King Eurystheus sat hidden in the great jar, and he thought of more
terrible labors he would make Heracles engage in. Now he would send him
oversea and make him strive with fierce tribes and more dread monsters.
When he had it all thought out he had Heracles brought before him and he
told him of these other labors.
He was to go to savage Thrace and there destroy the man-eating horses of
King Diomedes; afterward he was to go amongst the dread women, the
Amazons, daughters of Ares, the god of war, and take from their queen,
Hippolyte, the girdle that Ares had given her; then he was to go to Crete
and take from the keeping of King Minos the beautiful bull that Poseidon
had given him; afterward he was to go to the Island of Erytheia and take
away from Geryoneus, the monster that had three bodies instead of one, the
herd of red cattle that the two-headed hound Orthus kept guard over; then
he was to go to the Garden of the Hesperides, and from that garden he was
to take the golden apples that Zeus had given to Hera for a marriage
gift—where the Garden of the Hesperides was no mortal knew.
So Heracles set out on a long and perilous quest. First he went to
Thrace, that savage land that was ruled over by Diomedes, son of Ares, the
war god. Heracles broke into the stable where the horses were; he caught
three of them by their heads, and although they kicked and bit and
trampled he forced them out of the stable and down to the seashore, where
his companion, Abderus, waited for him. The screams of the fierce horses
were heard by the men of Thrace, and they, with their king, came after
Heracles. He left the horses in charge of Abderus while he fought the
Thracians and their savage king. Heracles shot his deadly arrows amongst
them, and then he fought with their king. He drove them from the seashore,
and then he came back to where he had left Abderus with the fierce horses.
They had thrown Abderus upon the ground, and they were trampling upon
him. Heracles drew his bow and he shot the horses with the unerring arrows
that were dipped with the gall of the Hydra he had slain. Screaming, the
horses of King Diomedes raced toward the sea, but one fell and another
fell, and then, as it came to the line of the foam, the third of the
fierce horses fell. They were all slain with the unerring arrows.
Then Heracles took up the body of his companion and he buried it with
proper rights, and over it he raised a column. Afterward, around that
column a city that bore the name of Heracles’s friend was built.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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