Erymanthian Boar
The boar of Mount Erymanthus in Frazer’s translation
The animal that ravages Psophis and must be brought alive to Mycenae in Heracles’s fourth labour.
Quick answer
In Apollodorus’s Library, the Erymanthian Boar is the animal that raids Psophis from Mount Erymanthus. Heracles must capture it alive as his fourth labour. He drives it from a thicket with shouts, traps the exhausted boar in deep snow, and brings it to Mycenae.[1]
Quick facts
| Record type | Individual creature in Greek mythography |
|---|---|
| Source | Apollodorus, Library 2.5.4, translated by Frazer (1921) |
| Source realm | Erymanthus and Psophis in the Greek mythic world |
| Form | Boar; no measurements or colour specified |
| Threat | Raids on Psophis from the mountain |
| Capturer | Heracles, called Hercules in Frazer’s translation |
| Command | Eurystheus’s fourth labour: bring the boar alive |
| Outcome | Trapped in deep snow and taken to Mycenae |
These details follow the selected passage; it does not describe the boar’s subsequent fate.[1]
What the source says
Eurystheus orders the boar brought alive. The compiler identifies it by the damage it does to Psophis and by the mountain from which it emerges, Erymanthus. On the journey, Heracles passes through Pholoe and is hosted by Pholus.[1]
The narrative pauses for the centaur episode: opening the shared wine brings armed centaurs to Pholus’s cave, and the ensuing violence includes the accidental wounding of Chiron and the death of Pholus. After returning and burying Pholus, Heracles resumes the hunt. These events frame the journey; they are not actions performed by the boar.[1]
The capture itself is brief. Heracles uses shouts to chase the boar out of a thicket, drives the exhausted animal into deep snow, traps it, and takes it to Mycenae. Frazer’s wording does not specify a net, rope, or constructed trap.[1]
Description and limits
The passage identifies a boar capable of ravaging Psophis, but supplies no detailed anatomy, extraordinary tusks, parentage, or supernatural powers. Its exhaustion matters to the capture. Deep snow is part of the encounter, not evidence of an ice-related ability or a permanent snowy habitat.[1]
The bronze shown beside this account belongs to later artistic reception. Its visible form cannot supply missing physical details for the ancient text.
Source realm: Erymanthus and Psophis
Erymanthus is the mountain from which the animal raids Psophis; Mycenae is the destination after capture. Pholoe belongs to the hero’s intervening journey. The text leaves the particular thicket unnamed.[1]
This is an individual creature record within the Greek mythic world, grouped under Mythic cosmos. The account supplies a particular quarry and encounter, without establishing a dragon category or a general fantasy species.
Role in the labour
The command makes live capture the measure of success. Read as a narrative, the pursuit turns the animal’s exhaustion and the snowy terrain into the means of fulfilling that command. This is an interpretation of the episode’s structure; the passage assigns the boar no explicit symbolic meaning.[1]
Book and reference
- 1The Library
Apollodorus (conventionally Pseudo-Apollodorus); with an English translation by Sir James George Frazer. Volume I, Loeb Classical Library 121. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1921. Book 2, chapter 5, section 4 (2.5.4). Public-domain translation; Theoi transcription.
Read Book 2; locate [2.5.4] ↗Edition and authorship note ↗. The compiler’s identity and exact date are uncertain; the traditional attribution is retained as a bibliographic convention.