Nemean Lion
The lion of Nemea in Frazer’s translation
The invulnerable lion whose skin Eurystheus demands as Heracles’s first labour.
Quick answer
In Apollodorus’s Library, the Nemean Lion is an invulnerable beast begotten by Typhon. Heracles’s arrow cannot overcome it. He blocks one entrance of its cave, enters through the other, and chokes it to death for his first labour.[1]
Quick facts
| Record type | Individual creature in Greek mythography |
|---|---|
| Source | Apollodorus, Library 2.5.1; Frazer (1921) |
| Source realm | Nemea in the Greek mythic world |
| Form | Lion; no measurements or colour supplied |
| Parentage in this passage | Begotten by Typhon; no mother named |
| Defining property | Called invulnerable; nevertheless killed by choking |
| Command | Eurystheus orders Heracles to bring its skin |
| Outcome | Killed in its cave and carried through Cleonae to Mycenae |
These details belong to the selected account, not a composite genealogy or description.[1]
What the source says
Eurystheus’s first command is to bring the lion’s skin. On the journey, Heracles stays with Molorchus at Cleonae. He asks his host to delay a sacrifice for thirty days: a safe return will call for an offering to Saviour Zeus; failure to return will call for an offering to Heracles as a dead hero.[1]
At Nemea, Heracles tracks the lion and shoots an arrow at it. Recognising its invulnerability, he pursues it with his club raised. The lion retreats into a cave with two entrances. Heracles closes one, goes in through the other, and holds the animal by the neck until it dies.[1]
He carries the lion back to Cleonae on the thirtieth day, in time to join the sacrifice to Zeus, and then takes it to Mycenae. Eurystheus responds by requiring future trophies to be shown outside the gates. The compiler also reports that the frightened king had an underground bronze jar made as a hiding place and issued commands through Copreus.[1]
Description and limits
Frazer’s word “invulnerable” must be read alongside the encounter: the arrow fails, but the lion can be choked to death. The text does not make it immortal, specify the material of its hide, or catalogue resistance to every possible weapon. Heracles raises his club in pursuit; the passage does not describe a club blow stunning the lion.[1]
No colour, dimensions, unusual mane, or detailed anatomy is supplied. The illustrated bronze is later reception, not evidence for physical details missing from the ancient account.
Source realm: Nemea
The hunt and two-entrance cave belong to Nemea. Cleonae is the place of Molorchus’s hospitality and the return sacrifice; Mycenae is where Heracles brings the dead lion. The passage does not name the cave or identify a modern archaeological site.[1]
This individual lion belongs under Mythic cosmos through its Greek mythographic source. Its local encounter does not establish a population or a general fantasy creature type.
Role in the first labour
Read as narrative structure, the failed arrow makes bodily strength and control of the cave’s exits central to the victory. The returned lion also changes how Eurystheus receives later results. These are readings of the episode’s action; the passage does not assign the lion an 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 1 (2.5.1). Public-domain translation; Theoi transcription.
Read Book 2; locate [2.5.1] ↗Edition and authorship note ↗. The compiler’s identity and exact date are uncertain; Apollodorus is retained as the traditional bibliographic attribution. Editorial notes and other ancient witnesses are not merged into this account.