This document provides details about several of Heracles' labors, including capturing the Cattle of Geryon, stealing the golden apples of Hesperides, and capturing the Cretan Bull. It describes Heracles' journeys to complete each labor, the obstacles he faced along the way, and how he was ultimately successful in completing the tasks. The document also provides some background mythology and context about the locations and characters involved in each labor narrative.

1. Hercules searching for Gods’ riches
G E R Y O N ’ S C A T T L E
T H E C R E T A N B U L L
T H E A P P L E S O F
H E S P E R I D E S

2. T H I S I S T H E M O S T R E P R E S E N T A T I V E A R T I S T I C H E R C U L E S ’ I M A G E
I N S I C I L Y : E U T H Y M I D E S C R A T E R !
f the masterpieces of Greek art in Sicily: Euthymides crate

3. Let’s follow Hercules’ footprints in our Labours

4. [4.17.1] Eurystheus then
enjoined upon him as a tenth
Labour the bringing back of the
cattle of Geryones, which
pastured in the parts of Iberia
which slope towards the ocean.
[4.18.2] And after Heracles had
visited a large part of Libya he
arrived at the ocean near
Gadeira,51 where he set up
pillars on each of the two
continents.[…]
Tenth Labour
Hercules and Geryon
Diodorus Siculus

5. Geryon was the son of
Chrysaor and Callirrhoe.
Chrysaor had sprung from
the Gorgon Medusa after
Perseus beheaded her, and
Callirrhoe was the daughter
of two Titans, It seems that
Geryon had three heads and
three sets of legs all joined at
the waist.

7. – G I O V A N N I M E L A
Canto XVII
See the savage beast, with the pointed tail, that crosses mountains, and pierces
walls and armour: see him, who pollutes the whole world.’ So my guide began to
speak to me, and beckoned to him to land near the end of our rocky path, and that
vile image of Fraud came on, and grounded his head and chest, but did not lift his
tail onto the cliff.
Geryon's face is that of an innocent man, but his body is half-reptile, half-hairy
beast, with a scorpion's stinger at the end of his tail.

8. – G I O V A N N I M E L A

9. Geryon lived on the island
Erythia near the boundary of
Europe and Libya. There
Geryon kept a herd of red
cattle guarded by Cerberus's
brother Orthus, a two-headed
hound. Hercules came to the
place where Libya met
Europe. Here, Apollodorus
tells us, Hercules built two
massive mountains, one in
Europe and one in Libya..
Gibraltar and
Hercules Pillars

10. Other accounts say that
Hercules split one mountain
into two. Either way, these
became known as the Pillars
of Hercules. The strait
Hercules made when he broke
the mountain apart is now
called the Strait of Gibraltar,
between Spain and Morocco,
the gateway from the
Mediterranean Sea to the
Atlantic Ocean.
The Pillars of Hercules

11. "Before Eratosthenes about 250 BC, ancient Greek writers
located the Pillars of Hercules on the Strait of Sicily. This
changed with Alexander the Great’s eastward expansion
and the Pillars were moved by Eratosthenes to Gibraltar.
This evidence has been cited in some Atlantis theories,
notably in Sergio Frau's."
Herodot wrote that the Mediterranean Sea ends at the
Pillars of Hercules and a "sea called Atlantic" beginns
there (Hdt. I 202). --Bender235 20:17, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Plato is the first one mentioning Atlantis, and at his time
they knew nothing about Gibraltar, or Spain, or even
Sardinia. He describes the Pillars of Hercules as a shallow
passage, hard to navigate. Does Gibraltar match the
description, considering it's 400m deep? According to
recent studies the description matches the strait of Sicily,
which corresponds also to the limit of the greek influence
in the mediterranean at that time.
Arthur C. suggested that there was evidence that the early
Greeks did not originally refer to the Strait og Gibraltar, he
expressed his personal preference for the Strait of
Messina.
Pillars, Atlantis and Sicily

12. Going beyond Hercules Pillars
was seen as daredevil, it was
impossible to challenge what the
ancient gods had established
Dante’s narration of Ulysses' last
voyage is some of the best poetry
and one of the highlights of the
entire Inferno.

13. – G I O V A N N I M E L A
Canto XXVI
“Fatti non foste a viver come bruti, ma per seguire virtute e
canoscenza"
“Consider well the seed that gave you birth: you were not
made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.”

14. Charybdis is described as a
daughter of Poseidon and
Gaea, and as a voracious
woman,who stole oxen from
Heracles, and was hurled by
the thunderbolt of Zeus into
the sea, where she retained
her voracious nature. (iii.
420.Servius, Scholiast on Virgil's Aeneid)

17. The poet wrote a song Γηρυονηΐς—
Geryoneïs) in the VIth cent. BC.
In the fragmentary papyri, Geryon, after
being informed of Horthus' death talked
to his mother, who begged him not to
confront Heracles. The gods met and
Athena warned Poseidon that she
would protect Heracles against Geryon.
Denys Page observes that the increase
in representation of Geryon in vase-
paintings increased from the mid-sixth
cent. was determined by Stesichorus'
‘Geryoneïs’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBy-
SRxzRus&feature=youtu.be
Stesichorus ‘Geryoneis’

18. – G I O V A N N
“Inserisci qui una citazione”.
m with his club. Eurytion followed, with the same result. Just as Hercules was

20. Bringing the herd back to Greece
was more trouble. In Liguria, two
sons of Poseidon, tried to steal it,
so he killed them. At Rhegium, a
bull got loose and jumped into the
sea. The bull swam to Sicily and
then made its way to the
neighboring country. The native
word for bull was "italus," and so
the country came to be named
after the bull, and was called Italy.

21. The escaped bull was found
by Eryx, another of
Poseidon's sons, and Eryx
put it into his own herd.
Hercules searched for the
runaway animal and found it
in Eryx's herd, but the king
would return it only if the
hero could beat him in a
wrestling contest.

22. "[Herakles travelled the length of
Sicily with the cattle of Geryon]
When Herakles arrived at the strait
[of Messina] where the sea is
narrowest, he had the cattle taken
over into Sikelia (Sicily), but as for
himself, he took hold of the horn of
a bull and swam across the
passage”
Herakles approached the region of
Eryx, son of Aphrodite and Butas,
king of that country.
Diodorus Siculus
Library of history 4. 22. 6 - 22. 3

23. – G I O V A N N I M E L A
The contest of the rivals carried with it a penalty: Eryx was to surrender
his land and Herakles the cattle. Now at first Eryx was displeased at such
terms, maintaining that the cattle were of far less value, but when
Heracles showed that he would lose his immortality, Eryx agreed to the
terms, and wrestling with him was defeated and lost his land.
• Eryx

24. Hercules made it to the edge
of the Ionian Sea, with the end
of his journey finally in sight.
Hera, however, was not about
to let the hero accomplish this
labor. She sent a gadfly to
attack the cattle, and the herd
scattered far and wide. Finally,
he regrouped the herd and
brought the cattle of Geryon to
Eurystheus, who sacrificed the
herd to Hera.

25. – G I O V A N N I M E L A
Hercules’ Route to catch the Cattle of Geryon

26. .

27. T H E A P P L E S O F
H E S P E R I D E S

28. H E S P E R I D E S
Eurystheus ordered Hercules to bring
him the golden apples which granted
immortality. Hera had given them to
him as a wedding gift. She would never
allow Hercules to steal them. They
were kept in a garden at the northern
edge of the world, and they were
guarded by a hundred-headed dragon,
Ladon, and by the Hesperides,
daughters of Atlas, the titan who held
the sky and the earth upon his
shoulders.

29. The Garden of the Hesperides
According to the Sicilian Greek poet
Stesichorus, in his poem the "Song of
Geryon", and the Greek geographer Strabo,
in his book Geographic (volume III), the
garden of the Hesperides is located in
Tartessos, a location placed in the south of
the Iberian peninsula.
The Garden of the Hesperides is Hera's
orchard in the west, where either a single
apple tree or a grove grows, producing
golden apples that grant immortality eaten.

30. – G I O V A N N I M E L A
Greek mythology, the Hesperides, Ancient Greek: Ἑσπερίδες) was
the name of the nymphs of the evening, sunset. They tend a blissful
garden in a far western corner of the world, located near the Atlas
mountains in North Africa .

31. In the myth of the Judgement of Paris,
when it was from the Garden that Eris,
Goddess of Discord, obtained the Apple
of Discord, which led to the Trojan War.
In later years it was thought that the
"golden apples" might have actually
been oranges, a fruit unknown to
Europe before the Middle Ages.
Apples

32. Hercules's first problem was that he
didn't know where the garden was. He
journeyed through Libya, Egypt, Arabia,
and Asia, He had single-combats with
several contenders. In Illyria, Hercules
seized the sea-god Nereus because he
needed his help to know where the
Garden of the Hesperides was.

33. – G I O V A N N I M E L A
“Inserisci qui una citazione”.
He knew the garden's secret location. But Nereus transformed himself into all
kinds of shapes, trying to escape, but Hercules held tight and didn't release
Nereus until he got the information he needed.
The earliest poet to link Nereus with the labours of Heracles was Pherekydes,
according to a scholion on Apollonius of Rhodes.

34. Continuing on his quest, Hercules was
stopped by Antaeus, the son of the
sea god, Poseidon, who also
challenged Hercules to fight. Hercules
defeated him in a wrestling match,
lifting him off the ground and crushing
him, because when Antaeus touched
the earth he became stronger. After
that, Hercules met up with Busiris,
another of Poseidon's sons, was
captured, and was led to an altar to be
a human sacrifice. But Hercules
escaped, killing Busiris, and journeyed
on.
Hercules and Antaeus

35. Hercules came to the rock on Mt Caucasus where Prometheus was trapped. Prometheus, w

36. In gratitude, Prometheus told
Hercules how to get the apples. He
should ask Atlas to do it instead of
going himself. Atlas hated holding
up the sky and the earth so much
that he would agree so that he
could pass his burden over to
Hercules. Everything happened as
Prometheus had predicted.

37. When Atlas returned with the
golden apples, he told Hercules he
would take them to Eurystheus
himself, and asked him to stay
there and hold the heavy load for
the rest of time. Hercules slyly
agreed, but asked Atlas if he could
take it back again, for a moment,
while the hero put some soft
padding to soften the weight of the
sky and the earth. Atlas put the
apples on the ground, and did it .

38. And so Hercules picked up the apples
and quickly ran off, carrying them
back, uneventfully, to Eurystheus.
There was one final problem: because
they belonged to the gods, the apples
could not remain with Eurystheus.
After all the trouble Hercules went
through to get them, he had to return
them to Athena, who took them back
to the garden at the northern edge of
the world.

39. T H E C R E T A N B U L L

40. There are many bull stories
about Crete. Zeus, in the
shape of a bull, had carried
Minos' mother Europa to
Crete. , and the Cretans were
fond of the sport of bull-
leaping, in which contestants
grabbed the horns of a bull
and were thrown over its back.
The Cretan Bull

41. Bull and Crete
Bull-leaping is thought to have been
a key ritual in the religion of the
Minoan civilization in Bronze Age
Crete. As in the case of other
Mediterranean civilizations, the bull
was the subject of veneration and
worship. Representation of the Bull
at the palace of Knossos is a
widespread symbol in the art and
decoration of this archaeological
site.[4]
The assumption, widely debated by
scholars, is that the iconography
represents a ritual sport and/or
performance in which human
athletes literally vaulted over bulls as
part of a ceremonial rite.

42. “Minos himself, in order to prove his claim to the throne, had promised the sea-god
Poseidon that he would sacrifice whatever the god sent him from the sea. Poseidon
sent a bull, but Minos thought it was too beautiful to kill, and so he sacrificed another
bull. Poseidon was furious with Minos for breaking his promise. In his anger, he
made the bull rampage all over Crete, and caused Minos' wife Pasiphae to fall
in love with the animal.

43. – G I O V A N N I M E L A
As a result, Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur, a monster with
the head of a bull and the body of a man. Minos had to shut up
this beast in the Labyrinth, a huge maze underneath the palace,
and every year he fed it with prisoners from Athens.
.

44. – G I O V A N N I M E L A
“Inserisci qui una citazione”.
drove it back to King Eurystheus. Eurystheus let the bull go free. It wandered around G re

45. The Bull was a gift from
Poseidon to King Minos of
Crete. This Cretan Bull is
also the father of the
Minotaur. The Cretan bull
was a very sweet and
gentle beast that is until
king Minos upset Poseidon.
Poseidon struck the bull
driving the bull insane and
then the

46. Cretan bull ran wild through
all Crete knocking down
orchard walls, and
destroying crops.
So it was only natural that
King Eurystheus would
send Hercules to capture
the bull, you know with the
bull being a trouble making
beast and all.

47. Off Hercules sailed to the island of
Crete. Hercules arrived at Crete,
to find that the country was being
terrorized by the Cretan bull. King
Minos offered to help Hercules,
but Hercules refused King Minos
help. Which is probable a good
thing, considering the fact that
every time Hercules gets help he
has to do another Labor to gain
his redemption for his crimes.

48. Hercules set off to find the bull. He
found the bull drinking from a water
spring, and snuck up behind the bull.
Grabbing the bull by the horns,
Hercules wrestled the bull to the
ground and tied the bull up so it could
not escape.
With the bull successfully subdue,
Hercules took the bull with him and sailed
back to King Eurystheus. When the king saw
how massive the bull was he was frightened.
He told Hercules, that they should sacrifice
the bull to Hera. Hera refused to take the
bull saying that the sacrifice would be in

50. Hercules honor, remember
Hera HATES Hercules, and
all the labors have been
secretly selected by Hera to
destroy Hercules. So with
that Hercules picked up the
bull and tossed it high into
the sky and the bull became
the constellation Taurus.