Pylos
A fresco from the palace of Pylos, dated around 1300-1200 BC
Herakles now went for revenge to Pylos, because its king Neleus had refused to purify him after the murder of Iphitos, or because Neleus had been an ally of Augeias, or because Neleus had stolen the cattle of Geryones from him. In the battle at Pylos Herakles killed Neleus and eleven of his twelve sons; only Nestor, the youngest, was spared, since he had been sent away from home to be raised by the Gerenians.
One of Neleus’ sons, Periklymenos, had received from his grandfather Poseidon the ability to change himself into any kind of animal or tree; another source limits his choices to an eagle, ant, bee, or snake. Herakles swatted him with his club when he was a bee or a fly, or shot him with an arrow when he took the shape of an eagle.
During the same war Hera, Poseidon, and Hades were allies of Neleus, while Athena and Zeus helped Herakles. Ares fought on the side of Neleus until Herakles wounded him in the thigh with a spear thrust and forced him to withdraw. Herakles also wounded Hades in the shoulder with an arrow, and he shot Hera in the right breast with a three-pronged arrow that caused her “incurable pain.” The intensity of her suffering was due to the fact that Herakles tipped his arrows with the poison of the Hydra, the monster which Hera herself had raised against Herakles. By wounding Hera in the breast Herakles gained symbolic revenge for her rejection of him from her breast when he was an infant; his “retroactive” poisoning of her breast appropriately punishes her refusal to give him the nurturance he desired.
Herakles’ next foes were king Hippokoon of Sparta and his sons, who had
been allies of Neleus and also had killed Herakles’ cousin Oionos, son of
Alkmena’s brother Likymnios. While Oionos was looking at the palace of
Hippokoon, a dog ran out and bit him; when he threw a stone at the dog, the sons
of Hippokoon beat him to death with clubs. In one version Herakles was with
Oionos in Sparta; the Spartans wounded him in the hollow of the hand or the
thigh, but the legendary surgeon Asklepios cured him and he returned with an
army. First, however, he went to Tegea in Arcadia and asked king Kepheus and
his twenty sons to help him; Kepheus refused, afraid that in his absence the
Argives would invade his country. Herakles gave Kepheus’ daughter Sterope a
lock of Medousa’s hair which he had received from Athena, and told her she could
defeat her enemies by holding it up three times from the walls without looking
at it. Kepheus then agreed to help Herakles but in the battle at Sparta he and
all his sons were killed along with Hippokoon and his sons and Herakles’ brother
Iphikles. Herakles now brought back Tyndareos, who had been expelled by his
brother Hippokoon, and gave him the kingdom.
Elsewhere Sterope is called Airope, who was loved by Ares and died in
childbirth; her son survived by sucking milk from the breast of his dead mother
and was named Airopos In this account Athena gave Medousa’s hair directly to
Kepheus; Herakles’ possession of the fatal tress is another instance of his
recurrent imitation of the adventures of Perseus.
Aleos and Auge
The infant Telephus is abandoned in the wilderness and: carpenters construct a boat in which Auge is to be cast adrift. Telephos Frieze, North Wall, Pergamon Altar, Pergamon Museum, Berlin
Kepheus had a sister named Auge; both were the children of Aleos, king of
Arcadia, and his niece Neaira. While Herakles was in Tegea he seduced Auge, who
had a baby son and hid him in the precinct of Athena. When a plague afflicted
the land of Aleos, he entered the precinct and there found the baby. He exposed
the infant on Mount Parthenios and gave Auge to Poseidon’s son Nauplios with
orders to drown her or sell her to a foreigner. The baby was saved by a doe
which found and nursed him, and shepherds who discovered him named him Telephos
(or gave him to king Korythos, who named him). As for Auge, Nauplios gave her
to Teuthras, king of Teuthrania (another name for Mysia in Asia Minor), and
Teuthras married her.
According to Diodoros, Auge was still pregnant
when her father gave her to Nauplios; as she was being led off she felt labor
pains and, pretending that she had to perform a “necessary act,” went into some
bushes, had the baby, and left it there. Pausanias says that Aleos put both
Auge and her son into a chest and threw it into the sea (just as Akrisios had
done with his daughter Danae and her son Perseus). The chest floated to Mysia,
where Teuthras found it and married Auge.
The fullest version says that
Aleos was warned by the Delphic oracle that his daughter’s son, if she had one,
would kill his maternal uncles (Aleos’ sons). Aleos therefore made Auge a
virgin priestess in the temple of Athena and threatened her with death if she
lost her virginity. While Herakles was being entertained by Aleos he got drunk
and ravished Auge; her father gave her, still pregnant, to Nauplios, and
Nauplios sold her, and the child she bore on Mount Parthenios, to Teuthras.
