And there the sun beat upon him, and drew all strength away from him,
and he was dazed and dazzled by the rays of the sun. He shouted out
against the sun, and in his anger he wanted to strive against the sun.
Then he drew his bow and shot arrows upward. Far, far out of sight the
arrows of Heracles went. And the sun god, Helios, was filled with
admiration for Heracles, the man who would attempt the impossible by
shooting arrows at him; then did Helios fling down to Heracles his
great golden cup.
Down, and into the Stream of Ocean fell the great golden cup of Helios.
It floated there wide enough to hold all the men who might be in a
ship. Heracles put the bull of Minos into the cup of Helios, and the
cup bore them away, toward the west, and across the Stream of Ocean.
Thus Heracles came to the Island of Erytheia. All over the island
straggled the red cattle of Geryoneus, grazing upon the rich pastures.
Heracles, leaving the bull of Minos in the cup, went upon the island;
he made a club for himself out of a tree and he went toward the cattle.
The hound Orthus bayed and ran toward him; the two-headed hound that
was the brother of Cerberus sprang at Heracles with poisonous foam upon
his jaws. Heracles swung his club and struck the two heads off the
hound. And where the foam of the hound's jaws dropped down a poisonous
plant sprang up. Heracles took up the body of the hound, and swung it
around and flung it far out into the Ocean.
Then the monster Geryoneus came upon him. Three bodies he had instead
of one; he attacked Heracles by hurling great stones at him. Heracles
was hurt by the stones. And then the monster beheld the cup of Helios,
and he began to hurl stones at the golden thing, and it seemed that he
might sink it in the sea, and leave Heracles without a way of getting
from the island. Heracles took up his bow and he shot arrow after arrow
at the monster, and he left him dead in the deep grass of the pastures.
Then he rounded up the red cattle, the bulls and the cows, and he drove
them down to the shore and into the golden cup of Helios where the bull
of Minos stayed. Then back across the Stream of Ocean the cup floated,
and the bull of Crete and the cattle of Geryoneus were brought past
Sicily and through the straits called the Hellespont. To Thrace, that
savage land, they came. Then Heracles took the cattle out, and the cup
of Helios sank in the sea. Through the wild lands of Thrace he drove
the herd of Geryoneus and the bull of Minos, and he came into Myceaæ
once more.
But he did not stay to speak with Eurystheus. He started off to find
the Garden of the Hesperides, the Daughters of the Evening Land. Long
did he search, but he found no one who could tell him where the garden
was. And at last he went to Chiron on the Mountain Pelion, and Chiron
told Heracles what journey he would have to make to come to the
Hesperides, the Daughters of the Evening Land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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