HeraclesLaborsSuite2.0001

HeraclesLaborsSuite2.0001_Nahl

OGCMA s.v. "Heracles, Labors of"
Ovid Met. 9.182ff.
Apollodorus Libr. 2.5.1-12

Perham Wilhelm Nahl, "The Thirteenth Labor of Hercules," official poster for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition held at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Original is color offset lithograph measuring (as a booklet cover) 7 7/8 x 10 1/8 in.

Image at right is copied from Wikipedia Commons, owned by Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (De Young and Legion of Honor).

Heracles performed 12 canonical labors and many parerga (secondary accomplishments). Many of the parerga were of substantial importance, but still not canonized as The Twelve were. For the propoganda machine of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition to claim the cutting of the Panama Canal as "the Thirteenth Labor" is a somewhat bold assertion that the hero's accomplishments, culminating either in fetching the Apples of the Hesperides or in escorting Cerberus to the world of the living, were not the end of the hero's sanctifying career.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.