‘Arise, Amphitryon, for numbing fear lays hold of me: arise, nor stay to
put shoon beneath thy feet! Hearest thou not how loud the younger child
is wailing? Mark’st thou not that though it is the depth of the night,
the walls are all plain to see as in the clear dawn? {127} There is some
strange thing I trow within the house, there is, my dearest lord!’
Thus she spake, and at his wife’s bidding he stepped down out of his bed,
and made for his richly dight sword that he kept always hanging on its
pin above his bed of cedar. Verily he was reaching out for his new-woven
belt, lifting with the other hand the mighty sheath, a work of lotus
wood, when lo, the wide chamber was filled again with night. Then he
cried aloud on his thralls, who were drawing the deep breath of sleep,—
‘Lights! Bring lights as quick as may be from the hearth, my thralls,
and thrust back the strong bolts of the doors. Arise, ye serving-men,
stout of heart, ’tis the master calls.’
Then quick the serving-men came speeding with torches burning, and the
house waxed full as each man hasted along. Then truly when they saw the
young child Heracles clutching the snakes twain in his tender grasp, they
all cried out and smote their hands together. But he kept showing the
creeping things to his father, Amphitryon, and leaped on high in his
childish glee, and laughing, at his father’s feet he laid them down, the
dread monsters fallen on the sleep of death. Then Alcmena in her own
bosom took and laid Iphicles, dry-eyed and wan with fear; {128} but
Amphitryon, placing the other child beneath a lamb’s-wool coverlet,
betook himself again to his bed, and gat him to his rest.
The cocks were now but singing their third welcome to the earliest dawn,
when Alcmena called forth Tiresias, the seer that cannot lie, and told
him of the new portent, and bade him declare what things should come to
pass.
‘Nay, and even if the gods devise some mischief, conceal it not from me
in ruth and pity; and how that mortals may not escape the doom that Fate
speeds from her spindle, O soothsayer Euerides, I am teaching thee, that
thyself knowest it right well.’
Thus spake the Queen, and thus he answered her:
‘Be of good cheer, daughter of Perseus, woman that hast borne the noblest
of children [and lay up in thy heart the better of the things that are to
be]. For by the sweet light that long hath left mine eyes, I swear that
many Achaean women, as they card the soft wool about their knees, shall
sing at eventide, of Alcmena’s name, and thou shalt be honourable among
the women of Argos. Such a man, even this thy son, shall mount to the
starry firmament, the hero broad of breast, the master of all wild
beasts, and of all mankind. Twelve labours is he fated to accomplish,
and thereafter to dwell in the house of Zeus, but all his mortal part a
Trachinian pyre shall possess.
‘And the son of the Immortals, by virtue of his bride, shall he be
called, even of them that urged forth these snakes from their dens to
destroy the child. Verily that day shall come when the ravening wolf,
beholding the fawn in his lair, will not seek to work him harm.
‘But lady, see that thou hast fire at hand, beneath the embers, and let
make ready dry fuel of gorse, or thorn, or bramble, or pear boughs dried
with the wind’s buffeting, and on the wild fire burn these serpents
twain, at midnight, even at the hour when they would have slain thy
child. But at dawn let one of thy maidens gather the dust of the fire,
and bear and cast it all, every grain, over the river from the brow of
the broken cliff, {129} beyond the march of your land, and return again
without looking behind. Then cleanse your house with the fire of unmixed
sulphur first, and then, as is ordained, with a filleted bough sprinkle
holy water over all, mingled with salt. {130} And to Zeus supreme,
moreover, do ye sacrifice a young boar, that ye may ever have the mastery
over all your enemies.’
So spake he, and thrust back his ivory chair, and departed, even
Tiresias, despite the weight of all his many years.
But Heracles was reared under his mother’s care, like some young sapling
in a garden close, being called the son of Amphitryon of Argos. And the
lad was taught his letters by the ancient Linus, Apollo’s son, a tutor
ever watchful. And to draw the bow, and send the arrow to the mark did
Eurytus teach him, Eurytus rich in wide ancestral lands. And Eumolpus,
son of Philammon, made the lad a minstrel, and formed his hands to the
boxwood lyre. And all the tricks wherewith the nimble Argive
cross-buttockers give each other the fall, and all the wiles of boxers
skilled with the gloves, and all the art that the rough and tumble
fighters have sought out to aid their science, all these did Heracles
learn from Harpalacus of Phanes, the son of Hermes. Him no man that
beheld, even from afar, would have confidently met as a wrestler in the
lists, so grim a brow overhung his dreadful face. And to drive forth his
horses ’neath the chariot, and safely to guide them round the goals, with
the naves of the wheels unharmed, Amphitryon taught his son in his
loving-kindness, Amphitryon himself, for many a prize had he borne away
from the fleet races in Argos, pasture-land of steeds, and unbroken were
the chariots that he mounted, till time loosened their leathern thongs.
But to charge with spear in rest, against a foe, guarding, meanwhile, his
back with the shield, to bide the biting swords, to order a company, and
to measure, in his onslaught, the ambush of foemen, and to give horsemen
the word of command, he was taught by knightly Castor. An outlaw came
Castor out of Argos, when Tydeus was holding all the land and all the
wide vineyards, having received Argos, a land of steeds, from the hand of
Adrastus. No peer in war among the demigods had Castor, till age wore
down his youth.
Thus did his dear mother let train Heracles, and the child’s bed was made
hard by his father’s; a lion’s skin was the coverlet he loved; his dinner
was roast meat, and a great Dorian loaf in a basket, a meal to satisfy a
delving hind. At the close of day he would take a meagre supper that
needed no fire to the cooking, and his plain kirtle fell no lower than
the middle of his shin.
IDYL XXV
HERACLES THE LION-SLAYER
_This is another idyl of the epic sort_. _The poet’s interest in the
details of the rural life_, _and in the description of the herds of King
Augeas_, _seem to mark it as the work of Theocritus_. _It has_,
_however_, _been attributed by learned conjecture to various writers of
an older age_. _The idyl_, _or fragment_, _is incomplete_. _Heracles
visits the herds of Augeas_ (_to clean their stalls was one of his
labours_), _and_, _after an encounter with a bull_, _describes to the
king’s son his battle with the lion of Nemea_.
. . . Him answered the old man, a husbandman that had the care of the
tillage, ceasing a moment from the work that lay betwixt his hands—‘Right
readily will I tell thee, stranger, concerning the things whereof thou
inquirest, for I revere the awful wrath of Hermes of the roadside. Yea
he, they say, is of all the heavenly Gods the most in anger, if any deny
the wayfarer that asks eagerly for the way.
‘The fleecy flocks of the king Augeas feed not all on one pasture, nor in
one place, but some there be that graze by the river-banks round Elisus,
and some by the sacred stream of divine Alpheius, and some by Buprasium
rich in clusters of the vine, and some even in this place. And behold,
the pens for each herd after its kind are builded apart. Nay, but for
all the herds of Augeas, overflowing as they be, these pasture lands are
ever fresh and flowering, around the great marsh of Peneus, for with
herbage honey-sweet the dewy water-meadows are ever blossoming
abundantly, and this fodder it is that feeds the strength of horned kine.
And this their steading, on thy right hand stands all plain to view,
beyond the running river, there, where the plane-trees grow luxuriant,
and the green wild olive, a sacred grove, O stranger, of Apollo of the
pastures, a God most gracious unto prayer. Next thereto are builded long
rows of huts for the country folk, even for us that do zealously guard
the great and marvellous wealth of the king; casting in season the seed
in fallow lands, thrice, ay, and four times broken by the plough. As for
the marches, truly, the ditchers know them, men of many toils, who throng
to the wine-press at the coming of high summer tide. For, behold, all
this plain is held by gracious Augeas, and the wheat-bearing plough-land,
and the orchards with their trees, as far as the upland farm of the
ridge, whence the fountains spring; over all which lands we go labouring,
the whole day long, as is the wont of thralls that live their lives among
the fields.
‘But, prithee, tell thou me, in thy turn (and for thine own gain it will
be), whom comest thou hither to seek; in quest, perchance, of Augeas, or
one of his servants? Of all these things, behold, I have knowledge, and
could tell thee plainly, for methinks that thou, for thy part, comest of
no churlish stock, nay, nor hath thy shape aught of the churl, so
excellent in might shows thy form. Lo, now, even such are the children
of the immortal Gods among mortal men.’ Then the mighty son of Zeus
answered him, saying—
‘Yea, old man, I fain would see Augeas, prince of the Epeans, for truly
’twas need of him that brought me hither. If he abides at the town with
his citizens, caring for his people, and settling the pleas, do thou, old
man, bid one of the servants to guide me on the way, a head-man of the
more honourable sort in these fields, to whom I may both tell my desire,
and learn in turn what I would, for God has made all men dependent, each
on each.’