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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Diomedes, king of the Bistones, a war-like people of Thrace, owned man-eating horses, which Herakles had to subdue: according to Apollodoros (ii 5.8) this was his eighth labour. Neither the number nor the order of Herakles' labours is certain; our earliest evidence for a canonical twelve is the metopal decoration of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (470–457 B.C.). The second metope from the south corner of the eastern end of the temple is badly preserved, but enough remains to make it clear that Herakles was here represented standing in front of a single horse, subduing it in much the same manner as he does the Cretan Bull on the west end of the Temple. Earlier, in the sixth century, Bathykles had represented Herakles ‘subduing Diomedes’ on the ‘throne’ at Amyklae (Pausanias iii 8.12), but of this nothing remains.
Until the publication in 1961 of a papyrus with more than fifty new verses of a poem by Pindar, our earliest literary evidence for Herakles' encounter with Diomedes was the Alcestis of Euripides (438 B.C.): Herakles comes to the palace of Thessalian Admetus, on his way to the Bistones (ll. 482 ff.). The new poem, which probably antedates the Alcestis by several decades, begins, as preserved, with a brief mention of Herakles' theft of Geryon's cattle and the moral implications of his deed.
1 Brommer, F., Herakles (1972)Google Scholar.
2 Ashmole, B. and Yalouris, N., Olympia (1967), 22 fGoogle Scholar.
3 Ibid. 27 and figs. 177–9.
4 In art Herakles tends to be represented with only one horse (on their number and sex, see below, n. 9), probably because the one-to-one ratio was compositionally more successful. Representations of Herakles and horses (which are not always clearly those of Diomedes; see below, n. 14) have been compiled by Brommer, , Vasenlisten 3 (1973), 86 ffGoogle Scholar. and Denkmälerlisten zur griechischen Heldensage, i: Herakles (1971), 144 ff. (‘Rosse’).
5 Pausanias does not specifically mention the horses in his brief description of the subjects represented on the ‘throne’. They probably were included, but we cannot be certain of this from Pausanias' words. Since both Bathykles and his ‘throne’ are virtually unknown to us, we cannot know what influence they had on later art.
6 Lobel, E., The Oxyrhynchus Papyri xxvi (1961), 141 ffGoogle Scholar. (no. 2450). See also HSCP lxxii (1968), 47 ft. (C. Pavese); ibid. lxxvi (1972), 45 ff. (H. Lloyd-Jones, with bibliography).
7 Euripides also mentions the episode in his Herakles, 380 ff.
8 HSCP lxxvi, 45 ff.
9 The number and the sex of Diomedes' horses varies (cf. Oxy. Pap. xxvi, 149, on 1. 4), although four mares seem most likely, since this was the ideal chariot team. Eurystheus did not order Herakles to kill the beasts, but to bring them back to him—according to Apollodoros (ii 5.8), so that he could use them for his own chariot. In art the full number is shown on a lekythos in Syracuse (see below, n. 21) and on some Etruscan gems (cf. Zwierlein-Diehl, E., Antike Gemmen in Deutchen Sammlungen: Berlin ii (1969), pl. 60, no. 392)Google Scholar.
10 HSCP lxxvi, 52; Oxy. Pap. xxvi, 150 (ll. 22 ff.).
11 Oxy. Pap. xxvi, 150 (l. 15).
12 HSCP lxxii, 74 f.; lxxvi, 52.
13 HSCP lxxii, 78 f. See also Maia n.s. xvi (1964), 311 ff. (Pavese's description of the Oltos cup).
14 When Herakles appears with a horse (cf. Vasenlisten 3, 186 ff.) the artist may not always have had the horses of Diomedes in mind (cf. Pfuhl, , Mz 323Google Scholar, para. 337).
15 Florence, I B 32, frr. ARV 58, no. 47. CV i, pl. 1. B 32.
16 Campana Fragments (1933), 8 and pl. Y, 3.
17 Once Odessa, now Leningrad. ABV 294, no. 22. Para. 128. The diameter of the cup is 22·5 cm. Mme K. S. Gorbunova supplied the photographs and measurement.
18 Cf. CF. 8.
19 Talcott, L. and Sparkes, B., Agora xii, 18 ffGoogle Scholar.
20 As Pavese has noted (HSCP lxxii, 78), in art Herakles wields his club, not so much to harm the beasts as to threaten them into obedience. The text of the Pindar fragment is not clear at line 29 (cf. Oxy. Pap. xxvi, 151). Pavese reads τєῑρє δὲ στєλєῷ—‘stung them with his club’ (HSCP lxxii, 77 f.), but Lloyd-Jones (HSCP lxxvi, 52) has pointed out that this conjecture is impossible, and suggests, with Lobel (Oxy. Pap. xxvi, 151, 1. 24), that something has dropped out of the text. In art Herakles may wield the club because it is one of the attributes by which he is most easily recognised, but Pavese's notion of how Herakles dominated the animals seems to me reasonable, indeed very likely, in view of the Psiax cup: here Herakles, dressed in his lionskin, is in need of no other attribute for easy identification.
21 Herakles grapples with one of the horses on a white ground lekythos with black-figure decoration in Syracuse (14569) by the Marathon Painter (ABL 222, no. 22; ABV 487; Boardman, BF Handbook, fig. 257) of the years around 490 B.C. Here there are four horses, and their special character is indicated not by dismembered human bodies, but by the presence of wings. This is the sort of detail which the Marathon Painter would have liked (because it gave him yet another opportunity to display his interest in contrasting areas of black and white paint), but according to some version of the story the horses may have been winged, especially since they appear in this form on some Etruscan gems (cf. P. Zazoff, Etruskische Skarabäen (1968), 165, no. 685).
22 HSCP lxxii. 79.
