Source Verification: Erymanthian Boar
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
Why was capturing the boar alive harder than simply killing it?
Eurystheus deliberately set the labors to be as difficult as possible. Killing a dangerous boar was straightforward hunting; trapping one that size and temper without harming it meant Heracles had to corner it exhausted rather than fight it directly, the same constraint that made the Ceryneian Hind so hard to take.
Source: Apollodorus, Library 2.5.4
Who was Pholus, and why does his death appear in the Boar labor's story?
Pholus was a centaur who hosted Heracles on the way to Mount Erymanthus. His decision to open a jar of wine shared jointly by all centaurs, rather than kept for one guest, drew the other centaurs into a violent frenzy once they smelled it, folding an entire second, deadly episode into what should have been a straightforward hunt for the boar.
Source: Apollodorus, Library 2.5.4
How was the wise centaur Chiron wounded during this labor?
During the fight that Pholus's opened wine jar triggered, one of Heracles's arrows, tipped with the Hydra's venom from an earlier labor, struck Chiron in the knee by accident. Because Chiron was immortal, the wound could not kill him, which meant he had to endure the pain indefinitely rather than the injury ending his life outright.
Source: Apollodorus, Library 2.5.4
How did Pholus himself die, if he was not fighting Heracles?
After the fighting ended, Pholus examined one of the arrows that had killed a fellow centaur, wondering that so small a thing could kill something so large, and dropped it on his own foot. The same poison that wounded Chiron killed Pholus almost instantly.
Source: Apollodorus, Library 2.5.4
Did Heracles actually kill the boar?
No. As with the Ceryneian Hind, the labor required the animal alive. Apollodorus describes Heracles chasing the boar into deep snow until it was too exhausted to resist, then binding and carrying it to Mycenae rather than killing it outright; Ovid's Metamorphoses lists the same boar among Heracles's own catalog of labors without adding this chase detail.
Source: Apollodorus, Library 2.5.4
Where Accounts Differ
- Eurystheus hiding from the boar: text or vase painting only
- The scene of Eurystheus hiding from the boar in a bronze jar is a well-attested motif in Greek vase painting, but no surviving literary source describes it directly.
Sources
- Apollodorus, Library 2.5.4
- Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.185-9.198
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)