THE FOURTH LABOR--THE ERYMANTHIAN BOAR
Elis is a beautiful plain lying to the north and west of Arcadia. Here
once in five years there was a great festival in honor of Zeus, when
all the men and boys ran races, wrestled, boxed and played all sorts
of games. Between Arcadia and Elis there is a high mountain-range,
called Erymanthos. There a terrible Boar had its lair.
The Boar frequently left its den and came down into the plains and
killed cattle, destroyed fields of grain and attacked people.
Eurystheus, having heard of this Boar, made up his mind that he wanted
the beast alive, and so ordered Herakles to bring it to him.
The hero put on his lion skin once more and started for the mountain.
On his way he stopped at a little town where the Centaurs had their
home. These strange people were half man and half horse. We have heard
that they were really men, but such good riders that they seemed to be
one with their mountain ponies.
Their home was just on the edge of a high plain, covered with
oak-trees and looking down across a wild valley, through which flowed
the Erymanthos River. There were many forests and little streams and
dreadful gorges in the valley, where these horsemen used to hunt and
fish.
The Centaur Chief, Pholos, received Herakles as a guest and gave him
cooked meat to eat, while he ate it raw himself, after the Centaurs'
custom.
When Herakles had eaten his fill, he said to Pholos: "Thy food is
indeed good and tasteful. But I should enjoy it still more if I could
have a sip of wine, for I am very thirsty." To which Pholos replied:
"My dear guest, we have very fine and fragrant wine in this mountain,
and I should like nothing better than to give thee some of it. But I
am afraid to do so, because it has a strong aroma, and the other
Centaurs, if they smelt it, might come to my cave and want some. They
are very fierce and lawless, and might do thee great harm."
"Let not that trouble thee," said Herakles. "I am not afraid of the
Centaurs." So the wine was placed before him and he drank of it. In a
little while a great noise was heard outside of the cave, a shouting
of many wild voices and a stamping of many horses' feet. What Pholos
feared had come to pass.
The Centaurs had smelt the fragrance of the wine and in full armor
had made for the cave of Pholos. Then began a terrible fight. The
Centaurs fell upon Herakles with pine-branches, rocks, axes, and
fire-brands, and the clouds, their mothers, poured a flood of water on
him. But Herakles was too clever for them. He put two to flight,
prevented others from entering the cave, and shot the rest down with
his arrows.
Pholos was a kind-hearted chief, and hearing one of the Centaurs
crying for help outside of his cave, went out to him and tried to pull
the arrow from his wound, wondering at the same time that so slight a
weapon could cause his death. But the arrow slipped out of his hand
and struck his own foot. It made only a scratch, but it could not be
healed, for the arrow was one of those which Herakles had dipped in
the blood of the Hydra, and poor Pholos breathed his last.
The death of his kind host was a great sorrow to Herakles, for in
those times, when there was so little safety in travelling, the bond
of kindness and gratitude between host and guest was one of the
closest and most sacred, often more so than that between members of
the same family. In all their later lives, host and guest could never
meet as enemies, and if the chances of war brought them face to face
as foes, they were not expected to fight. They exchanged greetings and
gifts and drove off in different directions.
Herakles therefore sincerely mourned his friend, performed over him
the proper funeral rites, and buried him with all due honors in the
side of the mountain. There he left him, sore at heart, but comforted
by knowing that he had done all he could do to reconcile the shade of
Pholos, and that his soul would bear him no grudge in Spirit Land.
Then Herakles went on his way in search of the Boar. He soon spied him
in a dense thicket and chased him to the very top of the mountain. The
mountain-top was covered with deep snow, which prevented the Boar from
running fast enough to escape. So Herakles ran up to him, caught him
in a net, threw him over his shoulder and carried him off alive to
Mykenæ.
It is said that Eurystheus hid himself in a large brazen bowl when he
heard Herakles approaching the city, and that Herakles threw the Boar
into the same brazen bowl as the safest place in which to keep him.
How astonished Eurystheus must have been to find himself in such
terrible company! And we can fancy that he scrambled out with all
possible haste.