A Hercules’ labour - Геркулесов труд
A Hercules’ labour is a very great task. Hercules is
the latinized name of the most famous Greek legendary
hero, Heraeles, distinguished for his prodigious physical
strength.
According to the Greek myth, Heracles was the son
of Zeus and a mortal woman, which fact excited the
jealousy and hatred of the great goddess Hera, wife of
the mighty Zeus. Even before Heracles was born, Hera
planned and plotted to bring some harm upon him. She
placed the brave hero into the power of Eurystheus, a
sickly and cowardly king, whose orders the former had
to take. Throughout his life Heracles suffered the vengeful persecution of Hera; indeed, his first exploit was
the strangling of two enormous serpents which she sent
to kill him in his cradle.
Heracles spent his early youth in developing his
strength. He began his saga of deeds by killing the lion
that was rav ag in g the herds of his m other’s husband.
Then he waged a victorious war against a king of Beotia, and married a royal princess. But he killed his own
children in a fit of madness sent by Hera; as a punishment for this crime, he was obliged to become the ser*
vant of Eurystheus. The latter imposed upon Heracles
the famous labours, later arranged in a cycle of twelve,
as follows: (I) the slaying of the lion of Nemea, whose
skin he therefore wore; (2) the slaying of the nine-headed hydra; (3) the capture of the elusive stag; (4) the
capture of the wild boar; (5) the cleansing of the s tables of King Augeas; (G) the shooting of the monstrous
man-eating birds, (7) the capture of the mad bull that
terrorized the island of Crete; (8) the capture of the
man-eating mares; (9) the taking of the girdle of the
queen of the Amazons; (10) the seizing of the cattle of
the three-bodied giant; (11) the fetching up from the
lower world of the triple-headed dog, guardian of its
gates; (12) the bringing back of the golden apples kept
at the world’s end by the Hesperides.
The favourite hero of the ancient Greeks, Heracles
was very popular with poets and sculptors. One of the
most famous statues represents the hero exhausted by
toil, leaning on his club; and in his left hand he holds
one of the apples of the Hesperides.
1. Геракл (в римской мифологии Геркулес) — один из самых прославленных героев мифологии. 2. Геракл был одарен необыкновенной физической силой. 3. По велению богов он должен был стать на 12 лет слугой царя Эврисфея и совершить по его поручению двенадцать подвигов. 4. Геракл очистил конюшни Авгия, убил девятиглавую гидру, похитил золотые яблоки Гесперид. 5. Имя легендарного греческого героя стало употребляться для обозначения человека, обладающего большой физической силой. 6. Выражение Геркулесов подвиг употребляется, когда говорят о каком-либо деле, требующем необыкновенных усилий.