Once, when Heracles was ten months old, Alcmena,
woman of Midea, bathed both him and Iphicles,
younger by a night, gave them their fill of milk,
and put them to bed in the brazen shield, that beautiful weapon
Amphitryon had stripped away from Pterelaus
when he fell. Stroking the boys' heads, the woman sang,
"Sleep, my babies, sweetly sleep and wake again.
Safely sleep, my children, my twins, my very soul.
Happily slumber and happily come again to the dawn."
So she sang and spun the mighty shield and sleep
overtook them. But when the Bear at midnight wheels to the west
against Orion himself, who shows his enormous shoulder,
then devious Hera sped two horrible monstrous snakes,
with undulating coils of midnight blue, against
the broad threshold of the house's timbered doors
and commanded them to devour the infant Heracles.
They uncoiled and writhed their blood-devouring bellies
upon the earth and from their eyes a wicked fire
flickered as slithering they spat forth their fatal venom.
But when with licking tongues they crept close to the boys,
then there awoke -- for Zeus knew all -- the dear babes
of lady Alcmena, and there was light throughout the house.
Iphicles, as soon as he spied the evil beasts
above the hollow shield and saw their savage teeth,
screamed aloud and kicked aside his woolly blanket,
struggling to escape. But Heracles attacked
head on and held them with his hands in a heavy grip,
grasping them by the throat where deadly serpents hold
their baneful venom that even immortal gods abhor.
So then the snakes coiled their spires about the boy,
that unweaned nursling child who never cried, and then
again relaxed their spines as they suffered, struggling to find
a slack of that compelling grasp. Alcmena heard
them scream and she was first to wake. "Amphitryon,
get up! For I am paralyzed with fear. Get up,
and do not wait to put your sandals on your feet!
Do you not hear how the younger child shrieks? Nor know
that though it is the dead of night, the walls are all
as clear to see as though it were the shining dawn?
Something strange is going on throughout the house,
my dear husband; yes, there is." So she spoke.
Amphitryon obeyed his wife, got out of bed,
and rushed for his gorgeous sword, which always hung above
his cedarwood couch upon its peg. He reached out for
his baldric, freshly spun, and with the other hand
lifted the sheath, a mighty work of lotus wood,
and then the spacious room was filled again with dark.
Next he shouted to his slaves, who slumbered deeply,
"Bring fire! Quick as you can! Take it from the hearth,
my slaves! And shove back the sturdy bolts of the doors."
"Get up, you stout-hearted thralls, himself is calling out!"
Thus a Phoenician woman who slept beside the mills.
Straightway with the kindling of their lamps the slaves came forth,
and the house was filled with folk rushing all about.
When then they saw the suckling Heracles clutching tight
in his tender hands the two beasts, they cried out
in wonder, but he kept brandishing the snakes before
Amphitryon and jumped up high, delighting in
his baby-prime, and laughed and laid at his father's feet
those terrible monsters asleep in the swoon of death. And then
Alcmena caught to her breast Iphicles, rigid with fright,
in spasms of terror, but their father Amphitryon laid
the other babe beneath his blanket of lamb's wool,
and going back to bed, he put his mind to sleep.
The cocks were just for the third time trumpeting
the break of dawn when Alcmena called Teiresias
and told him of this strange affair, commanding him
to say in reply what the consequence would be.
"Nor, even if the gods intend some wickedness,
conceal it in respect for me. Not even so
can mortal men escape what Fate speeds from the spindle.
Seer, son of Everes, I teach you what you know."
So spoke the queen, and he replied with words like these:
"Courage, woman, bearer of the best of children,
blood of Perseus, courage. Put in your heart the better
of things to come. By the sweet light that long ago
left these eyes of mine, many Achaean women
will rub with their hands the soft yarn over their knees
and sing late in the evening of Alcmena by name,
and you shall have honor among all the women of Argos,
such a man shall ascend to the star-bedecked heaven,
your son, a hero, broad in the chest. All other
men and wild beasts too will be less than he.
He is destined to complete twelve labors and then
to dwell in the house of his father Zeus. A pyre at Trachis
shall consume his mortal remains. In time he shall be called
son-in-law of immortal gods, of even those
who urged the lurking monsters to tear apart the babe.
[The day will come when the jagged-tooth wolf finding the fawn
in its lair will not care to do the creature harm.]
But, woman, let there be fire prepared beneath the ash
and make ready dry wood of camel's thorn or of
the jujube or bramble or wild pear, beaten and parched
by the wind, and on that wild cleft wood at midnight burn
the serpents, the hour when they intended to kill your child.
At dawn let one of your handmaids gather up the ash
from the fire and carry it all across the river and to
the rugged rocks and cast it beyond the boundaries,
and let her return again without a single glance
behind. And first, with pure sulphur fumigate
the house, and then, as custom decrees, sprinkle there
from a wool-bound branch clear water mixed with salt,
and sacrifice to Zeus on high a young male pig
that you may always be superior to your foes."
So spoke Teiresias, and leaving his ivory chair,
he went away, though bowed by the weight of his many years.
Heracles was nurtured by his mother's love
as though he were a young sapling that grows in an orchard
and called the son of Amphitryon, the Argive man.
Letters old Linus taught the boy -- Apollo's son,
a hero, and ever wakeful guardian to Heracles;
to stretch the bow and shoot an arrow at the mark,
Eurytus, rich in broad ancestral plowlands.
But Eumolpus, Philammon's son, made him a bard and molded
both his hands upon the boxwood lyre. And all
the tricks with which the hip--twisting men of Argos trip
each other, wrestling, with their legs, and all the skills
that boxers, clever with their leather thongs, and all
that pancratiasts, who fall to the ground, have found devices
to aid their art -- all this he learned from Hermes' son,
Harpalycus of Panopeus. No one seeing him
even from afar would with courage await
him as contestant in the lists, such was his brow
that scowled and overshot the ferocious cast of his face.
To drive his horses and chariot and protect the nave
of the wheel as he safely steered about the turning post,
Amphitryon himself fondly taught his son,
for many prizes had he brought back from the swift races
in horse-rearing Argos. Unbroken were the chariots
he mounted and only time slackened their leather thongs.
How with leveled spear to hold his shoulder beneath
his shield and aim at his man, withstanding the stroke of swords,
to arrange the phalanx and take the measure of enemy troops
coming on, to command the cavalry, Castor taught,
the son of Hippalus, a fugitive from Argos,
for Tydeus once received from Adrastus his whole estate
and his spreading vineyard and dwelt in the land of horse-driving
Argos.
None among the demigods was Castor's equal
as warrior until old age wore away his youth.
This was how his dear mother had Heracles schooled.
The child's bed was a lion's skin, set next to his father,
and this gave him great delight. His dinner was roast flesh
and a big Dorian loaf of bread in a basket, enough
to satisfy, you may be sure, a gardening man.
During the day he took a little uncooked lunch.
He wore simple clothes to just above his shins . . .