On he went toward the
king's palace. Eurystheus was seated outside his palace that day,
looking at the great jar that he had often hidden in, and
thinking to himself that Heracles would never appear to affright
him again. Then Heracles appeared. He called to Eurystheus, and
when the king looked up he held the hound toward him. The three
heads grinned at Eurystheus; he gave a cry and scrambled into the
jar. But before his feet touched the bottom of it Eurystheus was
dead of fear. The jar rolled over, and Heracles looked upon the
body that was all twisted with fright. Then he turned around and
made his way back to the Underworld. On the brink of Acheron he
loosed Cerberus, and the bellow of the three-headed hound was
heard again.
II
It was then that Heracles was given arms by the gods the sword of
Hermes, the bow of Apollo, the shield made by Hephaestus; it was
then that Heracles joined the Argonauts and journeyed with them
to the edge of the Caucasus, where, slaying the vulture that
preyed upon Prometheus's liver, he, at the will of Zeus,
liberated the Titan. Thereafter Zeus and Prometheus were
reconciled, and Zeus, that neither might forget how much the
enmity between them had cost gods and men, had a ring made for
Prometheus to wear; that ring was made out of the fetter that had
been upon him, and in it was set a fragment of the rock that the
Titan had been bound to.
The Argonauts had now won back to Greece.
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