HERCULES
Hercules was not only the strongest of the heroes (even as a baby he killed two great serpents with his bare hands) but he was also the craziest (he murdered his first three sons in a fit of madness) and the smartest (what he could not accomplish by brute strength he achieved through guile). What is less well known these days is that he was as heroic in bed as he was standing up.
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One time he was invited by king Thespios to help him rid the land of a huge lion that was terrorizing the countryside. When the king set eyes on Hercules he had a better idea: "Come and stay the night at my palace, and rest yourself before the hunt," said the king to Hercules, "and meet my family." As Hercules was soon to find out, the king's family was made up mostly of his fifty virgin daughters, for whom he had not found fitting husbands until then. That night Hercules met them all, and made love to forty nine of them (the fiftieth was too shy). The next morning he and the king went off to hunt the lion, and nine months later all forty nine daughters gave birth to sons.
Much as he loved women, Hercules loved youths no less. |
Plutarch said that the number of his lovers was beyond counting. What we know for sure is that he had more than even the god Apollo (who was no slouch when it came to male love). Most stories about the beloved boys of Hercules have been lost or destroyed, but among his lovers were said to be the young heroes Admetos, Iphitos, and Euphemos, all of them Argonauts, Elacatas, honored by the yearly Elacatia games in Sparta, and Abderus, an Opian boy and son of Hermes, whose love for Hercules cost him his life, and who was honored with his own festival in the city that bore his name.
Abderus was the young man to whom Hercules entrusted the man-eating mares of king Diomedes. Not strong enough to keep them in check, they tore him to shreds and devoured him. Heartbroken, Hercules built the city of Abdera in his memory. There was also a myth, now lost, that claimed that Eurystheus, the king for whom Hercules performs his labors, was one of his lovers, and that Hercules undertook the labors in order to please him. If so, then male love becomes the central motive force of the Hercules cycle, just as the love between Achilles and Patroclos is the fire that drives the story of the Iliad.
Among the lovers of Hercules, but not such unlucky, were Philoctetes who inherited Hercules's bow and arrows. He who was called upon to use them in the Trojan war, and Nestor, the youngest son of king Neleus, whom he grew to be loved more than any other lads. Nireus, Adonis, Jason, Corythus, Stychius, and Phrynx were reputed to have been amongst his lovers as well. But these stories have been all lost.
Of all his boyfriends, however, the ones he loved the best (besides Nestor) were Iolaos of Thebes, and Hylas of Argos. Iolaos, was also his nephew and, though only sixteen, his helper in many of his labors. It was said that their love was such that Hercules found those labors easier when Iolaos watched him. He was Hercules' charioteer and beloved, just like Patroclos was for Achilles.
As Plutarch tells us: "And as to the [male] loves of Hercules, it is difficult to record them because of their number; but those who think that Iolaos was one of them do to this day worship and honor him, and make their loved ones swear fidelity at his tomb." And also, "It is a tradition likewise that Iolaos, who assisted Hercules in his labors and fought at his side, was beloved of him; and Aristotle observes that even in his time lovers pledged their faith at Iolaos' tomb." The Thebans thought so highly of Iolaos that they worshiped him together with Hercules, named their gymnasium after him, and in his honor held yearly contests, the Iolaeia.
HERCULES AND HYLAS
As for the love between Hercules and Hylas, the poet Theocritus, who wrote 300 years before our era, had this to say:
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"We are not the first mortals to see beauty in what is beautiful. No, even Amphitryon's bronze-hearted son, who defeated the savage Nemean lion, loved a boy-charming Hylas, whose hair hung down in curls.
And like a father with a dear son he taught him all the things which had made him a mighty man, and famous. And they were inseparable, being together both day and night. That way the boy might grow the way he wanted him to, and being by his side attain the true measure of a man. |
When Jason sailed after the golden fleece, and all the nobles went with him invited from every city, to rich Iolkos he came too, the man of many labors, son of noble Alcmena.
And brave Hylas in the flower of youth went with him aboard the Argo, the strong-thwarted ship, to bear his arrows and to guard his bow."
After many adventures and no little struggle it happened one day that the ship was becalmed off the Mysian coast, and the noble heroes held a contest to see who was the strongest. One by one the other heroes grew tired, until only Jason and Hercules were left. So powerfully did Hercules tug at his oar that the strong-knit timbers of the ship shuddered with each pull, until finally the oar's shaft, made of hard wood and as thick as his own forearm, snapped in two. Half the oar fell into the sea, and the other half, together with Hercules, into the bottom of the ship. And he sat up in silence glaring round; for his hands were not used to being idle.
The other heroes wearily started rowing again, and late in the day, close to supper time they reached the Mysian port of Kios, at the mouth of the river by the same name. Since they came in friendship, the Mysians warmly welcomed them and gave them in their need provisions and sheep and plenty of wine. Then some of the heroes gathered dried wood, others from the meadows great heaps of leaves for making beds, while others were twirling sticks to start a fire; still others were mixing wine and water in the bowl and making ready the feast, after sacrificing one of the sheep at nightfall to Delian Apollo, protector god of wave-tossed ships. But the son of Zeus, wishing his comrades enjoyment of the feast, made his way into a wood, that he might first uproot a fir tree and fashion himself a new oar.
Meanwhile Hylas took a bronze pitcher and went off on his own, in quest of a sacred running spring, that he might before his return draw for him water for his dinner and get all else ready and in good order for him at suppertime. For Hercules had with his own hands brought him up with such habits from the time he took him, while still an infant, from his father Theiodamas, the king of the Dryopians, whom he killed in a fight over an ox.
Quickly Hylas came to the spring which the people of that land call Pegae. The dances of the nymphs [nature spirits] were just now starting; for it was the custom of the nymphs that haunted that lovely headland to honor Artemis in hymn and dance by night. The ones who held the mountain peaks or glens were ranged far off guarding the woods; but Dryope, a water-nymph, was just rising from the clear spring; and she saw the boy on shore, glowing with the rosy flush of his beauty and sweet grace. For the full moon beaming from the sky shone bright on him. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, made her heart faint, and in her confusion she could scarcely gather her wits.
As soon as the unsuspecting boy dipped the pitcher in the stream and the flowing water rang loud as it poured against the sounding bronze, she laid her left arm upon his neck yearning to kiss his tender mouth; and with her right hand she drew down his elbow, and plunged him into the midst of the eddy. His muffled cry was heard only by the hero Polyphemos, son of Eilatos. Right away he drew his great sword and took off towards Pegae in pursuit, in fear lest the boy should be the prey of wild beasts, or men should have lain in ambush for him, and be carrying him off.
But all his searching only turned up the brazen pitcher. As he ran to and fro, brandishing his naked sword in his hand he ran into Hercules himself returning through the darkness. At once he told him what had happened, heart pounding, out of breath: "My poor friend, I shall be the first to bring you bitter news: Hylas has gone to the spring and has not returned safe, perhaps robbers have attacked and are carrying him off, or beasts are tearing him to pieces; I heard his shout for help."
When Hercules heard those words, sweat poured down from his temples and black blood boiled in his heart. In wrath he hurled the fir tree to the ground and rushed wildly along the path wherever his feet took him. "Hylas!" he roared three times, as loud as he could with that deep voice of his, and the boy answered three times, but his voice came faintly through the water.
Like a bull which, stung by a gadfly, tears madly along and heeds not herd or herdsman but presses on, now without check, now standing still, so Hercules raged fiercely through the thick wood, shouting afar with loud thunderous bellows like a great beast in pain. He and Polyphemos searched all night, and forced every Mysian they met to join them, to no avail. He had been seduced by the nymphs, and remained to live with them in an underwater cave.
Then he gathered the Mysians together and threatened to ravage their land if they didn't discover for him the fate of Hylas, either alive or dead. To appease him they chose out the noblest sons of the people, and gave them as pledges for him, and swore an oath that they would never cease from the toil of seeking him. Wherefore long afterwards the Mysians sacrificed to Hylas once a year at Prusa, near Pegae.
The priest thrice called out his name, and the others roamed the mountains shouting aloud for the son of Theiodamas. They also looked after the town of Trachis, for it was there that Hercules did place the boys they sent to him from Kios to take as hostages.
Bibliography
1. Robert Graves, The Greek Myths
2. Plutarch - Eroticus, par. 17 - Life of Pelopidas
3. Bernard Sergent, Homosexuality in Greek Myth
4. Theocritus, Idyll 13 (fr. Bernard Sergent,
Homosexuality in Greek Myth)
5. Edward Tripp, The Meridian Handbook of Classical Mythology
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