Hylas- Greek FigureMortal"Squire of Heracles"

Son of Theiodamas

Hylas was the son of Theiodamas, king of the Dryopes, a people dwelling in the region around Mount Oeta. According to Apollonius of Rhodes, Heracles slew Theiodamas in a quarrel over a plowing ox — when the Dryopian king refused to give Heracles food, the hero killed him and took the boy Hylas, who was still young. Heracles raised the youth as his companion and beloved, and the two became inseparable. When Jason gathered heroes for the voyage to Colchis aboard the Argo, Hylas sailed alongside Heracles as his squire, carrying his arrows and tending his bow.

Theocritus tells it more tenderly in his thirteenth Idyll: Heracles taught Hylas everything "as a father teaches his own dear son," never letting the boy out of sight, shaping him into the hero he hoped Hylas would become.

The Spring at Pegae

When the Argo put in at the coast of Mysia near the city of Cius, the crew went ashore to prepare an evening meal. Heracles went into the forest to cut a new oar, and Hylas set out alone with a bronze pitcher to draw water from a nearby spring called Pegae.

The spring was a haunt of nymphs. As Hylas knelt at the water's edge and dipped his pitcher, the nymphs — Apollonius names them as Eunica, Malis, and Nycheia — saw his beauty in the moonlight and were seized with desire. One of them reached up from the water, clasped his arm, and pulled him down into the pool. Hylas cried out once as he fell. The Argonaut Polyphemus, son of Eilatus, heard the cry from a distance and ran toward it with drawn sword, fearing the boy had been taken by bandits or wild beasts. He found no trace of Hylas at the spring.

In Theocritus, the nymphs drew Hylas down gently, and he fell into the dark water "as a star falls blazing into the sea." In both accounts, the boy vanished completely, swallowed by the spring.

The Search and After

Polyphemus found Heracles and told him Hylas had cried out. Heracles, maddened with grief, charged through the forest calling the boy's name, crashing through thickets and ignoring all else. Meanwhile, the Argo's crew grew impatient. A favorable wind rose at dawn, and despite debate among the Argonauts, the ship sailed without Heracles and Polyphemus. In some versions it was the Dioscuri who argued for leaving; in others, the heroes were simply unable to wait any longer.

Heracles remained in Mysia searching. According to Apollonius, he threatened the Mysians and demanded hostages, commanding them to continue the search for Hylas even after he departed. The Mysians of Cius afterward held a ritual in which they called out Hylas' name through the countryside, a practice Strabo and other later sources confirm as an annual rite. Theocritus closes his poem by saying Hylas was counted among the blessed — the nymphs had made him immortal — but Heracles wandered on, and for his sake was mocked as a deserter from the voyage.

The cry of "Hylas!" echoing unanswered through the Mysian woods became proverbial in antiquity for calling after someone who will never return.