Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Eurystheus ordered Heracles first to bring the skin of the Nemean lion. That beast, offspring of Typhon in Apollodorus’s genealogy (Hesiod makes it a child of Orthus and Chimera, reared by Hera), was invulnerable to iron, bronze, and stone. On the way Heracles lodged with Molorchus of Cleonae. When Molorchus would sacrifice, Heracles told him to wait thirty days: if he returned safely, sacrifice to Zeus the Savior; if he died, offer hero-cult to Heracles as to the dead. At Nemea he shot the lion without effect, then beat it with his club, and finally closed in the cave whose double mouth he had blocked, caught the animal in his arms, and choked it to death. He set the carcass on his shoulders. Returning within the thirty days, he found Molorchus about to offer him funerary honors and turned the sacrifice instead to Zeus the Savior. When he tried to flay the beast, no knife would cut; Athena prompted him to use the lion’s own claws, and so he stripped the hide. Thereafter he wore the skin as a cloak and the scalp and jaws as a helmet. He carried the proof to Mycenae. Eurystheus, terrified at the strength that could master such a creature, forbade Heracles to enter the city thereafter and ordered him to display his catches before the gates; the king even had a bronze jar (pithos) prepared beneath the earth to hide in when Heracles approached. From this labor onward Copreus, son of Pelops, served as herald between them.