In "Heroes," Robert Creeley makes specific references to two of the most legendary figures in Greco-Roman mythology: Hercules and Aeneas. Their stories function as case studies for Creeley as he tries to pinpoint what he thinks does, and does not, work in traditional heroic narratives. In the context of the poem, he specifically refers to Aeneas's journey to the underworld and Hercules's twelve labors. While Creeley makes very limited mention of the actual events of these stories, they provide helpful context to the poem as a whole.
In Book 6 of the Aeneid, Aeneas makes a trip to the underworld with the guidance of the Cumaean Sibyl, a priestess. She warns Aeneas that the trip down is easy, but returning to the human world is the challenge. The full quote from Sibyl reads as follows:
Trojan son of Anchises,
sprung from the blood of the gods, the path to hell is easy:
black Dis’s door is open night and day:
but to retrace your steps, and go out to the air above,
that is work, that is the task.
They then travel to the river Acheron, passing by hordes of dead souls as they are taken across the river Styx by Charon. They also pass Cerebrus, the three-headed hound who guards the gates. After seeing Tartarus, Sibyl warns Aeneas to bow his head in the presence of the gods. Then, Aeneas encounters the ghost of Dido, his abandoned lover, who refuses to forgive him. Finally, they arrive at the fields of Elysium, and Aeneas's father tells him of his vision of the future of the city Rome.
While Creeley spends more time detailing Aeneas's story, he also alludes briefly to Hercules's labors. This refers to the twelve acts that Hercules was told to carry out as penance for murdering his wife and child; an act he committed in a fit of madness induced by Hera. Hercules went to the Oracle at Delphi and asked how he might make amends for his crime. He was told by Apollo to work in the service of Eurystheus, king of Mycenae, and was then assigned the following twelve, difficult tasks:
- Kill the Nemean lion.
- Kill the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra.
- Catch the Ceryneian Hind.
- Catch the Erymanthian Boar.
- Wash the Augean stables in one day.
- Kill the Stymphalian birds.
- Capture the Cretan Bull.
- Take the Mares of Diomedes.
- Steal the girdle of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazon.
- Steal the cattle of the three-bodied giant Geryon.
- Take three of the golden apples of the Hesperides.
- Catch and return Cerberus.
Various narratives portray Hercules's completion of these tasks differently, but one constant is the emphasis on the feat of strength he demonstrated with each one.
Creeley cleverly makes no specific mention of these stories because he wants to avoid their weighty backstory. He elides the bigger moments (Aeneas's battle scenes, Hercules's killing of the lion) because he thinks poets ought to return to more human portrayals of these figures. He chooses the small moment of Aeneas journeying to the underworld over any of Hercules's actual "labors" because he sees more depth and frailty in that moment. He mentions these myths only to draw away from them because he believes there is something missing from their telling.
