Key Points

- Giant mythical boar captured by Heracles 

Brief Bio

In Greek mythology, the Erymanthian boar was a mythical creature that took the form of a shaggy and wild tameless boar of vast weight and foaming jaws. It was a Tegeaean, Maenalusian or Erymanthian boar that lived in the glens of Lampeia beside the vast marsh of Erymanthus. It would sally from the thick-wooded, cypress-bearing heights of Erymanthus to harry the groves of Arcady and abuse the land of Psophis.

The fourth labour of Heracles was to bring the Erymanthian boar alive to Eurystheus in Mycenae. To capture the boar, Heracles first chased the boar with shouts and thereby routed it from a certain thicket and then drove the exhausted animal into deep snow. He then trapped it, bound it in chains, and lifted it, still breathing from the dust, and returning with the boar on his left shoulder, staining his back with blood from the stricken wound, he cast it down in the entrance to the assembly of the Mycenaeans, thus completing his fourth labour. When the king saw him carrying the boar on his shoulders, he was terrified and hid himself in a bronze vessel.