United States or Bolivia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
His next labor was to take away the herd of red cattle that was owned by the monster Geryoneus. In the Island of Erytheia, in the middle of the Stream of Ocean, lived the monster, his herd guarded by the two-headed hound Orthus that hound was the brother of Cerberus, the three-headed hound that kept guard in the Underworld.
Above the doors of the temple is the hunting of the Erymanthian boar, and Hercules taking the mares of Diomede the Thracian, and robbing Geryon of his oxen in the island of Erytheia, and supporting the load of Atlas, and clearing the land of Elis of its dung.... The image of the god is in gold and ivory, seated on a throne. And a crown is on his head imitating the foliage of the olive tree.
Beyond him stretched the Stream of Ocean; the Island of Erytheia was there, but Heracles thought that the bull would not be able to bear him so far. And there the sun beat upon him, and drew all strength away from him, and he was dazed and dazzled by the rays of the sun. He shouted out against the sun, and in his anger he wanted to strive against the sun.
It floated there wide enough to hold all the men who might be in a ship. Heracles put the bull of Minos into the cup of Helios, and the cup bore them away, toward the west, and across the Stream of Ocean. Thus Heracles came to the Island of Erytheia. All over the island straggled the red cattle of Geryoneus, grazing upon the rich pastures.
Hence they placed in it the Isles of the blest, the ruddy isle Erytheia, on which the bright oxen of Geryon were pastured, and the isle of the Hesperides. The apples are supposed by some to be the oranges of Spain, of which the Greeks had heard some obscure accounts. A celebrated exploit of Hercules was his victory over Antaeus.
In the Mediterranean itself the Sirens beguiled the passers-by with their songs near where Naples now stands; adjoining were Scylla and Charybdis; in Sicily were the one-eyed Cyclops and cannibal Læstrygons. In the island of Erytheia the three-headed giant Geryon tended his oxen with a double-headed dog.
He was to go to savage Thrace and there destroy the man-eating horses of King Diomedes; afterward he was to go amongst the dread women, the Amazons, daughters of Ares, the god of war, and take from their queen, Hippolyte, the girdle that Ares had given her; then he was to go to Crete and take from the keeping of King Minos the beautiful bull that Poseidon had given him; afterward he was to go to the Island of Erytheia and take away from Geryoneus, the monster that had three bodies instead of one, the herd of red cattle that the two-headed hound Orthus kept guard over; then he was to go to the Garden of the Hesperides, and from that garden he was to take the golden apples that Zeus had given to Hera for a marriage gift where the Garden of the Hesperides was no mortal knew.
Word Of The Day