The Tenth Labour of Heracles , n. 205336. In the fullest account in the
Bibliotheke of Pseudo-Apollodorus,
Heracles was required to travel to
Erytheia, in order to obtain the Cattle of Geryon (Γηρυόνου βόες) as his
tenth labour. On the way there, he crossed the
Libyan desert and became so frustrated at the heat that he shot an arrow at
Helios, the Sun. Helios "in admiration of his courage" gave Heracles the golden cup he used to sail across the sea from the west to the east each night. Heracles used it to reach Erytheia, a favorite motif of the
vase-painters. Such a magical conveyance undercuts any literal geography for Erytheia, the "red island" of the sunset. When Heracles reached Erytheia, no sooner had he landed than he was confronted by the two-headed dog,
Orthrus. With one huge blow from his olive-wood club, Heracles killed the watchdog.
Eurytion, the herdsman, came to assist Orthrus, but Heracles dealt with him the same way. , Munich On hearing the commotion, Geryon sprang into action, carrying three shields, three spears, and wearing three helmets. He pursued Heracles at the River Anthemus but fell victim to an arrow that had been dipped in the venomous blood of the
Lernaean Hydra, shot so forcefully by Heracles that it pierced Geryon's forehead, "and Geryon bent his neck over to one side, like a poppy that spoils its delicate shapes, shedding its petals all at once". Heracles then had to herd the cattle back to
Eurystheus. In Roman versions of the narrative, on the
Aventine Hill in
Italy,
Cacus stole some of the cattle as Heracles slept, making the cattle walk backwards so that they left no trail, a repetition of the trick of the young
Hermes. According to some versions, Heracles drove his remaining cattle past a cave, where Cacus had hidden the stolen animals, and they began calling out to each other. In others,
Caca, Cacus' sister, told Heracles where he was. Heracles then killed Cacus, and according to the Romans, founded an altar where the
Forum Boarium, the cattle market, was later held. To annoy Heracles,
Hera sent a
gadfly to bite the cattle, irritate them and scatter them. The hero was within a year able to retrieve them. Hera then sent a flood which raised the level of a river so much, Heracles could not cross with the cattle. He piled stones into the river to make the water shallower. When he finally reached the court of Eurystheus, the cattle were sacrificed to Hera. In the
Aeneid,
Vergil may have based the triple-souled figure of
Erulus, king of
Praeneste, on Geryon and Hercules' conquest of Geryon is mentioned in Book VIII. The
Herculean Sarcophagus of Genzano features a three-headed representation of Geryon.
Stesichorus' account The poet
Stesichorus wrote a poem "
Geryoneis" (Γηρυονηΐς) in the sixth century BC, which was apparently the source of this section in
Bibliotheke; it contains the first reference to
Tartessus. From the fragmentary
papyri found at
Oxyrhyncus it is possible (although there is no evidence) that Stesichorus inserted a character, Menoites, who reported the theft of the cattle to Geryon. Geryon then had an interview with his mother Callirrhoe, who begged him not to confront Heracles. They appear to have expressed some doubt as to whether Geryon would prove to be immortal. The gods met in council, where Athena warned Poseidon that she would protect Heracles against Poseidon's grandson Geryon.
Denys Page observes that the increase in representation of the Geryon episode in vase-paintings began in the mid-sixth century and suggests that Stesichorus' "Geryoneis" provided the impetus. The fragments are sufficient to show that the poem was composed in twenty-six line triads, of
strophe,
antistrophe and
epode, repeated in columns along the original
scroll, facts that aided Page in placing many of the fragments, sometimes of no more than a word, in what he believed to be their proper positions.
Pausanias' account In his work
Description of Greece,
Pausanias mentions that Geryon had a daughter, Erytheia, who had a son with
Hermes,
Norax, the founder of the city of Nora in
Sardinia. ==In Dante's Inferno==