Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Hyllus.
The gallery
Heracles, Deianira and the Centaur Nessus
Unknown (Roman fresco, Casa del Centauro, Pompeii), 1st century AD
This Roman wall painting from the House of the Centaur at Pompeii (152 x 124 cm, now in the Naples National Archaeological Museum, inv. 9001) captures the prelude to Heracles' doom and gathers his whole family into a single frame. Heracles strides forward carrying his small son Hyllus in his arms, while Deianira lingers beside the river and the centaur Nessus, who has offered to ferry her across, looks back toward them. Within the myth this is the fateful moment before Nessus attempts to violate Deianira and Heracles shoots him with a poisoned arrow, leaving the dying centaur's blood that will one day kill the hero. Hyllus appears here not as the grown leader of the Heraclid Return but as the infant heir cradled by his father, anchoring the future avenger at the very origin of his family's tragedy.
Attic Red-Figure Lekythos: Herakles with Deianeira and the Infant Hyllos
Imitator of the Villa Giulia Painter, c. 450 BC
On this Classical Attic red-figure lekythos (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, AN1890.26; attributed in Beazley's catalogue, ARV 627.1, to an imitator of the Villa Giulia Painter), the legendary family of Heracles is shown in a quiet domestic register rather than in heroic action. Deianeira sits enthroned on a chair, and on her lap the infant Hyllos stretches out both hands toward his father Herakles, who stands before them, while a mirror hangs suspended in the background as a marker of the household interior. The vase is among the rare ancient depictions to name Hyllus by name, presenting the eldest son of Heracles and Deianira as a reaching child long before he would behead Eurystheus, marry Iole, and lead the first attempted return of the Heraclids to the Peloponnese.