The Abraham Cowley Text and Image Archive

This series of eleven stamps (Greece, 1970) devoted to ancient depictions of scenes from the Hercules myth does not strictly preserve the traditional scheme of twelve labors *, but most of the scenes which the series does foreground are featured in Cowley's Plantarum. There is also the bawdy "thirteenth labor" of Hercules, the all-nighter in which he is supposed to have sired fifty sons on the daughters of Thespius; with Plantarum 1.529-30 and the note in our volume, see the painting by Frenchman Gustave Moreau (1826-1898).
Atlas and the Hesperides / The Erymanthian Boar / Nessus the Centaur
The Cretan Bull / Hellhound Cerberus
The Lernean Hydra / Three-Headed Geryon
Achelous the River-God / The Nemean Lion
The Stymphalian Birds / The Giant Antaeus


* The Nemean Lion, the Lernean Hydra, the Cerynean Hind, the Erymanthian Boar, the Augean Stables, the Stymphalian Birds, the Cretan Bull, the Mares of Diomedes, the Girdle of Hippolyta, the Cattle of Geryon, the Apples of the Hesperides, the hound of Hell (Cerberus)
Related link: Herculean Virtue
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