Heracles In Trachis

STILL accompanied by his Arcadian allies, Heracles came to Trachis where he settled down for awhile, under the protection of Ceyx. On his way, he had passed through the   country of the Dryopians, which is overshadowed by Mount Parnassus, and found their king Theiodamas, the son of Dryops, ploughing with a yoke of oxen. Being hungry and also eager for a pretext to make war on the Dryopians-who, as everyone knew, had no right to the country-Heracles demanded one of the oxen; and, when Theiodamas refused, killed him. After slaughtering the ox, and feasting on its flesh, he bore off Theiodamas’s infant son Hylas, whose mother was the nymph Menodice, Orion’s daughter. But some call Hylas’s father Ceyx, or Euphemus, or Theiomenes; and insist that Theiodamas was the Rhodian ploughman who cursed from afar while Heracles sacrificed one of his oxen.
b. It seems that Phylas, Theiodamas’s successor, violated Apollo’s temple at Delphi. Outraged on Apollo’s behalf, Heracles killed Phylas and carried off his daughter Meda; she bore him Antiochus, founder of the Athenian deme which bears his name. He then expelled the Dryopians from their city on Mount Parnassus, and gave it to the Malians who had helped in its conquest. The leading Dryopians he took to Delphi and dedicated them at the shrine as slaves; but, Apollo having no use for them, they were sent away to the Peloponnese, where they sought the favour of Eurystheus the High King. Under his orders, and with the assistance of other fugitive compatriots, they built three cities, Asine, Hermione, and Eion. Of the remaining Dryopians, some fled to Euboea, others to Cyprus and to the island of Cynthos. But only the men of Asine still pride themselves on being Dryopians; they have built a shrine to their ancestor Dryops, with an ancient image, and celebrate mysteries in his honour every second year.
c. Dryops was Apollo’s son by Dia, a daughter of King Lycaon, for fear of whom she hid the infant in a hollow oak; hence his name. Some say that Dryops himself brought his people from the Thessalian river Spercheius to Asine, and that he was a son of Spercheius by the nymph Polydora.

d. A boundary dispute had arisen between the Dorians of Hestiaeotis, ruled by King Aegimius, and the Lapiths of Mount Olympus, former allies of the Dryopians, whose king was Coronus, a son of Caeneus. The Dorians, greatly outnumbered by the Lapiths, fled to Heracles and appealed for help, offering him in return a third share of their kingdom; whereupon Heracles and his Arcadian allies defeated the Lapiths, slew Coronus and most of his subjects, and forced them to quit the disputed land. Some of them settled at Corinth. Aegimius then held Heracles’s third share in trust for his descendants.
e. Heracles now came to Itonus, a city of Phthiotis, where the ancient temple of Athene stands. Here he met Cycnus, a son of Ares and Pelopia, who was constantly offering valuable prizes to guests who dared fight a chariot duel with him. The ever-victorious Cycnus would cut off their heads and use the skulls to decorate the temple of his father Ares. This, by the way, was not the Cycnus whom Ares had begotten on Pyrene and transformed into a swan when he died.
f Apollo, growing vexed with Cycnus, because he waylaid and carried off herds of cattle which were being sent for sacrifice to Delphi, incited Heracles to accept Cycnus’s challenge. It was agreed that Heracles should be supported by his charioteer Iolaus, and Cycnus by his father Ares. Heracles, though this was not his usual style of fighting, put on the polished bronze greaves which Hephaestus had made for him, the curiously wrought golden breast-plate given him by Athene, and a pair of iron shoulder-guards. Armed with bow and arrows, spear, helmet, and a stout shield which Zeus had ordered Hephaestus to supply, he lightly mounted his chariot.

g. Athene, descending from Olympus, now warned Heracles that, although empowered by Zeus to kill and despoil Cycnus, he must do no more than defend himself against Ares and, even if victorious, not deprive him of either his horses or his splendid armour. She then mounted beside Heracles and Iolaus, shaking her aegis, and Mother Earth groaned as the chariot whirled forward. Cycnus drove to meet them at full speed, and both he and Heracles were thrown to the ground by the shock of their encounter, spear against shield. Yet they sprang to their feet and, after a short combat, Heracles thrust Cycnus through the neck. He then boldly faced Ares, who hurled a spear at him; and Athene, with an angry frown, turned it aside. Ares ran at Heracles sword in hand, only to be wounded in the thigh for his pains, and Heracles would have dealt him a further blow as he lay on the ground, had not Zeus parted the combatants with a thunderbolt. Heracles and Iolaus then despoiled Cycnus’s corpse and resumed their interrupted journey; while Athene led the fainting Ares back to Olympus. Cycnus was buried by Ceyx in the valley of the Anaurus but, at Apollo’s command, the swollen river washed away his headstone.
h. Some, however, say that Cycnus lived at Amphanae, and that Heracles transfixed him with an arrow beside the river Peneius, or at Pegasae.
i. Passing through Pelasgiotis, Heracles now came to Ormenium, a small city at the foot of Mount Pelion, where King Amyntor refused to give him his daughter Astydameia. ‘You are married already,’ he said, ‘and have betrayed far too many princesses for me to trust you with another.’ Heracles attacked the city and, after killing Amyntor, carried off Astydameia, who bore him Ctesippus or, some say, Tlepolemus.

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1. Heracles’s sacrifice of a plough ox, Theiodamas’s cursing, and the appearance of  the infant Hylas from a furrow, are all parts of the pre-Hellenic sowing ritual. Ox blood propitiates the Earth-goddess, curses avert divine anger from the sprouting seeds, the child represents the coming crop-namely Plutus, whom Demeter bore to Iasius after they had embraced in the thrice-ploughed field. Theiodamas is the spirit of the old year, now destroyed. The annual mourning for the doomed tree-spirit Hylas has here been confused with mourning for the doomed corn-spirit.
2. Heracles’s expulsion of the Dryopians from Parnassus with Dorian assistance, and the Dryopian emigration to Southern Greece, are likely to have taken place in the twelfth century BC, before the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese. His combat with Cycnus recalls Pelops’s race with Oenomaus, another son of Ares, and equally notorious as a head-hunter. In both cases one of the chariots contained a woman: namely Oenomaus’s daughter Hippodameia (the subject of his contention with Pelops) and Athene, who is apparently, the same character-namely the new king’s destined bride. Cycnus, like Spartan Polydeuces, is a king of the swan cult whose soul flies off to the far northern otherworld.
3. Aegimius’s name-if it means ‘acting the part of a goat’-suggests that he performed a May Eve goat-marriage with the tribal queen, and that in his war against the Lapiths of Northern Thessaly his Dorians fought beside the Centaurs, the Lapiths’ hereditary enemies who, like the Satyrs, are depicted in early works of art as goat-men.
4. Cypselus the tyrant of Corinth, famous for his carved chest, claimed descent from the Lapith royal house of Caeneus