Iole, daughter of Eurytus of Oechalia, was offered as the prize to whoever could outshoot her father and his sons at archery. Heracles won the contest but was denied the bride, and from that refusal flowed the sack of Oechalia, his capture of Iole, and, through Deianira's jealousy of the captive, his own death.1
Behind the contest stands the archer-father. Homer names Eurytus of Oechalia as a master of the bow who strove even with the immortals, and so died early, for Apollo, whom he challenged, slew him in wrath; from him Eurytus's bow passed in time to Odysseus. This is the archery tradition that frames the prize Heracles won and Eurytus withheld.2
Eurytus, prince of Oechalia, set his daughter Iole as the prize for any man who could beat him and his sons at the bow. Heracles came and proved the better archer, yet the bride was withheld: Iphitus, Eurytus's eldest son, urged that Iole be given to him, but Eurytus and the rest refused, fearing that if Heracles fathered children he would again kill his own offspring, as he had killed the sons of Megara.3
Hyginus tells the refusal differently: Heracles sought Iole in marriage and was turned away, then marched on Oechalia, and to bend the girl threatened to slaughter her kin before her eyes — and she, with resolute mind, let them all be slain. Having killed them, he sent Iole captive ahead of him to Deianira.4
To punish Eurytus, Heracles mustered an army, slew Eurytus and his sons, took the city, and led Iole away captive. When he sent the herald Lichas to fetch fine raiment for his sacrifice, Deianira learned of the captive and, fearing Heracles would love the damsel more than herself, smeared the offered tunic with the blood of the centaur Nessus; the hydra-poison soaked into it corroded his flesh.5
Ovid gives the same ruin: returning victorious from Oechalia with Iole, Heracles is undone when chattering Rumor reaches Deianira that he burns for the girl, and she sends Lichas with the robe steeped in Nessus's poisoned blood. The venom sears him on Mount Oeta; in his agony he hurls Lichas into the sea, and after heaping the pyre he bids Philoctetes set the torch beneath it and take his bow in recompense.6
Apollodorus closes the tale otherwise. Dying, Heracles charged his elder son Hyllus to wed Iole when he came of age, binding the withheld bride to his own line; then on the pyre he had heaped on Oeta it was Poeas, passing in search of his flocks, who lit the fire and received the bow as his reward — where Ovid instead gives both torch and bow to Poeas's son Philoctetes.7
Then the toils were finished. In Apollodorus a cloud bears Heracles up to heaven, and, reconciled at last to Hera, he weds her daughter Hebe; Hesiod's Theogony sings the same crown, the son of Alcmena, his grievous labours ended, taking Hebe, child of Zeus and gold-shod Hera, as his wife on snowy Olympus, to live untroubled and unaging among the undying gods — the apotheosis to which Iole's part had brought him.8
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
