Heracles: The Last Six Labours — To Hades and Back

A living man comes back from the underworld bringing its watchdog into daylight. It sounds like an ending vast enough to conclude a hero’s whole existence. For Heracles, however, capturing Cerberus finishes a term of service, not his life. His immortality lies much farther ahead.

Part One took Heracles from the Nemean Lion to the Stymphalian birds. Two tasks were rejected: the Hydra because Iolaus helped, the Augean stables because Heracles expected payment. In the Library attributed to Pseudo-Apollodorus, the famous twelve therefore comprise ten original assignments and two replacements. The last six move beyond local beasts toward increasingly distant places and extraordinary rules. This article follows Library 2.5.7–12, keeping other traditions distinct.

The Cretan Bull: capture without a second story’s embellishments

The seventh task sends Heracles to Crete. Pseudo-Apollodorus records competing origins for its extraordinary bull: one tradition connects the animal to Europa’s passage across the sea; another says Poseidon sent it to Minos, who substituted another sacrifice and provoked the god’s anger.

Minos does not help Heracles seize it. The hero catches the bull himself and presents it to Eurystheus. It is then released, wanders across Greece and ultimately troubles the people around Marathon. Its journey makes the bull a possible bridge to later stories of Theseus, but this labour stops with the capture and presentation. The Library does not say that Heracles slings the bull across his shoulders, nor does its bull breathe fire. Library 2.5.7.

The mares of Diomedes: a victory with a grave beside it

In Thrace, Diomedes, king of the Bistones, keeps man-eating mares. Heracles leads volunteers to their stables, defeats the grooms and drives the animals toward the sea. The Bistones pursue, and Heracles faces two incompatible jobs: control dangerous animals and repel armed men.

He leaves the mares in the care of Abderus and fights. In Pseudo-Apollodorus’ account, the mares kill Abderus by dragging him after them. The hero defeats the Bistones, kills Diomedes and establishes Abdera by his companion’s grave. He delivers the mares to Eurystheus, who subsequently releases them.

Popular versions sometimes have Diomedes fed to his own horses. That is not the event told in this passage, and it would shift attention away from Abderus’ death. The city’s foundation is a memorial to the person who did not survive the successful labour. Library 2.5.8.

Hippolyta’s belt: the battle that need not happen

Eurystheus’ daughter Admete wants the war-belt of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. Heracles reaches Themiscyra. The queen meets him, asks his purpose and promises to give him the belt. The task appears capable of ending through conversation.

Then Hera enters disguised as an Amazon and spreads a false warning that the strangers intend to abduct their queen. The Amazons arm themselves and ride against the visitors. Heracles sees a sudden attack and assumes Hippolyta has betrayed him. He kills her, takes the belt and leaves amid fighting.

Neither side on the shore knows the crucial piece of information the reader has been given. The tragedy is not an unavoidable struggle against a hostile queen: Hippolyta has already agreed to cooperate. Hera’s deception turns a peaceful handover into bloodshed. This is how Pseudo-Apollodorus constructs the event; different Amazon traditions should not be pasted over its specific causes. Library 2.5.9.

Geryon’s cattle: beyond the familiar world

The tenth assignment is to fetch Geryon’s cattle from Erythia, near Ocean. Geryon has three bodies joined at the waist. His red herd is protected by the herdsman Eurytion and Orthrus, a two-headed dog. Before reaching them Heracles erects the pillars at the bounds of Europe and Libya. Tormented by the Sun’s heat, he threatens Helios with his bow. Helios admires the audacity and lends him a golden goblet in which to cross Ocean.

At Erythia Heracles clubs Orthrus, kills Eurytion and shoots Geryon. He embarks the cattle in the Sun’s vessel. That is not yet the end of the job: the cattle scatter during the homeward journey, including when Hera sends a gadfly in Thrace. Only after further losses and recoveries does Heracles finally deliver the herd to Eurystheus.

The Library makes the voyage almost as implausible as the opponent. The hero can overcome the guardian and the three-bodied owner, yet still has to move animals across an immense mythic landscape. Library 2.5.10.

The Hesperides: finding Atlas, then outwitting him

The two replacement labours begin with three golden apples. It is tempting to imagine the Hesperides as a fixed western garden, but Pseudo-Apollodorus actually places the apples on Atlas among the Hyperboreans in the version he chooses, while noting alternative geography. A many-headed immortal dragon guards them. Even locating the fruit becomes an adventure.

Heracles holds the shape-changing Nereus until the sea-god reveals the route. Along his travels he encounters Antaeus, whose strength depends on touching the earth; lifting the wrestler away from it becomes the answer. Heracles later frees Prometheus from his torment. Prometheus advises him not to take the apples himself. Atlas can fetch them—if someone else supports his burden.

Heracles takes the sphere of heaven while Atlas collects the fruit. When the Titan returns with the apples, he proposes carrying them to Eurystheus, leaving Heracles to hold the sky indefinitely. Heracles pretends to agree and requests one small favor: Atlas should take back the burden long enough for him to arrange a pad on his head. Atlas obliges. Heracles takes the apples and departs.

Pseudo-Apollodorus also mentions a different account in which Heracles kills the guardian dragon and picks the apples himself. The Atlas version is the one in which cunning ends a contest of strength. Athena ultimately returns the fruit to its proper place. Library 2.5.11.

Cerberus: the only way out is back

The last labour demands Cerberus alive. Heracles must descend into Hades, master the guardian of the dead, show him to Eurystheus and then return him. First he is purified and initiated at Eleusis. His entrance to the underworld is at Taenarum.

He finds Theseus and Pirithous, punished for trying to seize Persephone. Heracles raises Theseus, but when he tries to free Pirithous the earth trembles and he leaves him behind. Even a man strong enough to enter Hades cannot release everyone.

Hades grants permission for Cerberus to be taken if Heracles overpowers him without using his carried weapons. This is not the same as saying the hero has no protection. Pseudo-Apollodorus explicitly gives him a cuirass and the Nemean Lion’s skin. Heracles wraps his arms around the hound and endures a bite from the serpent in its tail. He brings Cerberus into the upper world, presents him and takes him back to the underworld.

The last labour reverses the first. The lion’s hide has accompanied Heracles all the way to the gates of death; the first trophy protects him in his final task. But the final achievement is not conquest of the underworld. Cerberus goes home. Library 2.5.12.

What ends—and what does not

Eurystheus’ labour-cycle is complete. The original ten commissions and their two replacements have carried Heracles from the Peloponnese to the limits of the known and imagined world. The decisive skill changes with the challenge: capture, delegation, recognizing deception, navigation, bargaining, endurance.

The labours do not end with Heracles becoming a god. The Library continues through many later adventures. In 2.7.7, after the poisoned garment and the pyre on Mount Oeta, a cloud bears him to heaven; the author places his immortality there, not at the moment Cerberus returns to Hades. The oracle’s early promise and its eventual fulfilment belong to different points in his life. Library 2.7.7.

The next channel story turns toward Jason and the Argonauts. Apollonius Rhodius includes Heracles among the heroes aboard the Argo, but this is a narrative bridge, not a claim that every ancient chronology begins the voyage immediately after the twelfth labour. Argonautica Book 1.

Sources and version boundaries

• Main narrative: Pseudo-Apollodorus, Library 2.5.7–12.
• Earlier calculation: Library 2.4.12 and 2.5.11. Ten initial tasks, two rejected, two replacements; twelve years of service is a separate quantity.
• Later apotheosis: Library 2.7.7, well after the last labour.
• Argonautic bridge only: Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica Book 1.

For the Nemean Lion through the Stymphalian birds, read The First Six Labours of Heracles once its companion article is public. Until the respective videos are actually PUBLIC, both texts remain reviewed drafts rather than live site pages.