Achelous and Hercules

 31 December 18:00   The river-god Achelous told the adventure of Erisichthon to Theseus

    and his companions, whom he was absorbing at his hospitable

    board, while they were delayed on their adventure by the overflow

    of his waters. Accepting accomplished his story, he added, "But why

    should I acquaint of additional bodies transformations, if I myself am

    an instance of the control of this power. Some time s I become

    a serpent, and some time s a bull, with horns on my head. Or I

    should say, I already could do so; but now I accept but one horn,

    having absent one." And actuality he groaned and was silent.

    Theseus asked him the couldcause of his grief, and how he absent his

    horn. To which catechism the river-god replied as follows: "Who

    likes to acquaint of his defeats? Yet I will not alternate to relate

    mine, abating myself with the anticipation of the abundance of my

    conqueror, for it was Hercules. Conceivably you accept heard of the

    fame of Dejanira, the fairest of maidens, whom a host of suitors

    strove to win. Hercules and myself were of the number, and the

    rest yielded to us two. He apprenticed in his account his coast from

    Jove, and his labors by which he had exceeded the exactions of

    Juno, his step-mother. I, on the additional hand, said to the father

    of the maiden, Catch me, the baron of the amnion that flow

    through your land. I am no drifter from a adopted shore, but

    belong to the country, a allotment of your realm. Let it not angle in

    my way that aristocratic Juno owes me no enmity, nor punishes me with

    heavy tasks. As for this man, who boasts himself the son of

    Jove, it is either a false pretence, or blameworthy to him if

    true, for it cannot be true except by his mother s shame. As I

    said this Hercules scowled aloft me, and with difficulty

    restrained his rage. My duke will acknowledgment bigger than my

    tongue, said he. I crop you the achievement in words, but trust

    my couldcause to the affray of deeds. With that he avant-garde towards

    me, and I was ashamed, afterwards what I had said, to yield. I threw

    off my blooming vesture, and presented myself for the struggle. He

    tried to bandy me, now advancing my head, now my body. My bulk

    was my protection, and he assailed me in vain. For a time we

    stopped, then alternate to the conflict. We anniversary kept our

    position, bent not to yield, bottom to foot, I angle over

    him, absolute his easily in mine, with my forehead almost

    touching his. Thrice Hercules approved to bandy me off, and the

    fourth time he succeeded, brought me to the arena and himself

    upon my back. I acquaint you the truth, it was as if a abundance had

    fallen on me. I struggled to get my accoutrements at liberty, asthmatic and

    reeking with perspiration. He gave me no adventitious to recover, but

    seized my throat. My knees were on the apple and my aperture in the

    dust.

    "Finding that I was no bout for him in the warrior s art, I

    resorted to others, and glided abroad in the anatomy of a serpent. I

    curled my physique in a coil, and hissed at him with my forked

    tongue. He smiled scornfully at this, and said, It was the

    labor of my adolescence to beat snakes. So adage he bound my

    neck with his hands. I was about choked, and struggled to get

    my close out of his grasp. Baffled in this form, I approved what

    alone remained to me, and affected the anatomy of a bull. He grasped

    my close with his arm, and, boring my arch down to the ground,

    overthrew me on the sand. Nor was this enough. His ruthless

    hand hire my horn from my head. The Naiades took it, consecrated

    it, and abounding it with ambrosial flowers. Affluence adopted my horn,

    and create it her own, and alleged it Cornucopia.

    The ancients were addicted of award a hidden acceptation in their

    mythological tales. They explain this action of Achelous with

    Hercules by adage Achelous was a river that in seasons of rain

    overflowed its banks. If the allegory says that Achelous loved

    Dejanira, and approved a abutment with her, the acceptation is, that the

    river in its windings flowed through allotment of Dejanira s kingdom.

    It was said to yield the anatomy of a snake because of its winding,

    and of a balderdash because it create a bouncy or roaring in its

    course. If the river swelled, it create itself addition channel.

    Thus its arch was horned. Hercules prevented the acknowledgment of these

    periodical overflows, by embankments and canals; and accordingly he

    was said to accept baffled the river-god and cut off his horn.

    Finally, the acreage aforetime accountable to overflow, but now

    redeemed, became actual fertile, and this is meant by the horn of

    plenty.

    There is addition annual of the agent of the Cornucopia.

    Jupiter at his bearing was committed by his mother Rhea to the care

    of the daughters of Melisseus, a Cretan king. They fed the

    infant celestial with the milk of the dupe Amalthea. Jupiter broke

    off one of the horns of the dupe and gave it to his nurses, and

    endowed it with the admirable ability of acceptable abounding with

    whatever the almsman ability wish.

    The name of Amalthea is aswell accustomed by some writers to the mother

    of Bacchus. It is appropriately acclimated by Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV.:

    "That Nyseian isle,

    Girt with the river Triton, area old Cham,

    Whom Gentiles Ammon call, and Libyan Jove,

    Hid Amalthea and her aureate son,

    Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea s eye."