off topic request

Jeffrey B. Gibson jgibson000 at attbi.com
Sat Sep 21 10:25:37 EDT 2002


"Carl W. Conrad" wrote:

> At 1:05 PM +0000 9/21/02, jwest at highland.net wrote:
> >what is the oldest source of the "Labors of Heracles"?
>
> Jim, have you ever heard of the Perseus web-site? It's a good place to get
> answers to questions like that. My understanding is that one of the oldest
> pieces of evidence for the "canonical" twelve labors is the pediment of the
> Temple of Zeus at Olympia, which showed what had evidently already become
> traditionally the twelve PONOI or AQLA or whatever; I think the usual
> dating of that temple is 6th century b.c.

I find that besides the Perseus site, one of the best sources for things mythological
is Timothy Gantz's book _Early Greek Myth_. Here's what he has to say on the (off)
topic at hand.

Yours,

Jeffrey

*********
Already we have seen from Iliad 19 and the birth of Eurystheus that at an early stage
of the tradition Herakles was destined to be subordinate to his cousin.

Two other passages in the Iliad mention labors that Herakles had to perform for
Eurystheus (118.362-69; 15.639-40); the first of these, in Iliad 8, specifies the
fetching of Kerberos as one of them. in the Odyssey, too, Herakles in the Underworld
speaks of how a lesser man enjoined harsh labors on him, including Kerberos (Od
11.620-26). Subsequent to Homer, the Theogony notes the slaying of the Nemean Lion and
the Lernaian Hydra, and the driving-off of the cattle of Geryoneus (Th 326-32, 313-18,
289-94), and to these Peisandros adds the Keryneian Hind and the Stymphalian Birds
(frr 3, 4 PEG); neither poet mentions Eurystheus or actually says that the deeds were
done under compulsion. Eurystheus does reappear in Homeric Hymn 15, where as in Homer
he is the setter of the tasks that take his cousin over land and sea. But none of
these sources ever says~ why Herakles had to perform the tasks, or how many there
were, although Peisandros probably provided a (for his own time) complete set. The
total from literary sources prior to 500 B.C. is thus six; Black- Figure painting of
the sixth century adds the Erymanthian Boar (brought back to Eurystheus), the Kretan
Bull, the Mares of Diomedes, a combat with Ama-
zones, and the quest for the Hesperides' Apples. Only the Stables of Augeias must wait
until the fifth century to surface. Of the eleven attested prior to that point, only
two, Kerberos and the Boar, are specifically linked to Eurystheus, and some of the
remainder may originally have been undertaken for profit or other reasons. The
Athenian Treasury at Delphi metopes show the Lion and the Hind and Geryoneus, and no
doubt others too fragmentary to identify (the Herakles metopes on this building were
not, however, all Labors). On the east faqade of the Hephaisteion temple in Athens,
where the architects had ten metopes at their disposal, Geryoneus was allowed to
occupy two metopes, and thus only nine Labors were represented; omitted were the
Birds, the Stables, and the Bull .

Slightly earlier in the century, the sculptors at Olympia had found themselves with
twelve metopes to carve, since it had been decided to decorate only those over the
inner porches at the two ends. Given the influence such metopes would have had over
the Greek world as a whole, there is a good possibility that twelve became the
canonical number of Labors because there were twelve spaces to fill. In particular, it
has been questioned if the Stables of Augeias-which from their very first appearance
in Pindar include the mention of pay withheld-have not been added in as a sop to local
pride. On the other hand, perhaps the number of metopes suggested the choice of the
Labors as subject, and in any case there is always the chance that the Stables have
replaced some other task. Sophokles' Trachiniai (1089-1100) and Euripides' Herakles
(359-424) both give partial lists, and Aischylos may well have offered his own version
in the Prometheus Lyomenos, but not until Diodoros do we have a preserved literary
account of the twelve Labors as we know them, all ordained by Eurystheus (DS 4.11-26).
Admittedly, there are no preserved instances where a source claims any additional
Labors or offers anything other than the known ones. But when the twelve we do have
all became canonical we can only guess.,

As for Herakles' motivation to perform the Labors, there are two main lines of
thought. Euripides, who is the first surviving author to commit himself on the matter,
says that Herakles wished to return with his family and his father to Tiryns, and
promised Eurystheus in return for that permission that he would tame the earth (HF
17-21). Certainly this seems a bit weak, especially when compared with Apollodoros'
notion that Delphi advised him to serve Eurystheus for twelve years as a penance for
killing his own children (ApB 2.4.12). We should note, too, that Euripides' play
revolves around the tack of placing the murders late in Herakles' career, after the
Labors have been completed, so that earlier triumphs can be followed by tragedy. Most
likely, then, the version of Apollodoros, that the Labors are an expiation, is the
older one, and Euripides has worked a change to better dramatize Heralles' sense of
despair. A third motivation, that Herakles was instructed by Delphi to undertake the
Labors as a means to apotheosis, appears first in Diodoros (4.10.7), and is repeated
by Apollodoros as a secondary motif after the major one of penance. Obviously this
idea cannot be older than the apotheosis itself, and the apotheosis is very likely a
sixth-century invention (see below). In any case, the emphasis in Homer is entirely on
Herakles' travails and sufferings (and in one instance his death), which would be
rather anomalous if he were laboring toward any ultimate reward. Finally, Athenaios'
remark-that in the Herakleia of the late epic poet Diotimos, Herakles and Eurystheus
were lovers-shows that for some writers anything is possible (Athen 13.603d).

On the order of the Twelve Labors there is surprising agreement in our two main
sources, Diodoros and Apollodoros. It has long been noted that six of the twelve are
located in the Peloponnesos, and both writers separate these off as a group performed
before the other six. At Olympia the arrangement was admittedly different: the Augeian
Stables, as the local contribution, occupied the place of honor in the last position
over the front porch; joining it were the Mares of Diomedes, Geryoneus, the Apples,
Kerberos, and one other Peloponnesian exploit, the Erymanthian Boar (so Paus 5.10.9,
although he forgets Kerberos). Over the rear porch were the four remaining
Peloponnesian tales, plus the Kretan Bull and the Amazones. The presumed decision to
elevate the Stables perhaps disrupted the more traditional arrangement, if there as
yet was one, and then too the artists may have been guided by considerations of
compositional juxtaposition. The Hephaisteion presents, as noted, nine Labors, in the
order Lion, Hydra, Hind, Boar, Mares, Kerberos, Amazones, Geryoneus, Apples. In
Diodoros we find the following: (1) Lion, (2) Hydra, (3) Boar, (4) Hind, (5) Birds,
(6) Stables, (7) Bull, (8) Mares, (9) Amazones, (10) Geryoneus, (11) Kerberos, (12)
Apples. Apollodoros' only changes in this order are to invert (3) and (4), (5) and
(6), and (11) and (12). Of these three separate inversions of neighboring pairs only
the last is really of any interest, for we would like to know which Labor was
considered the last and most difficult. As one might expect, different narrators seem
to have had different opinions on that question, and here again the loss of
Peisandros' work is unfortunate.


--
Jeffrey B. Gibson, D.Phil. (Oxon.)
1500 W. Pratt Blvd.
          Floor 1
Chicago, Illinois 60626
e-mail jgibson000 at attbi.com
          jgibson000 at hotmail.com





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