After his labours Hercules went to Thebes and
gave Megara to Iolaus,1 and, wishing
himself to wed, he ascertained that Eurytus, prince of Oechalia, had proposed the hand of his daughter Iole as a prize to him who
should vanquish himself and his sons in archery.2 So he came to Oechalia, and though he proved himself better than
them at archery, yet he did not get the bride; for while Iphitus, the elder of Eurytus's
sons, said that Iole should be given to Hercules, Eurytus and the others refused, and said
they feared that, if he got children, he would again kill his offspring.3
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
1 With this and what follows down to the adventure with Syleus, compare Diod. 4.31 （who seems to be following the same authority as Apollodorus）; Tzetzes, Chiliades ii.412-435.
2 Compare Scholiast on Hom. Il. 5.392; Soph. Trach. 260ff., with the Scholiast on Soph. Trach. 266; Scholiast on Eur. Hipp. 545.
3 As he had killed the children he had by Megara. See Apollod. 2.4.12.
Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Includes Frazer's notes.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.