Heracles and the Erymanthian Boar
Snaring a wild boar turns out to be much less dangerous than keeping centaurs away from their wine.
Snaring a wild boar turns out to be much less dangerous than keeping centaurs away from their wine.
This post is number 4 in the series Twelve Labours of Heracles
Heracles is performing a series of ‘Labours’ for King Eurystheus, who regards his cousin as a rival and would not be sorry to see him dead. But ever since Heracles came back wearing the pelt of the Nemean Lion, Eurystheus’s nerves have been jangling and he now keeps a capacious wine-jar, half buried in the ground, as a place of refuge.
AFTER the fiasco of the Cerynaean Hind, Eurystheus abandoned subtlety and went back to basics with the rampaging wild boar of the snow-capped Erymanthus Mountains. Heracles was ordered to bring him back alive, ideally coming to grief in the attempt.
In that region lived the centaur Pholus, an old friend, so Heracles looked him up, and cajoled him into serving some wine donated by Dionysius himself. Its heady bouquet drew the other centaurs, angry at being left out and brandishing rocks and staves. They retreated under a hail of Heracles’s arrows, tipped with the Hydra’s toxic blood, but in examining one Pholus nicked himself, and died.
Heracles wept as he buried him with honour, and then went after the boar. He flushed him out with great cries and drove him into a deep snow-drift where he netted him, and in due course he deposited him before Eurystheus.
The King took one look at those snarling tusks, and dived for the comforting safety of his wine-jar.
Next in series: Heracles and the Augean Stables
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why were the other centaurs angry with Pholus?
For serving Dionysius’s wine without inviting them.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
A wild boar lived on Mount Erymanthus. Eurystheus told Heracles to catch it. He wanted the boar to kill Heracles.