From his early years Hercules was instructed in the learning of his time.  Castor, the most experienced charioteer of his day, taught him, Eurytus also, how to shoot with a bow and arrows; Linus how to play upon the lyre; and Eumolpus, grandson of the North Wind, drilled him in singing.  Thus time passed to his eighteenth year when, so great already had become his strength and knowledge, he killed a fierce lion which had preyed upon the flocks of Amphitryon while they were grazing on Mount Cithaeron, and which had in fact laid waste many a fat farm of the surrounding country.

But the anger of Hera still followed Hercules, and the goddess sent upon him a madness.  In this craze the hero did many unhappy deeds.  For punishment and in expiation he condemned himself to exile, and at last he went to the great shrine of the god Apollo at Delphi to ask whither he should go and where settle.  The Pythia, or priestess in the temple, desired him to settle at Tiryns, to serve as bondman to Eurystheus, who ruled at Mycenae as King, and to perform the great labours which Eurystheus should impose upon him.  When these tasks were all accomplished, the inspired priestess added, Hercules should be numbered among the immortal gods.

THE FIRST LABOUR—­WRESTLING WITH THE NEMEAN LION

The first task which Eurystheus required of Hercules was to bring him the skin of a lion which no arrow nor other weapon could wound, and which had long been a terror to the good people who lived in Nemea.  Hercules set forth armed with bow and quiver, but paused in the outer wood of Nemea long enough to cut himself his famous club.  There too he fell in with an honest countryman who pledged him to make a sacrifice to Zeus, the saviour, if he, Hercules, should return victorious; but if he were slain by the monstrous lion, then the countryman should make the sacrifice a funeral offering to himself as a hero.

So Hercules proceeded, far into a dense wood, deserted because all people feared the fierce beast it protected.  On he went till after many days he sighted the lion at rest near the cave which was its den.  Standing behind a tree of great girth, Hercules fitted and let fly an arrow.  It struck and glanced, leaving the animal unharmed.  Then he tried another shot, aiming at the heart.  Again the arrow failed.  But the lion was by this time roused, and his eyes shot fiery glances, and the heavy roar from his throat made the woods most horribly resound.  Then the devoted Hercules seized his heavy wooden club, and rushing forward drove the lion by the suddenness and fierceness of his assault into his den.  But the den had two entrances.  Against one Hercules rolled huge stones, and entering the cave by the other he grasped the lion’s throat with both hands, and thus held him struggling and gasping for breath till he lay at his feet dead.