Heracles, Theiodamas, and the Dryopians

Catalogue ID: 03-heroes/203-heracles-theiodamas-dryopes-apollodorus

Cycle: Heroes — Heracles / side campaigns; Hylas’s parentage

Version line: Apollodorean — Theiodamas slain; Dryopian war; Hylas taken

Sources: Apollodorus, *Library* 2.7.7; cf. Apollonius, *Argonautica* 1.1211–1220 (Hylas’s father); Apollodorus 1.9.19 (Hylas on the Argo)

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/03-heroes/203-heracles-theiodamas-dryopes-apollodorus.md

Characters

Ajax — demands the plow-ox; kills Theiodamas; adopts Hylas
Dryopians — people defeated in the ensuing fight
Hylas — son of Theiodamas; taken as companion; later Argonaut (cross-ref)
Nymphs of Mysia — agents of Hylas’s later vanishing (background only)
Theiodamas — Dryopian; plowman or king; slain over the ox

Places

Dryopian country — plow scene and battle
Mysia — later locus of Hylas’s loss (not this entry’s action)

Themes

Narrative

Apollodorus places among Heracles’s later deeds a clash with Theiodamas, king (or plowman-king) of the Dryopians. Heracles, hungry on the road with young Hylas, demanded one of the oxen with which Theiodamas was plowing; when the man refused, Heracles took the beast, killed it, and feasted. Theiodamas armed the Dryopians and attacked; Heracles defeated them, slew Theiodamas, and took the boy Hylas as his arms-bearer and beloved. In related Argonautic tradition Hylas sails with Heracles until the Mysian nymphs draw him under at the spring—so this quarrel supplies the hero’s companion for that later loss. Catalogue the Theiodamas episode apart from Hylas’s disappearance and from the Lydian servitude tales: it is a Heraclean side-war that orphans and annexes Hylas, and a charter of Dryopian defeat in northern Greek lore.