Idyll 24

24. The Little Heracles When Heracles was ten months old, Alcmena of Midea once

took him and Iphicles, a night younger,

and having bathed them both and filled them with milk,

laid them in a bronze shield, the fair piece of armor

that Amphitryon had stripped from fallen Pterelaus.

And touching the heads of her children the woman said:

Sleep, my babes, a sweet sleep from which you will wake;

sleep, my soul, two brothers, children safe and sound;

blessed may you lie, and blessed may you come to the dawn.

So saying, she rocked the great shield, and sleep took them.

But at the hour when at midnight the Bear turns toward its setting

right over against Orion, who shows his great shoulder,

then crafty Hera sent two dread monsters,

serpents bristling under their dark coils,

upon the broad threshold, where the hollow door-posts

of the doorway stood, threatening to devour the babe Heracles.

And the two, uncoiling along the ground, both rolled

their blood-hungry bellies; and from their eyes an evil fire

flashed as they came, and they spat out a heavy venom.

But when, with darting tongues, they came near the children,

then they woke, by the will of Zeus who notices all things,

the dear children of Alcmena, and light arose throughout the house.

He at once cried out, as soon as he marked the evil beasts

over the hollow shield and saw their shameless fangs,

Iphicles, and kicked off the woolen coverlet with his feet,

eager to flee; but Heracles met them with his hands,

and bound them both in a heavy bond,

gripping their throats, where the baneful poisons are hidden

in deadly serpents, which even the gods abhor.

And the two wound their coils about the late-born,

milk-fed child, who under his nurse's care had never wept;

but again they unwound them when they grew weary of straining,

trying to find release from the forced bond.

And Alcmena heard the cry and was the first to wake:

Rise, Amphitryon; for a chill fear holds me;

rise, and do not put sandals on your feet.

Do you not hear how the younger of the children cries out?

Or do you not see that, though it is the dead of night,

all the walls are clear, as in the pure dawn?

There is something new in the house, dear husband.

So she spoke; and he came down from the bed, obeying his wife,

and reached for his richly wrought sword, which always hung

above the cedar bedstead on its peg.

He grasped for the newly woven baldric,

lifting in his other hand the great scabbard, a work of lotus-wood.

But the wide chamber was filled again with darkness;

and then he called to the slaves who were breathing heavy sleep:

Bring fire as quickly as you can, taking it from the hearth,

my slaves, and throw back the strong bolts of the doors.

Rise, you stout-hearted slaves. The master is calling.

So spoke the Phoenician woman who had her bed at the mill.

And the slaves came quickly with kindled lamps;

and the house was filled, as each one hastened.

And when they saw the suckling Heracles

holding the two beasts fast in his tender hands,

they cried out together; but he showed the creatures

to his father Amphitryon, and leapt up high, rejoicing

in his boyish triumph, and laughing he laid before his father's feet

the dread monsters now lulled in death.

Then Alcmena gathered to her own bosom

the dry, pale, terrified Iphicles;

and Amphitryon laid the other child beneath the lambswool coverlet,

and going back to bed bethought him of his rest.

The cocks were just singing the third and last dawn-song;

then Alcmena called the seer Teiresias, who always spoke the truth,

and told him the strange portent,

and bade him reveal how it was to be accomplished.

And though the gods purpose something evil,

do not in shame hide it from me; for even so men cannot escape

what Fate hastens from her spindle.

Son of Eueres, I teach you, who know full well.

So much the queen said; and he answered her thus:

Take heart, woman who have borne the noblest, blood of Perseus;

take heart; and lay up in your mind the better part of what is to come.

For by my sweet light, long since gone from my eyes,

many of the Achaean women, rubbing the soft thread

upon their knees with their hands, shall sing at nightfall

of Alcmena by name, and you shall be a reverence to the Argive women.

Such a man is this your son, who shall mount

to the star-bearing heaven, a hero broad of chest,

to whom all wild beasts and all other men shall be inferior.

It is fated that, when he has accomplished twelve labors,

he shall dwell in the house of Zeus, and the Trachinian pyre shall hold all that is mortal of him.

And he shall be called the son-in-law of the immortals, who roused these

lurking beasts to destroy the babe.

That day shall come, when the sharp-toothed wolf,

seeing the fawn in its lair, will not wish to harm it.

But, woman, let the fire be ready beneath the ashes,

and prepare dry sticks of camel-thorn or of buckthorn

or of bramble, or the dry wild pear shaken by the wind;

and burn these two serpents on the wild billets

at midnight, just when they themselves wished to kill your child.

And at dawn let one of the handmaids gather the ash of the fire

and carry it well, all of it, across the river,

and fling it among the jagged rocks beyond the border, and return

without looking back; and first purify the house with pure brimstone,

and then, as is the custom, with pure water mixed with salt

sprinkle it from a garlanded branch, water that does no harm;

and sacrifice a male boar to Zeus the supreme,

that you may ever be supreme over your enemies.

He spoke, and pushing back his ivory chair

Teiresias went off, heavy though he was with his many years.

And Heracles grew up beneath his mother, like a young plant in an orchard,

called the son of Argive Amphitryon.

Letters the old man Linus taught the boy,

son of Apollo, a watchful guardian, a hero,

and to draw the bow and aim true with arrows,

Eurytus, rich from his fathers in broad acres.

And he made him a singer and shaped both his hands

upon the boxwood lyre, the sweet-singing son of Philammon.

And all the tricks by which the hip-twisting men of Argos

throw each other in wrestling, and all that boxers

skilled with the thongs, and all the holds the all-in fighters

falling to the ground have devised, useful to their art,

he learned, taught by the son of Hermes,

Harpalycus of Phanote, whom not even seeing him from afar

would any man boldly await as he contended in the games;

so dread a frown lay upon his grim face.

And to drive horses under the chariot, and safely round the post

to turn the wheel, guarding the nave,

Amphitryon himself, with loving mind, taught his son,

since he had won very many treasures from the swift games

in horse-pasturing Argos, and the chariots

he mounted kept their straps unbroken till time loosed them.

And to reach at a man with leveled spear, his shoulder under the shield,

and to bear the gash of swords,

and to marshal the ranks, and to measure out an ambush

of the enemy as they came on, and to give commands to horsemen,

Castor, son of Hippalus, taught him, when he came an exile from Argos,

at the time when Tydeus dwelt, having received from Adrastus

all his portion and the great vineyard, in horse-driving Argos.

And among the demigods no other warrior was like Castor

before old age wore away his youth.

So his dear mother had Heracles taught.

And the boy's bed was made near his father's,

a lion's skin most pleasing to him,

and his dinner was roasted meat and a great Dorian loaf

in a basket; surely it would satisfy a man who digs in the vineyard.

But by day he took a small meal without fire.

And he wore plain clothes that reached below his knees.