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Heracles and the Erymanthian Boar Snaring a wild boar turns out to be much less dangerous than keeping centaurs away from their wine. Music: George Frideric Handel

© Myceneanconundrum, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0. Source

About this picture …

Mount Erymanthus lies in Achaea, the northern part of the Peloponnese (the large peninsula of Greece that lies below the Gulf of Corinth), and reaches a height of 7,294ft (2,224 meters).

Heracles and the Erymanthian Boar
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.

Twelve Labours of Heracles Next: Heracles and the Augean Stables

Précis

Heracles’s fourth Labour was to take the wild boar of Mount Erymanthus alive. He succeeded, but only after becoming embroiled in a violent quarrel over some special wine, which resulted in the accidental death of his friend Pholus. On delivering the boar to Eurystheus as requested, Heracles watched that intrepid monarch take refuge once more in his wine-jar. (58 / 60 words)

Source

Based on ‘Library’ II.5.4 by Pseudo-Apollodorus (ca. 1st or 2nd century AD).

Suggested Music

Keyboard Suite in G Minor HWV 439

Gigue

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

Played by Ragna Schirmer.

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