Transcript The Twelve Labors of Heracles - Lake

The Twelve Labors of Heracles
A PowerPoint Presentation by:
Eyanna Gruver
Elizabeth Farrell
Sarah Spess
How did the labors come about?
• Heracles was born from the
unfaithfulness of Zeus.
• Hera, Zeus’ wife, decided to
take revenge on Zeus because of
this.
• As revenge, she put two snake
ito baby Heracles’ crib. But
Heracles had superhuman
strength and was able to strangle
them.
• Hera was even angrier after her
plan failed, and decided that to
make up for her failure, she
would make Heracles’ life
miserable.
• When Heracles had come of
age, and already proved himself
as a holder of heroic strength,
he was nearly driven mad by
Hera.
• She made him so crazy that he,
in a fit of anger, killed his own
children.
• To atone for this crime, he was
sentenced to perform a series of
tasks, or "Labors", for his cousin
Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns
and Mycenae
The First Labor
• As his first Labor, Heracles was challenged to kill the
Nemean lion.
• This was no easy feat, for the beast was supernatural
and it was more of a monster than an ordinary lion.
Its skin could not be penetrated by spears or arrows.
• Heracles blocked off the entrances to the lion's cave,
crawled into the close confines where it would have
to fight the lion face to face.
• Heracles throttled it to death with his bare hands.
• Ever afterwards he wore the lion's skin as a cloak and
its gaping jaws as a helmet.
The Second Labor
• After seeing that Heracles returned, King Eurystheus
issued the second Labor.
• Heracles was to seek out and destroy the monstrous and
many-headed Hydra.
• Some said that the Hydra had 8 or 9 heads while others
said it had 10,000 heads. All agreed, however, that as
soon as one head was beaten down or chopped off, two
more grew in its place.
• Heracles sought out the monster in its lair and brought it
out into the open. But then the fight went in the Hydra's
favor. It twined its many heads around the hero and tried
to trip him up. It called on an ally, a huge crab that also
lived in the lair. The crab bit Heracles in the heel and
further hindered his attack.
The Second Labor (continued)
• Iolaus, who had driven Heracles to Lerna in a chariot,
looked on in worry as his uncle became entangled in the
Hydra's snaky heads.
• In response, he grabbed a burning torch and dashed into
the battle. Now, as soon as Heracles cut off one of the
Hydra's heads, Iolaus was there to char the wounded neck
with flame. This kept further heads from sprouting.
• Finally Heracles sliced off the one head that was
supposedly immortal and buried it deep beneath a rock to
prevent it from further regeneration.
The Third Labor
• The third Labor was the
• Taking careful aim with
capture of the Cerynitian
his bow, he fired an arrow
hind.
between the tendons and
• Though a female deer, this
bones of the two forelegs,
animal had golden horns.
pinning it down without
It was sacred to Artemis,
drawing blood.
goddess of the hunt, so
• All the same, Artemis was
Heracles dared not wound
displeased, but Heracles
it.
dodged her wrath by
• He hunted it for an entire
blaming his taskmaster,
year before running it
Eurystheus.
down on the banks of the
River Ladon in Arcadia.
The Fourth Labor
• The fourth Labor took Heracles back to Arcadia in
quest of an enormous boar, which he was challenged
to bring back alive.
• While tracking it down he stopped to visit the centaur
Pholus and ask him where the boar was. He was not
saying a word. Then, Pholus was examining one of
the hero's arrows when he accidentally dropped it on
his foot. Because it had been soaked in poisonous
Hydra venom, Pholus told Heracles everything.
• Heracles finally located the boar on Mount
Erymanthus and managed to drive it into a
snowbank, immobilizing it.
• Flinging it up onto his shoulder, he carried it back to
Eurystheus .
The Fifth Labor
• Eurystheus was very pleased with himself for
dreaming up the next Labor, which he was sure
would humiliate his heroic cousin. Heracles
was to clean out the stables of King Aegeus in
a single day.
• Augeas had huge herds of cattle which had
deposited their manure in such quantity over
the years that a thick aroma hung over the
entire Peloponnesus.
• Instead of employing a shovel and a basket as
Eurystheus imagined, Heracles diverted two
rivers through the stableyard and got the job
done without getting dirty.
The Sixth Labor
• The sixth Labor pitted Heracles against the
Stymphalian birds, who inhabited a marsh near Lake
Stymphalus in Arcadia.
• It was said that the Stymphalian birds feasted on human
flesh.
• Heracles could not approach the birds to fight them the ground was too swampy to bear his weight and too
mucky to wade through.
• Finally he resorted to some castanets given to him by
the goddess Athena. By making a racket with these, he
caused the birds to fly away.
• Before they got too far, Heracles brought them down by
the dozens with his arrows
The Seventh Labor
• Queen Pasiphae of Crete had
been “inspired” by a vengeful
god to fall in love with a bull.
• Pasiphae's husband was
understandably eager to be
rid of the bull, which was
also destroying the Cretan
countryside, so Heracles was
assigned the task as his
seventh Labor.
• The bull was an easy
opponent, as all the hero had
to do was overpower it, and
then ship it back to the
mainland
The Eighth Labor
• Next Heracles was instructed
to bring Eurystheus the
mares of Diomedes.
• These horses dined on the
flesh of travelers who made
the mistake of accepting
Diomedes' hospitality.
• In one version of the myth,
Heracles pacified the beasts
by feeding them their own
master.
• In another, they satisfied
their appetites on the hero's
squire, a young man named
Abderus.
• In any case, Heracles soon
rounded them up and herded
them down to sea .
• Once he had shown them to
Eurystheus, he released
them. They were eventually
eaten by wild animals on
Mount Olympus.
The Ninth Labor
• The ninth Labor took Heracles to the land of the Amazons,
to retrieve the belt of their queen for Eurystheus' daughter.
• The Amazons were a race of warrior women.
• Heracles recruited a number of heroes to accompany him
on this expedition.
• As it turned out, the Amazon queen, Hippolyte, willingly
gave Hercules her belt, but Hera was not about to let the
hero get off so easily.
• The goddess stirred up the Amazons with a rumor that the
Greeks had captured their queen, and a great battle ensued.
• Heracles escaped from this battle and made off with the
belt.
The Tenth Labor
• As his next labor, Eurystheus
ordered the hero to bring him
the cattle of the monster
Geryon.
• Geryon had three heads
and/or three separate bodies
from the waist down. His
watchdog, Orthrus, had only
two heads.
• The hound Orthrus rushed at
Heracles as he was making
off with the cattle, and the
hero killed him with a single
blow from his wooden club.
• Geryon was killed as well,
and Heracles drove the herd
back to Greece
The Eleventh Labor
• As his eleventh labor, Heracles
was told to retrieve the apples of
the Hesperides
• The Hesperides were nymphs
entrusted by the goddess Hera
with certain apples which she
had received as a wedding
present.
• These were kept in a grove
surrounded by a high wall and
guarded by Ladon, a manyheaded dragon.
• Heracles had been told that he
would never get the them
without the aid of Atlas. He
found Atlas and Atlas agreed to
help, but only if Heracles would
hold a pillar after he defeated
the dragon with arrows.
• Atlas retrieved the apples, and
whist doing this, he realized
how nice it was to not live with
strain. He was reluctant to come
back, but Hercules tricked him
into it.
The Twelfth Labor
• As his final Labor, Heracles was
instructed to bring the
hellhound Cerberus up from
Hades.
• Heracles had some trouble
getting past the Charon the
Boatman, because in order to
enter the Underworld, you had
to be dead and have a coin
under your tongue.
• Heracles’ fierceness had
convinced Charon to take him
over the river.
• The greater challenge was
Cerberus, who had razor teeth,
three (or maybe fifty) heads, a
venomous snake for a tail and
another swarm of snakes
growing out of his back.
• The creature began to lash at
him, but fortunately, the hero
was wearing his trusty lion's
<>
skin, which
was impenetrable.
• Heracles eventually choked
Cerberus into submission and
dragged him to Tiryns, where he
received due credit for this final
Labor.
Works Cited List
• “Labor Two: The Hydra.” Myth Web. 19
Feb. 2009
<http://www.mythweb.com/hercules/herc0
4.html>.
• “The 12 Labors of Heracles.” Perseus
Project. 2009. 18 Feb. 2009
<http://library.thinkquest.org/J001598F/1
2_labors_of_heracles.htm>.