Читать книгу The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures: The Ultimate A–Z of Fantastic Beings from Myth and Magic - John Matthews - Страница 349

In Greek mythology, the Cerynean Hind was a wild female deer with golden antlers. She began life as the Titan Taygete, the companion of Artemis who was Mistress of the Animals (see Lords and Ladies of the Animals). Taygete succumbed to the attentions of Zeus and Artemis punished her friend by turning her into an antlered hind. The Cerynean Hind ranged through the countryside of Arkadia and into the mountains of Argos, laying waste to farms and fields. The quality of the hind that made it deadly was not its wildness but its effect upon potential hunters who became totally obsessed by the thought of their prey, finding it impossible to stop, even though the hind led them into unknown countries. Most hunters died of sheer exhaustion. Thus, the magical property of the Cerynean Hind is the dangerous compulsion to follow desires to their end whatever the cost.

Hercules undertook to hunt the Cerynean Hind as his third labour. He followed it for a whole year, throughout Arkadia and beyond, into Hyperborea, the land beyond the north wind, and on into the Otherworld itself. He finally came to the Garden of the Hesperides where he found the hind beneath the tree of the golden apples where the apple-guarding serpent Ladon dwelt. Accounts vary as to what happened next. In some versions, Hercules took the hind’s golden antlers, but others tell how he tied the hind’s legs together and carried her back into Arcadia where he was met by Apollo and his sister Artemis, who was exceedingly annoyed at the capture of her sacred animal. Hercules excused himself by saying that he was only carrying the hind into Mycenae alive, and Artemis forgave him.