Editing Erymanthian boar

{{Short description|Mythological boar}}
{{Infobox mythical creature
|image    = Herakles Eurystheus boar Louvre F202.jpg
|caption = [[Heracles]], [[Eurystheus]] and the Erymanthian boar. Side A from an [[Ancient Greece|Ancient Greek]] [[Black-figure pottery|black-figured]] [[amphora]], painted by the [[Antimenes painter]], ca. 525 BC, from [[Etruria]]. [[Louvre]] Museum, Paris.
|Folklore     = [[Greek mythology]]
|Grouping      = [[Legendary creature]]
|Country       = [[Greece]]
|Habitat       = [[Mount Erymanthos]]
}}

In [[Greek mythology]], the '''Erymanthian boar''' ([[Ancient Greek|Greek]]: ὁ Ἐρυμάνθιος κάπρος; [[Latin]]: ''aper Erymanthius'') was a mythical creature that took the form of a "shaggy and wild"<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Seneca's Tragedies|publisher=William Heinemann; G. R Putnam's Sons.|year=1917|volume=1|location=London; New York|pages=21|translator-last=Miller|translator-first=Frank Justus|chapter=Hercules Furens 228 ff.|id=ark:/13960/t71v5s15x}}</ref> "tameless"<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=Quintus Smyrnaeus The Fall Of Troy|publisher=William Heinemann Ltd; Harvard University Press|year=1984|location=London; Cambridge, Massachusetts|pages=271|translator-last=Way|translator-first=A. S.|chapter=The Fall of Troy, Book VI. 220 ff.|id=ark:/13960/t2m61f62d|orig-year=1913}}</ref> "boar"<ref name=":7" /> "of vast weight"<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|title=Ovid Heroides And Amores|publisher=William Heinemann; The Macmillan Co.|year=1914|location=London; New York|pages=115|translator-last=Showerman|translator-first=Grant|chapter=The Heroides 9. 87 ff|id=ark:/13960/t76t0t11q}}</ref> "and foaming jaws".<ref name=":1" /> It was a [[Tegea]]ean,<ref name=":2" /> [[Maenalus (town)|Maenalusian]]<ref name=":0" /> or [[Erymanthos (municipality)|Erymanthian]]<ref name=":7">{{Cite book|title=Sophocles The Plays and Fragments|publisher=The University Press|year=1892|volume=5 The Trachiniae|location=Cambridge|pages=159|translator-last=Jebb|translator-first=R. C.|chapter=Trachiniai. 1097|id=ark:/13960/t6tx3f955}}</ref> boar that lived in the "glens of [[Lampeia]]"<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|title="The Argonautica" of Apollonius Rhodius|publisher=George Bell And Sons, York Street, Covent Garden.|year=1889|location=London|pages=8|translator-last=Coleridge|translator-first=Edward P.|chapter=The Argonautica. Book 1 67-111|id=ark:/13960/t03x8577n}}</ref> beside the "vast marsh of Erymanthus".<ref name=":3" /> It would sally<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|title=Apollodorus the Library|publisher=G. P. Putnam's Sons|year=1921|volume=1|location=New York|pages=191 with the Scholiast|translator-last=Frazer|translator-first=Sir James George|chapter=The Library 2. 5. 3-4|id=ark:/13960/t00012x9f.}}</ref> from the "thick-wooded",<ref name=":0" /> "cypress-bearing"<ref name=":2" /> "heights of Erymanthus"<ref name=":0" /> to "harry the groves of [[Arcadia (ancient region)|Arcady]]"<ref name=":0" /> and "abuse the land of [[Psophis]]".<ref name=":4" />

==Mythology==
The fourth [[Labours of Heracles|labour of Heracles]] was to bring the Erymanthian boar alive to [[Eurystheus]] in [[Mycenae]].<ref name=":3" /> To capture the boar, Heracles first "chased the boar with shouts"<ref name=":4" /> and thereby routed it from a "certain thicket"<ref name=":4" /> and then "drove the exhausted animal into deep snow."<ref name=":4" /> He then "trapped it",<ref name=":4" /> bound it in chains,<ref name=":3" /> and lifted it, still "breathing from the dust",<ref name=":5">{{Cite book|title=Statius|publisher=William Heinemann Ltd.; G. P. Putnam's Sons|year=1928|volume=2|location=London; New York|pages=249|translator-last=Mozley|translator-first=J. H.|chapter=Thebaid, VIII. 731-760. 746 ff.|id=ark:/13960/t19k4m13k}}</ref> and returning with the boar on "his left shoulder",<ref name=":5" /> "staining his back with blood from the stricken wound",<ref name=":5" /> he cast it down in the "entrance to the assembly of the Mycenaeans",<ref name=":3" /> thus completing his fourth labour. "When the king [Eurystheus] saw him carrying the boar on his shoulders, he was terrified and hid himself in a bronze vessel."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Diodorus of Sicily|publisher=William Heinemann Ltd; Harvard University Press|year=1967|volume=2|location=London; Cambridge, Massachusetts|pages=381|translator-last=Oldfather|translator-first=C. H.|chapter=Book 4. 12. 1-2|id=ark:/13960/t7qn6bw6r|orig-year=1935}}</ref>

"The inhabitants of [[Cumae]], in the land of the [[Osci|Opici]], profess that the boar's tusks which are preserved in the sanctuary of [[Apollo]] at Cumae are the tusks of the Erymanthian boar, but the assertion is without a shred of probability."<ref name=":6">{{Cite book|title=Pausanias's Description of Greece|publisher=Macmillan and Co. Limited; The Macmillan Company|year=1898|location=London; New York|pages=402|translator-last=Frazer|translator-first=J. G.|chapter=Bk. VIII. Arcadia 24. 5-6|id=ark:/13960/t5t72bt15}}</ref>

In the primitive highlands of [[Arcadia (ancient region)|Arcadia]], where old practices lingered, the Erymanthian boar was a giant fear-inspiring creature of the wilds that lived on [[Mount Erymanthos]], a mountain that was apparently once sacred to the [[Mistress of the Animals]], for in classical times it remained the haunt of [[Artemis]] ([[Homer]], ''[[Odyssey]]'', VI.105). A boar was a dangerous animal: "When the goddess turned a wrathful countenance upon a country, as in the story of [[Meleager]], she would send a raging boar, which laid waste the farmers' fields."<ref>Kerenyi (1959), p. 149.</ref>[[File:Hércules y el jabalí de Erimanto, por Zurbarán.jpg|thumb|right|''Heracles and the Erymanthian Boar'', by [[Francisco de Zurbarán]], 1634 ([[Museo del Prado]])]]

== Cultural depictions ==
Chronological listing of classical literature sources for the Erymanthian boar:

* Sophocles, ''Trachiniae'' 1097 (trans. Jebb) (Greek tragedy C5th BC)
* Apollonius Rhodius, ''Argonautica'' 1. 67-111 (trans. Coleridge) (Greek epic poetry C3rd BC)
* Callimachus, ''Epigrams'' 36 (trans. Mair) (Greek poetry C3rd BC)
* Diodorus of Sicily, ''Library of History'' 4. 12. 1-2 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek history C1st BC)
* Virgil, ''Aeneid'' 6. 801 ff (trans. Dewey) (Roman epic poetry C1st BC)
* Lucretius, ''Of The Nature of Things'' 5. Proem 1 (trans. Leonard) (Roman philosophy C1st BC)
* Ovid, ''Metamorphoses'' 9. 191 (trans. Melville) (Roman epic poetry C1st BC to C1st AD)
* Ovid, ''Heroides'' 9. 87 ff (trans. Showerman) (Roman poetry C1st BC to C1st AD)
* Philippus of Thessalonica, ''The Twelve Labors of Hercule''s (''The Greek Classic''s ed. Miller Vol 3 1909 p.&nbsp;397) (Greek epigrams C1st AD)
* Seneca, ''Hercules Furens'' 228 ff (trans. Miller) (Roman tragedy C1st AD)
* Seneca, ''Hercules Oetaeus'' 17-30 (trans. Miller)
* Statius, ''Thebaid'' 4. 297 ff (trans. Mozley) (Roman epic poetry C1st AD)
* Statius, ''Thebaid'' 8. 746 ff
* Plutarch, ''Moralia'', On the Fortune of Alexander 341. 11 ff (trans. Babbitt) (Greek philosophy C1st AD to C2nd AD)
* Pseudo-Apollodorus, ''The Librar''y 2. 5. 3-4 (trans. Frazer) (Greek mythography C2nd AD)
* Pseudo-Hyginus, ''Fabulae'' 30 (trans. Grant)  (Roman mythography C2nd AD)
* Pausanias, ''Description of Greece'' 8 24. 5-6 (trans. Frazer) (Greek travelogue C2nd AD)
* Quintus Smyrnaeus, ''Fall of Troy'' 6. 220 ff (trans. Way) (Greek epic poetry C4th AD)
* Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 25. 194 (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic poetry C5th AD)
* Nonnos, ''Dionysiaca'' 25. 242 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic poetry C5th AD)
* Boethius, ''The Consolation of Philosophy'' 4. 7. 13 ff (trans. Rand & Stewart) (Roman philosophy C6th AD)
* Suidas s.v. ''Dryopes'' (trans. Suda On Line) (Byzantine Greek Lexicon C10th AD)
* Tzetzes, ''Chiliades'' or ''Book of Histories'' 2. 268 ff (trans. Untila et al.) (Byzantinian history C12 AD)
* Tzetzes, ''Chiliades'' or ''Book of Histories'' 2. 494 ff

==See also==
* [[Calydonian boar hunt]]
* {{c|Mythological pigs|List of mythological pigs}}

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{Refbegin}}
*[[Robert Graves|Graves, Robert]], ''The Greek Myths'' 1955.
*[[Karl Kerenyi|Kerenyi, Karl]], ''The Heroes of the Greeks'' 1959.
*[[Carl A. P. Ruck]] and Danny Staples, ''The World of Classical Myth,'' 1994.
*[[Ovid]], ''Heroides'' 
*Pseudo-Apollodorus, ''[[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|Bibliotheca]]'' ii.5.4
*[[Diodorus Siculus]] iv.12
*[[Apollonius of Rhodes]], ''[[Argonautica]]'' i.122ff
*[[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]], ''Description of Greece'' i.27.9
{{Refend}}[https://web.archive.org/web/20080118110405/http://www.greekmountainflora.info/Mt%20Erymanthos%20Jalbum/Mt%20Erymanthos%20Greece.html Greek Mountain Flora]
* [http://www.theoi.com/Ther/HusErymanthios.html Theoi Project: Erymanthian Boar, Giant boar of Arcadia]

{{Labours of Heracles}}

[[Category:Labours of Hercules]]
[[Category:Monsters in Greek mythology]]
[[Category:Mythological pigs]]
[[Category:Arcadian mythology]]
[[Category:Wild boars]]