Labor I

Abstract

The first of the Twelve Labors that Heracles performed for Eurystheus was to slay the Nemean Lion, an enormous beast who was living in the foothills of Nemea in the northwestern corner of the Argolid, terrorizing the neighborhood and preying on men and animals alike. The Lion’s skin was invulnerable to weapons, so the only way that Heracles could achieve his task was to choke the beast to death with his bare hands. The eleven Labors that followed would have Heracles demonstrating many heroic qualities—prodigious courage, prowess, endurance, even cunning; but none required from him quite such sheer brute strength. So great was his achievement that Zeus set the Lion in the stars as the constellation Leo, to be an everlasting memorial of his favorite son’s first great task. Heracles ever afterward wore the lion-skin as a trophy, with its forepaws knotted around his neck and its scalp serving as a helmet, the invulnerable hide itself protecting him from all weapons. This was not only the most popular of Heracles’ exploits to be depicted in ancient art, with many hundreds of representations surviving in vase-paintings alone, but also the commonest of all mythological scenes in antiquity.