Chapter 1 · Thebes · The cursed birth
Born of Zeus, Hated by Hera
Heracles is the son of Zeus by the mortal Alcmene, and from the moment of his birth Hera hates him as living proof of her husband's betrayal. She sends two serpents into his cradle; the infant strangles one in each fist.
His whole life will be shaped by this divine enmity. The strongest man ever born, favored by his father the king of the gods, will nonetheless be driven from crisis to crisis by the queen of heaven, who cannot forgive the circumstances of his birth.
Source: Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.4
Chapter 2 · Thebes · The unforgivable act
The Madness
Hera strikes at Heracles through his own mind. She sends a fit of madness upon him, and in its grip he kills his own wife and children, believing them enemies. When the madness lifts and he sees what he has done, the strongest man alive is broken by a crime that was, and was not, his.
He goes to the oracle of Apollo to ask how he can be cleansed. The answer is a sentence: he must serve his cousin, the weak king Eurystheus, and perform whatever labors are set him. Ten labors, to purge a guilt the gods themselves inflicted.
A question for the traveler
Why must Heracles perform the labors at all?
Source: Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.4
Chapter 3 · Across Greece · The impossible tasks
The Labors Begin
Eurystheus, prompted by Hera, sets tasks meant to kill him. The Nemean lion, whose hide no weapon can pierce, Heracles strangles with his bare arms and wears its skin ever after. The many-headed Hydra, which grows two heads for each one cut, he defeats by searing each stump before it can regrow.
On he goes: the golden hind, the great boar, the Stymphalian birds, the filthy stables cleaned in a day by rerouting a river, the man-eating mares, the Cretan bull. Each task is designed to be impossible, and each he accomplishes, sometimes by strength, often by wit, always by refusing to stop.
Figures in this chapter
Source: Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.5
Chapter 4 · The underworld · The last and deepest labor
The Descent for Cerberus
The final labor is the worst: to go down into the land of the dead and bring back Cerberus, the three-headed hound that guards its gate. No living man is meant to make this journey and return.
In the underworld Heracles comes before Hades and Persephone themselves and asks leave to take the hound. Hades grants it on one condition, that he master Cerberus with no weapons, and Heracles wrestles the beast into submission with his bare hands and hauls it up into the light. He has been to death and come back, the deepest proof of what he is.
Figures in this chapter
Source: Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.5
Chapter 5 · The world's western edge · The trick of the Titan
The Sky and the Golden Apples
One labor sends Heracles to fetch the golden apples of the Hesperides, which grow at the edge of the world where Atlas holds up the sky. On the way he frees Prometheus from his eagle, and the grateful Titan gives him the secret: send Atlas for the apples, and hold the sky yourself while he goes.
Atlas fetches the apples gladly, and tries to leave Heracles bearing the heavens forever. But the hero out-tricks the Titan: he asks Atlas to take the weight back just a moment, so he can pad his shoulders, and the moment Atlas shoulders the sky again, Heracles picks up the apples and walks away.
Figures in this chapter
Source: Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.5
Chapter 6 · Mount Oeta and Olympus · The reward
Death and the Ascent
The labors done, Heracles lives on, but his death comes through love and poison: a centaur's tainted blood, given him by his wife in the belief it was a charm, burns him beyond any bearing. Rather than die by inches, he builds his own pyre on Mount Oeta and lays himself upon it.
But the fire takes only his mortal part. His divine half, the son of Zeus, rises to Olympus, where even Hera is at last reconciled to him. The hero who was hounded by the gods his whole life becomes one of them, the only mortal to fully win his way into heaven by his own suffering and strength.
Source: Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.7
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