles then fed Diomedes to the beasts, stilling their unnatural appetite with a meal of their master's flesh.

### 9. Hippolyta's girdle

Upon his arrival, Hippolyta received Heracles warmly, and upon hearing his request to take her belt, she agreed to give it to him. Hera, however, was not pleased that Heracles could accomplish yet another task so easily and came down from Olympus, disguised as one of the Amazons, crying that Heracles wanted to kidnap their queen. The Amazons then charged toward Heracles' ship to save Hippolyta. Heracles, fearing that she had betrayed him, killed Hippolyta and took her belt, escaping from the raging Amazons.

### 10. Cattle of Geryon

When Heracles goes through Geryon's territory, he meets his two headed hound Orthus and his rancher Eurytion. They try to kill Heracles but he kills them instead. This angers Geryon as it is hard to find servants in his territory. Enraged, he attacks Heracles who smashes a club onto his chest. However, Geryon's wound promptly healed. Heracles soon figured that Geryon could only be killed if all of his hearts were shot through at once. Heracles draws an arrow and shoots it through all three of Geryon's bodies, killing him.

### 11. Apples of the Hesperides

This was one of the extra labors Heracles had to do, he needed to obtain Golden Apples from the Garden of the Hesperides for the eleventh of his Twelve Labors. He found out the location from Nereus and slew Antaeus along the way. Heracles could not gain the apples by himself as they were protected by the dragon Ladon, who was too powerful to fight, even for him. So instead, he went to Atlas to get the apples for him and in exchange, would hold the sky on his shoulders until he returned. Atlas readily agreed and went to get the apples, but when he returned, the Titan saw a chance to escape his punishment. Atlas offered to deliver the apples himself to King Eurystheus. Heracles, however, saw the trick and pretended to agree, but asked Atlas to hold the sky for only a moment, while Heracles padded his shoulders with his thick Nemean Lion's Pelt. This seemed reasonable to the Titan, who took the sky back, but Heracles simply took the apples from him and left, leaving an outraged and infuriated Atlas.

### 12. Cerberus

This was the other extra labor Heracles had to do, it was an impossible task to prove his strength and fearlessness. Heracles found the entrance to the Underworld and entered, he also freed Theseus. But rather than attack Cerberus on sight, Heracles, who had heard many stories of Hades and how he treated intruders, ignored the infernal monster (who let him pass) and continued straight onward to Hades' Palace.

Hera's plan to pit Heracles against a furious Hades backfired, when the hero humbly knelt before the terrifying Lord of the Dead, and asked permission to take Cerberus. Hades was impressed by Heracles, who until then had an infamous reputation for acting without thinking, and while all heroes who had previously entered the Underworld did so to win fame, Heracles was the first to place respect for Hades above his own ambitions. Hades was so impressed with this, that he granted the demigod permission to take Cerberus on a few conditions. The first was that Heracles could not seriously injure Cerberus, and thus, could not use his weapons against him. The second condition was that Heracles had to bring Cerberus back as soon as the labor was completed. The third and final condition, was that the hero had to tell Hades who had asked him to bring back Cerberus as a trophy. Heracles promptly agreed to all of the terms, and told Hades, that King Eurystheus had asked the labor of him.

Thus, placing aside his mighty club and deadly Hydra arrows, Heracles returned to Cerberus to wrestle the beast barehanded. Cerberus was tremendously strong and fierce, his three heads biting and snarling rapidly. The combatants seemed evenly matched, and fought so fiercely that earth cracked beneath them and walls shook. In the end, however, Heracles managed to headlock and slowly drag Cerberus out of the Underworld, back to King Eurythseus. The king was terrified when Heracles returned, as he had not expected the hero to return from what he believed to be a suicide mission. The people of the kingdom ran in fear and panic as Heracles approached with the ferocious infernal monster. Heracles casually asked where Eurystheus wanted his knew trophy, but was turned away by the fearful king who took cover in his pot. Heracles asked if Eurystheus was satisfied with his labor, to which Eurystheus proclaimed fervently that he was, and for Heracles to get the beast out of his kingdom. As he had promised Hades, Heracles escorted Cerberus all the way back to the Underworld, after which the mighty monster returned to his duties.