Nemea

Nemea is a valley in the north-eastern Peloponnese, between Cleonae and Phlius in the territory of Argos. It is the place of the first of the Labours of Heracles, the killing of the Nemean Lion, and the place where the Nemean Games began in memory of the child Opheltes, who was killed there by a serpent as the Seven Against Thebes passed through.

The Nemean Lion

Hesiod (Theogony 326–332) says that the lion was the offspring of Orthus and Echidna, and that Hera reared it and settled it in the hills of Nemea, a plague to men, where it haunted Tretus and Apesas. Bacchylides also calls it the lion that white-armed Hera reared in the plain of Nemean Zeus (9.4–9). Apollodorus (Library 2.5.1) names Typhon as its father. It was Eurystheus who ordered Heracles to bring him the skin of the lion, as the first of his Labours. The animal could not be wounded by weapons, and when Heracles saw that his arrows had no effect, he raised his club and chased it.

On his way Heracles came to Cleonae and stayed in the house of a day-labourer called Molorchus. When his host wished to sacrifice a victim, Heracles told him to wait thirty days: if he came back safe, the sacrifice should be to Zeus the Saviour, and if he died, to Heracles himself as a hero (Apollodorus 2.5.1).

The lion took refuge in a cave with two mouths. Heracles blocked one entrance and came at the beast through the other. According to Apollodorus he put his arm around its neck and held it until it was choked, then carried it on his shoulders to Cleonae, where he found Molorchus about to offer the sacrifice to him as a dead man on the thirtieth day; the two sacrificed to Zeus the Saviour instead. When Heracles brought the lion to Mycenae, Eurystheus, amazed at his strength, forbade him to enter the city again and ordered him to show the fruits of his labours outside the gates; it is also said that in his fear he had a bronze jar made under the earth to hide in (Apollodorus 2.5.1). Diodorus adds that the beast could not be wounded by iron, bronze or stone, so that only the force of his hands could overcome it (4.11.3). Theocritus (Idyll 25.272–279) has Heracles tell how neither iron nor stone would cut the hide until a god put it into his mind to skin the lion with its own claws.

Pausanias (2.15.2–3) was shown the lion’s cave in the mountains of the Tretus pass, about fifteen stades from Nemea, and describes the temple of Nemean Zeus in the valley, its roof fallen in, with the grave of Opheltes surrounded by altars and the earth mound of Lycurgus nearby. He adds that the valley was said to be named after Nemea, a daughter of the river Asopus, and that on Mount Apesas above it Perseus was the first to sacrifice to Zeus.

Opheltes and the Nemean Games

The other famous story of Nemea concerns the Seven Against Thebes. The expedition was led by Adrastus, king of Argos, and its seven champions included Polynices, Tydeus, Amphiaraus, Capaneus, Hippomedon and Parthenopaeus. On their way to attack Thebes, Adrastus and his army reached Nemea suffering from thirst. They met Hypsipyle, the former queen of Lemnos, who had been sold into slavery and served in the house of Lycurgus, king of Nemea; she was nursing his infant son Opheltes, the child of Lycurgus and Eurydice (Apollodorus 3.6.4). She put the child down on the grass to show the soldiers the way to a spring, and a serpent killed him while she was gone. Pausanias was shown the spot in the cypress grove around the temple, and the spring, called Adrastea (2.15.2–3).

The Seven killed the serpent and buried the boy, and because the seer Amphiaraus read the death as a sign of what was to come for the expedition, they renamed him Archemorus, “beginning of doom”. They held funeral games in his honour, which were the first Nemean Games: Adrastus won the horse race, Eteoclus the foot race, Tydeus the boxing, Amphiaraus the jumping and the discus, Laodocus the javelin, Polynices the wrestling and Parthenopaeus the archery (Apollodorus 3.6.4). Bacchylides tells the same story in a victory ode for a Nemean athlete: the Argive heroes held the games for the first time in honour of Archemorus, whom a fiery-eyed dragon killed in his sleep, “a sign of the slaughter to come,” and Amphiaraus, the son of Oicles, could not persuade them to turn back (9.10–20). In Pausanias’ day the Argives held the games in winter and offered a prize for a race in armour (2.15.3); Pindar’s Nemean Odes celebrate its winners. Statius tells the fullest version in the Thebaid (Books 4–6): when Lycurgus turned on Hypsipyle for the child’s death, Amphiaraus called the Argives off their swords, and her two sons by Jason, Thoas and Euneus, who had come to Nemea in search of her, recognised their mother and embraced her (5.650–730); the funeral games for Archemorus fill Book 6. Euripides’ Hypsipyle, which survives only in fragments, told the story of the nurse too.

Nemea therefore has two founding stories, one of a monster killed by the greatest hero and one of an infant killed by a snake, and the sanctuary of Zeus kept the memory of both.

See Also: Labours of Heracles, Nemean Lion, Heracles, Eurystheus, Seven Against Thebes, Adrastus, Amphiaraus, Hera