PREHISTORIC
PART
3 –
Ch.XVII
BIES ‘ERAKLEIES EIDOLON
- A prehistoric simulacrum
of Hercules
in
the bed of the river Cerna
The
renown of Hercules’ travels and deeds on the northern parts of the Istru, lives
even today in the legends of the Romanian people.
The poet Pindar mentions in his odes Hercules’ travels to the Hyperboreans (Olymp. III. 14. 27) and
the chase of the deer with the golden horns as far as the country called
The grammarian Apollodorus also mentions the arrival of Hercules at the Atlas mountain in the country of the Hyperboreans, where he frees Prometheus
from his chains.
Hercules takes part in the expedition
of the Argonauts (Orpheus, Argon. v.
118), with the purpose of bringing to the southern countries of the golden
fleece, an old palladium of the Pelasgian shepherds, which was kept in the holy
forest of Mars.
Herodotus communicates the tradition according
to which Hercules appears as the forefather of the Agathyrses, the Scythians
and the Gelones, and mentions his
gigantic foot-mark (two elbows long) imprinted on a stone on the bank of the
river Tyras (Nistru, Dnestr).
In Romanian folk songs this illustrious
hero of the prehistoric times is celebrated as the youth who fights the Nemean
lion, while in Romanian ballads it is sung the defeat and killing of the
gigantic dragon of the world, his fights with Mars (Marcociu = Mavors), his
love relations with Echidna (the she-serpent), his travel to the southern parts
of the Lower Danube to search for the horses of King Diomedes of Thrace
(Dobrisanul), the unrelenting chase of the deer with the golden horns (the
yellowish doe) through the mountains of Jiu and Olt.
Everywhere in the Romanian folk songs
he is the travelling hero (Tocilescu, Materialuri folkl. I. 34.
274. 1298), as he is also portrayed by the Greek traditions.
The name under which Hercules, this
hero of the Pelasgian world, figures in the songs and legends of the Romanian
people is Iovan Iorgovan, arm like a
mace, proud and magnificent captain, tough and big Iovan; he is the hero, who
criss-crossed the world in length and width, and defeated all the monsters of
the world [1].
[1.
Hercules under the name of Iovan was known to the classical
antiquity also, but the Greek and Latin authors preferred to use a simple
translated form, instead of a popular traditional one. According to the
Pelasgian-Greek theogony, Hercules was the son
of Jove. So Homer (Iliad, XIV.
250) and Hesiod (Theog. v. 316)
calls him simply “the son of Jove”, without adding the particular name of ‘Hrakles,
although had had, according to legends, an infinite number of sons.
Virgil also calls him
simply Iovis proles (Aen. VIII.
301). An old inscription in Abruzzo is dedicated to Herclo Iovio, another
one in
All
these different Greek and Roman appellations show that in the popular tradition
Hercules’ name was Iovan. The second
popular name of Hercules in Romanian legends is Iorgu, Iorga and Iorgovan, a name which corresponds to
the Greek form Georgos, the one who
ploughs. On some coins of the emperor Commodius, Hercules is shown
ploughing the furrow of
In
Romanian legends, the great “Furrow”
of Novac is also called the “Furrow of
Iorgovan” (Spineanu, Dict.
Geogr. Mehedinti, 161). As for the name Iorgovan,
this is only a composite form of Iorgu and
Iovan, a repetition of the preceding
name, very much used in fact in carols and heroic Romanian songs like: Novac Baba-Novac, Ion Sant-Ion, Ilie Sant-Ilie,
in order to express in this way the idea of more heroic, or more religious,
applied to the persons to whom the antiquity had accorded a special celebrity.
In
the Middle Ages the fathers of the church have tried to create a Christian
Hercules, Saint George, to fight
with the dragon. But the critics doubted not only the Saint’s country of
origin, but also his existence. In the Roman Martirolog there is no mention of
this fight. The fight with the dragon is attributed to him only from the 14th century onwards (see
Acta Sanctorum Hungariae, Tyrnaviae, 1743, II. 231; Farlati,
The
memory of Hercules’ deeds is especially preserved in Oltenia and the
neighbouring parts of Banat, where he appears during the Roman epoch as the
protective god of the Cerna region, adored as Hercules invictus, Hercules
sanctus, Hercules salutiferus (C. I. L. III, nr. 1566, 1569, 1570, 1571, 1573),
and where has been discovered a significant number of statues of him.
Here, in the middle of Cerna, Romanian
folk traditions tell us, a colossal simulacrum of Hercules once existed, an
ancient monument, which our heroic songs connect with the legend of a beautiful
maiden who dwelt in a cave in the Cerna mountains.
We will relate first the antique
tradition about the love relations of Hercules with the nymph Echidna, who
dwelt in a mountainous region called “Padurosa”
(
The Greeks who live near the Euxine
Pontos, writes Herodotus, relate the
following about the origin of the Scythians: Hercules, returning with the herds taken from Geryon, passed also
through this country, which the Scythians now inhabit, but which back then was
deserted. When bad weather and a terrible cold met him there, he covered
himself with the hide of the Nemean lion and fell asleep. While he was
sleeping, the mares from his wagon, which he had un-harnessed and left free to
graze, disappeared as by magic. When Hercules woke up, he went to look for
them, and after scouring all the neighbouring lands, finally arrived to a place
named Padurosa (Hylea). Here dwelt in a cave the nymph Echidna (the Viper, the She-serpent), who had a mixed nature. From
the waist up she was a woman, and from the waist down, serpent, and she reigned
over the whole of
Herodotus believes that the region
named Hylea or Padurosa, the country of the nymph Echidna, was situated close
to the river Borysthene (Nipru) in
But according to earlier traditions,
before Herodotus’ epoch, the abode of Echidna, this legendary woman, was not in
the lands of Scythia, north of the Black Sea, but in the land of the Arimi, at north of the Istru.
“The divine and valiant hearted Echidna” writes Hesiod (Theog. v. 295 seqq) “was half nymph, with black eyes and
beautiful eyelashes, and half a gigantic serpent. The gods had given her as
dwelling a famous cave, under a rock wall, in a valley encircled by mountains,
far from the immortal gods and the mortal men. Here, in the land of the Arimi the miserable Echidna, the
immortal nymph, unsubjected to old age during the whole of her life, had
retired underground”.
The old legend about the meeting of
Hercules with Echidna has been partly preserved until today in the heroic songs
of the Romanian people (Alecsandri,
Poesii poporale; Teodorescu, Poesii
populare; Tocilescu, Materialuri
folkloristice,
This tradition is the following:
Iorgovan, a great strongman from the eastern
parts, comes, either to hunt deer in the Carunti
mountains (Cerna mountains), or, according to other versions, in the Vergii or Covergii, Sovergii mountains,
or to look for a beautiful girl in the Mountains
of Gold.
Arriving at the river Cerna on a Thursday morning, Iorgovan
rides up the river, armed with bow and arrows, and having with him hawks from
Bogaz (the
But Cerna was in those times a big
river, wild and with black waters. Its waves were high like church steeples and
it flew with a frightening roar. Cerna had killed all the brave men (the old
heroes) who had gone up the river.
Iorgovan, finding no ford to cross to
the other bank, calls to Cerna, asking her to calm her waves, to stop her roar,
to show him the ford, not to kill him, but instead to tell him where he can
cross, because he had travelled and he had arrived, according to his
predestination, to find here and take with him, a wild girl, handsome and strong. At his pleading,
Cerna answers him to go upriver until he will get tired and will reach the
three young maple trees - at the round hill and the dugout bank - where, after
crossing to the other side, he will find a stone mossy wall, where is gone, and
where is hidden, the wild girl, handsome and strong.
Iorgovan does as Cerna said, and riding
up the river he reaches the three young maple trees, then, crossing the ford,
arrives at last at the stone, upraised mossy wall [2].
[2.
This is the cave called The Maiden’s
hole, situated on the boundary line between
Here, under this stone wall, in deep
shade, the beautiful hidden maiden, face like the moon, golden hair falling on
her shoulders, sits weeping with a beautiful voice and a caressing tone [3].
[3.
In another Romanian version, this maiden appears as a nymph with a beautiful singing voice. We read in
the Geographic Dictionary of Mehedinti district (Spineanu, p. 161) the
following: “Here (at The Hole of the Maiden) Iorgovan, attracted
by the song of a fairy, stopped for a while to listen. But because the water of
Cerna howled too loudly, Iorgovan said towards Cerna the following words: Stop,
Cerna, stop, to hear a maiden’s voice, etc”].
As soon
as he sees her Iorgovan tells her that the love of her had bitterly punished
him on this earth, that he had travelled the world in length and in width, and
had found no other like her, whom he would marry. But she answers him, to well
remember that once they both had served a proud queen (according to Apollodorus, Bibl. II. 6. 3, the Greek
legends mentioned also that Hercules had served in Lydia a queen called Omphale), and that he had kissed her
and had left her pregnant; but, because of his fame, of her mother’s anger and
her father’s shame, she had punished herself, had secluded herself and gone
into exile, and here she had come, in a deep valley, under stone walls,
unbeaten by wind, unseen by anybody (Hesiod,
Theog. v. 302), where she had became wild.
Because
the young maiden does not want to come out of the cave, Iorgavan, losing his
mind, incites against this unhappy girl, the hawks, hounds and the bitch Vija,
to dig under the rock and pull her out in the daylight (In Greek traditions
Hercules had twice gone berserk – Apollodorus,
Bibl. II. 6. 3). They listen to his order, rush into the cave and start
scratching the white face, unbeaten by wind and unseen by people, of the
unhappy maiden. (An antique statue, unearthed in 1736 at the Mihadia Baths,
shows Hercules accompanied by a strong dog, which looks attentively at him –
see Popoviciu, Baile lui Hercule,
Tab. III).
In vain cries the girl, and pleads with
Iorgovan to call back his hawks and his hounds, which bite and scratch her,
while her baby is crying. He, getting even madder, wants now to kill her.
Then, in her suffering and despair, she
curses Iorgovan like this:
Iovane, Iovane,
May God let it happen,
That when you shall go,
Through Cerna you’ll cross.
Cerna’s a bad water,
May God let it happen,
In the middle
of Cerna,
The horse to stumble,
And to throw you down.
And you to become,
Mound of
stone,
With moss on
it.
Your horse,
Black swallow,
To wander along Cerna,
In the evening to come,
And lie down on you.
A maiden’s curse,
Is like a father’s,
It reaches you quicly.
He went riding,
Through Cerna crossing.
The horse stumbled,
And threw him down,
As she had said;
And he became,
Mound of
stone,
With moss on it.
His horse,
Black swallow,
Along Cerna wandered,
In the evening it came,
On him it lied down,
As she had said [4].
[4.
Heroic popular song communicated by the teacher G. Vladescu, from the village
Vrata, Mehedinti district. Another version tells us that after Iorgovan
drowned, the young maiden married “the
son of a king from across the mountain” (Teodorescu, p. 419). It is the tradition communicated by Herodotus,
which makes Echidna the mother of Agathyrsos].
This is the Romanian tradition about the
“miserable and unhappy” Echidna, as Hesiod
calls her, who, in other fragments of our folk poetry, appears also under the
name of “Serpoaica”, the same word
as the Greek Echidna (TN – the she-serpent).
From
a historical point of view, this Hercules turned into stone could not be but a primitive statue, cut into live rock
(all the Romanian versions locate this metamorphosis of Hercules in the middle of the riverbed of Cerna),
which had been dedicated in a pre-historic epoch to this great hero, whose cult
had once been so strong in the parts of Cerna, where even today many legends
about him still exit.
Hercules, as a Pelasgian national hero,
had simulacrums in Pelasgian lands even in the most remote times. According to
what Pliny tells us, the oldest
statue in
The Romanian legend about the colossal
statue of Hercules in the
Neither Homer, nor Hesiod, mentions
anything about the last events in the life of Hercules.
But, according to the post-Homeric
narratives, gathered by Apollodorus,
the true cause of Hercules’ death was the crossing of a dangerous mountain
river. In essence it is the same tradition presented by the Romanian legends.
Hercules, writes Apollodorus, accompanied by
the beautiful Deianira, Oeneus’
daughter, came to the river Evenos, a wild water. Hercules crossed the river
himself, without fear, but he trusted Deianira to the centaur Nessos, who had
got from the Gods, due to his qualities of justice, the right to help the
travellers across this wild river, of course for some remuneration.
During the crossing, Nessos, admiring
Deianira’s charms, tried to seduce her, but when he reached the other bank,
Hercules shot him with an arrow which pierced his chest. In his last moments,
Nessos, in revenge, taught Deianira to prepare with the poisoned blood from his
wound, a love balsam for Hercules.
After some time, Hercules, having to
make a sacrifice to Jove on the Cenaeon promontory in Eubea, Deianira, in order
to make him love her even more, sent him for this ceremony a solemn shirt
imbibed with the balsam, as Nessos had taught her. But it happened that, during
the sacrifice, Hercules coming close to the fire, the shirt heated and the
Hydra poison which had infected Nessos’ blood, came into contact with the
hero’s body. Hercules, realising now that he can’t save his life, built
himself, although in great pains, a stake on the Oeta mountain, lied on this
bed of wood, and begged the passers-by to have mercy on him and light the fire.
Nobody dared to do it, except a shepherd named Poias, who was looking for his lost flocks, who took pity on the
hero’s sufferings and did this last service to him, so that Hercules gave him
his bow in gratitude (Apollodorus,
Bibl. II. 7. 6. 5) [5].
[5.
Ovid (Metam. IX. 233) calls this
shepherd “Poeante satum”, meaning
born from Poeas. The name Poias is without doubt only a topical
epithet. In Romanian folk songs the most famous shepherds are from Poienari, or Poiana, in
Finally, we find another tradition with
Herodotus, according to which the
river Dyras in
Both these antique legends connect
therefore the end of Hercules’ life with a fast flowing river. Examining the
essence of these narratives regarding the last moments of the hero, the
Romanian tradition appears as the original source of the Greek myth, namely
that the river Cerna had been the river which had caused the death of this
great Pelasgian hero.
The nymph Deianira, with whom Hercules wants to cross a wild river, is
nothing else but Dierna (Ptolemy, Geogr. III. 8. 4), the ancient
name of Cerna; and the name Evenos
which the Greek authors give to the river crossed by the hero, is the popular
name of Hercules at north of the Istru, Ivan
or Iovan (Tocilescu, Materialuri folkl. I. 34).
His life as a shepherd, a farmer, and a
fighter with the bow and arrow, with the mace, club, broadsword, spear, hawks
and dogs; his travels through the world, more on land than on seas; a hero who
scours the mountains chasing lions, boars, stags, dragons, maidens; his
epithets in the Romanian legends of Ramlean
(of the nation of the Rami or Arami), Roman, Mocan (N.T. –
peasant) and Craiovean; the
traditions which make him the forefather of the Agathyrses, Gelones, Scythians and Latins (Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, lib.
[6.
According to Greek legends, Hercules had been a shepherd until he was 18 years
old (Pauly, R. E. p. 1159; Apollodorus, Bibl. II. 4. 9). He had
learnt the art of the bow from a Scythian
shepherd, Teutarus (Frag. Hist.
graec. II, p. 29, 5. 6).
In
Romanian heroic songs, the principal weapon of Hercules is the mace, from where
derives his epithet “Arm like a mace”. The hero Achilles also had a mace, which
Homer calls though “sceptre pierced with gold nails”
(Iliad,
Suidas tells us that
the epic poet Pisandrus of Rhodos,
who had lived according to some before Hesiod, and according to others after
the XXXIII Olympiad (648-645 bc), had written a poem about the deeds of
Hercules and that he had been the first to attribute to Hercules the club].
During his travels through
The poet Homer says in his Odyssey (XI. 601) a few words about Hercules,
which are invaluable for the importance which the legendary monument in the
This shape of Hercules, without soul,
which was not a statue sculpted by human hand, existed, according to Homer,
somewhere at the extreme reaches of the river Oceanos potamos (Istru), where Plato places the country of the pious Hyperboreans (Axiochus, Ed. Didot, Vol.
II. p. 561) and where, according to Hesiod,
Jove had thrown in a deep cave the gigantic dragon of the old world (Theog. v.
820-868).
It is therefore doubtless that “the
idol of the strength of Hercules” about which Homer spoke, this primitive
statue near the Oceanos potamos (Istru), was one and the same traditional
simulacrum as the figure of the hero turned into stone on the