Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Tormented beyond endurance by the robe’s poison, Heracles had himself carried to the heights of Mount Oeta in Trachis’s country. He commanded Hyllus and his companions to build a great pyre of oak and wild olive. In Sophocles he exacts oaths: Hyllus must light no hand of his own to the flame if he can avoid it, must take Iole as wife when the time comes, and must bear his father to the mountain without tears that would shame the end. When the pyre was ready, none of the sons would kindle it. Poeas—or, in the commoner telling, his son Philoctetes—passed by (or was summoned) and set the torch. For that service Heracles bequeathed his bow and arrows, the weapons that would later be required for the fall of Troy in the next generation’s war. As the fire rose, the mortal part of Heracles was consumed. Thunder confirmed the gods’ interest; what followed for his divine portion is the apotheosis of the next entry. The Oeta pyre is thus both funeral and threshold: the Hydra’s last victory over the hero’s flesh, and the arranged succession of the bow that ties his death to the Trojan cycle.