Author's Note:
At this point in the labors, Eurystheus is getting frustrated with
Hercules' success (before Hercules submitted himself as a servant, they
were fierce rivals). In order to rid himself of Hercules once and
for
all, he begins sending Hercules on the most dangerous missions he can
think of. I changed several aspects of these labors in order to
make
them fit my storyline.
Hercules did capture the Cretan bull
by himself, although most accounts of this labor include a lot of
background information about the bull. I summed this up in a
short
statement about Poseidon cursing the bull, but the details reveal a lot
about other aspects of Greek mythology. Poseidon's curse also
caused
the queen of Crete to fall in love with the bull. She gave birth
to
the minotaur (a mythical creature with a man's body and a bull's head),
which King Minos locked in the labyrinth, a maze under his
palace.
Later on, after Eurystheus released the bull in Mycenae, Theseus,
another hero, killed the bull and traveled to Crete where he killed the
minotaur as well.
Some accounts of capturing the mares include
Hercules recruiting a group of men to help him and feeding Diomedes to
the mares. Some versions also have Hercules
recruiting an army to
battle the Amazons, although they do say he spoke to Hippolyte
first.
Hera, however, tricked the Amazon warriors into thinking he was going
to harm their queen. When they charged Hercules and his men, he
killed
Hippolyte and they battled the Amazons, killing many of them before
they left. For my story, however, I wanted to show Hercules
working
alone to achieve
honor, so I had him simply tame the mares without harming anyone and
show some humility when he ran from the Amazons.
The accounts of these labors are adapted from:
The images in this story are as follows:
1) Image of a spanish bull, from an image-sharing network called Flickr.
2) Image of
the statue "Mesteño", located outside the Fred
Jones, Jr. Museum of Art on the University of Oklahoma campus,
Norman, OK.
3) Image of
Hercules approaching the mares, from an image-sharing network called Flickr.
4) Image
of Hercules receiving the girdle from Hippolyte, from The List
Universe.
Seemingly
frustrated with how easily I managed to subdue the ferocious bull,
Eurystheus immediately thought of a more dangerous task for me to
complete. Without even a day's rest, he sent me to capture the
mares
of Diomedes. These horses were legendary monsters that fed on
human
flesh. In fact, King Diomedes punished the worst criminals in the
land
by simply locking them in the stable with the horses, which had never
been tamed to wear a bridle, and they would devour the criminals alive.
The Amazons were a
fierce society of women: they did not live with any men, and when
they
did give birth to a child, they disposed of the boys and only kept the
girls. They then raised the girls to be fierce warriors and
members of
their army. Because of this commitment to training, the Amazons
were
known all across Greece as some of the fiercest warriors in the
world.
The girdle Eurystheus sent me for was given to Hippolyte by Ares, the
god of war, as a gift because he recognized her as the greatest warrior
of all the Amazons.