Eurystheus requested Heracles to bring the Mares of Diomedes back to him. These mares symbolize the attraction for excessive asceticism that constrains the energies of life and must therefore be reoriented
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Diomedes, son of Ares and Cyrene, was king of the Thracian people of Cicones (Kikones) or, according to others, of the Bistones who were very belligerent. His mares fed on human flesh. (Some stallions or winged horses appear on the oldest ceramics.)
According to Pindar, the hero who was supposed to accomplish the labour without help, gave the mares a passerby to devour to distract them while harnessing them. Diomedes tried to oppose the hero and died in the fight that followed. The animals, once quieted, let themselves be taken meekly.
According to Diodorus, the troughs were made of bronze and the mares were chained to them. The hero gave them their own master Diomedes to devour, and thus they were cured from their bad habits. He then brought them to Eurystheus who gave them to Hera and ensured their progeny.
According to Apollodorus, Heracles had taken some volunteers with him, among which Abderos (a son of Hermes) who he loved (some say he was his lover). He used violence against the servants attending the troughs and took the mares towards the sea. As the Bistones pursued him, he entrusted the mares to Abderos who was ripped apart. After defeating the Bistones and having killed Diomedes, Heracles founded the city of Abdera and took the mares along with him. They were released by Eurystheus and went to Mount Olympus, where they were killed by wild beasts.
The texts hardly give us more details regarding this labour. It is essentially question of «bad habits» (human flesh as food) which a king of Thrace had given to his horses on which he exerted severe constraints.
The horse is a symbol of strength, of power which the yoga brings, as well as of the vital force.
(We shall not take into account Euripides’ version that introduced in this labour which he placed in fourth position, the story of Alceste and Admete that we studied in the second Chapter of the present volume.)
This labour takes place in Thrace, province of asceticism located in North-Eastern Greece where Boreas, the North wind, blows. The latter is one of the «breaths» of the Absolute encouraging the effort for the labour of purification and transformation in the right movement of incarnation, before the seeker abandons it between the hands of his Psychic Being. Let us recall that Apollo, the god of psychic light, lives in Hyperborea, thus beyond asceticism.
If the previous Labour was focused on the risks of an insufficient consecration of the power of the luminous mind during the first spiritual experiences, power therefore deviated for the benefit of the ego, this Labour denounces excessive austerity and constraints on the vital forces which ruin a right asceticism and lead to dryness of the being or to an amputation of its potentialities and qualities. This deviation is supported by the wrong belief that this excess pleases the Divine, while in reality the seeker clings to the ego with all his strength. He therefore distances himself from Reality through the violence of his very efforts to «feel» and «seize» It.
Diomedes «who meditates on the Divine or whose concern is the Divine» (not to be confused with Diomedes, chief of the Argives against Troy) is indeed the Kikones’ king «they who work with strength». His father is Ares, the god who works towards individuation and ensures the destruction of obsolete forms, and his mother is Cyrene (Kyrene) «the authority». The seeker would constrain his own nature by an excess of «separating» authority, which leads him to reject sometimes violently a right process of incarnation. He uses the strength given to him (the horses) to «devour» himself, while, on the contrary, the path requires to develop one’s abilities at best.
One can also see in Diomedes he «who thinks the Divine», and because of his parents Ares and Cyrene, «he who has a preconceived and separated idea of himself», idea generating an inner «censor». When the latter acts with a will of purification, he simultaneously removes the faculties necessary to perfecting one’s nature in its integrality. (The homonym Diomedes of the Trojan War would represent a much vaster idea of the Divine.)
This story can also be compared to that of Glaucos’ homonym (usually identified as Sisyphus’ son) killed by Iolaus during the funeral games in Pelias’ honour. He also fed his horses human flesh and was devoured by them when they had none left. The story denounces the intellect’s habit of drawing from the mental reserves to sustain the vital.
The present Labour of Heracles could therefore also be understood as an excessive constraint over the vital forces, which are sustained at the expense of the mind.
Sri Aurobindo in The Renaissance in India insisted on this deviation: «It is a great error to suppose that spirituality flourishes best in an impoverished soil with the life half-killed and the intellect discouraged and intimidated. The spirituality that so flourishes is something morbid, hectic and exposed to perilous reactions. »
Long is the list of constraints that the seeker can exert on himself under the guise of purification and at the expense of his outer nature resources: the fight against all what may seem impure to him or contradicting the path the way he conceives it, various excesses of ascetic disciplines, etc.
In other words, it is the error of he who seeks too much purity and perfection through his own strength, who often refuses that he belongs to humanity with all the darkness it implies, and moreover, who has not surrendered his yoga to the Absolute yet. The will of consecration to the quest which is diverted here towards that which wants to «seize» the Divine (Diomedes) is then used exclusively for repression, even th