Labor 8: The Horses of Diomedes
The Man-Eating Horses of Diomedes
After Hercules had captured
the Cretan Bull,
Eurystheus sent him to get the man-eating mares
of
Diomedes, the king of a Thracian tribe called
the
Bistones, and bring them back to him in Mycenae.
According to Apollodorus, Hercules
sailed with a
band of volunteers across the Aegean to Bistonia.
There he and his companions overpowered the
grooms who were tending the horses, and drove
them
to the sea. But by the time he got there, the
Bistones
had realized what had happened, and they sent
a band
of soldiers to recapture the animals. To free
himself
to fight, Hercules entrusted the mares to a youth
named Abderos.
Unfortunately, the mares got
the better of young
Abderos and dragged him around until he was killed.
Meanwhile Hercules fought the
Bistones, killed
Diomedes, and made the rest flee. In honor of
the
slain Abderos, Hercules founded the city of Abdera.
The hero took the mares back
to Eurystheus, but
Eurystheus set them free. The mares wandered around
until eventually they came to Mount Olympos, the
home of the gods, where they were eaten by wild
beasts.
Euripides gives two different
versions of the story,
but both of them differ from Apollodorus's in
that
Hercules seems to be performing the labor alone,
rather than with a band of followers. In one,
Diomedes has the four horses harnessed to a chariot,
and Hercules has to bring back the chariot as
well as
the horses. In the other, Hercules tames the horses
from his own chariot:
He mounted on a chariot and
tamed with the bit the
horses of Diomedes, that greedily champed their
bloody food at gory mangers with unbridled jaws,
devouring with hideous joy the flesh of men.
Euripides, Hercules,
380