Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

While Heracles drove Geryon’s cattle from the far west toward Mycenae, one bull broke away at Rhegium, swam the strait, and came to the plain of Eryx in western Sicily. Eryx, son of Poseidon and king of the Elymi, mixed the beast with his own herds. Heracles, leaving the rest of the cattle with Hephaestus (in Apollodorus’s wording of the pause), tracked the bull and demanded it back. Eryx refused unless the stranger beat him at wrestling. They wrestled three times; Heracles threw and killed Eryx, recovered the bull, and rejoined the herd for the continued drive. Local memory kept Eryx as an eponymous mountain and cult-site; the Greek handbook tale uses the bout to mark Heracles’ passage through Sicily on the cattle-road. Catalogue it apart from the killing of Geryon, Orthrus, and Eurytion on Erytheia.