Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Geras.
The gallery
Heracles and Geras (Louvre G234)
Geras Painter, c. 480–470 BC
Attic red-figure pelike in the Musée du Louvre (G234), the name-vase of the Geras Painter: Heracles, in lion-skin with club raised, seizes the shrunken personification of Old Age by the head while Geras leans on a staff and begs. No literary myth of this encounter survives — the scene is known only from a handful of Athenian vases — yet the painter labels the wizened nude ΓΕΡΑΣ and makes the contrast unmistakable: the ageless hero confronting the one foe no labour can finally defeat. Side B shows Poseidon.
Heracles and Geras (Villa Giulia 48238)
Matsch Painter, c. 500–450 BC
Attic red-figure pelike in the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia, Rome (inv. 48238), attributed to the Matsch Painter: Heracles, club planted and lion-skin over his shoulders, converses with Geras, who stands as an emaciated, bald old man with crooked back and walking stick. Where the Louvre pelike stages a beating, this vase freezes the quieter moment before or beside the struggle — Old Age as a named daemon Heracles can face and talk to. The reverse shows Dionysos with a maenad.