Characters
- Alcaeus — source of the discarded name Alcides
- Artemis — god of the oracle (through the Pythia)
- Heracles — purified exile; renamed at Delphi; enters service at Tiryns
- The Pythia — delivers Apollo’s command; confers the name Heracles; promises immortality after the labors
- Thespius — prior purifier (carry-over from 012)
Places
- Argos — commanded residence and base of the labor-years
- Mycenae — Eurystheus’s sphere of power (Apollodorus places the frightened king often at Mycenae)
- Ocean’s streams — place of the preceding purification
- Pytho — seat of the renaming oracle
Themes
Narrative
After purification at Thespiae, Heracles consulted Delphi. The Pythia refused him the old domestic name Alcides, called him Heracles, and set the terms of his future: he must dwell in Tiryns, serve Eurystheus for twelve years, and perform the labors that king would impose; fulfillment would bring him immortal life among the gods.
He obeyed. Settling at Tiryns under Eurystheus’s authority, he received the first commands of the cycle that classical myth numbers as twelve. Eurystheus, born ahead of him by Hera’s deceit and already marked in the *Iliad* as the weaker man preferred by fate’s wording, becomes the mortal instrument of that goddess’s continuing hostility: each labor is both penance for the children’s blood and the staged path to apotheosis.
This entry is the hinge, not a labor: it records the oracle’s renaming, the twelve-year indenture, the promise of immortality, and the transfer of narrative center from Thebes to the Argolid. The Nemean Lion opens the sequence proper.