Herakles is remembered as a figure of overwhelming strength—a slayer of monsters, a conqueror of chaos. Yet among his 12 Labors is one that demands the opposite of force: the capture, without harm, of the Ceryneian Hind.
We might think of Herakles’s 12 Labors as exploits or adventures. But “labors” is the correct word. Even after his death, when Herakles was deified and joined the immortal gods on Olympus, his shade—his shadow-like existence after death—remained in the realm of the dead, called Hades. In Homer’s “The Odyssey,” Herakles then complained to Odysseus, whom he meets during Odysseus’s descent among the dead.: “I was a son of Zeus, but infinite was my suffering; for I was a slave to a far inferior man, and heavy were the labours he laid on me.”
