The Eighth Labor

From the Lesson

King Diomedes of Thrace keeps four mares — Podargos, Lampon, Xanthos, and Deinos (meaning Swift, Shining, Blond, and Terrible) — and he feeds them on human flesh. Guests who visit his kingdom are killed and fed to the horses. The mares are not naturally carnivorous; they have been made monstrous by what they are fed. They are beautiful creatures twisted into abominations by a diet of destruction.

These are your appetites — not as they were born, but as they have been cultivated. Every human being arrives with natural hungers: for food, for connection, for stimulation, for meaning. These hungers are the four horses of the soul's chariot, and in their natural state, they are magnificent. But culture, trauma, and unconscious habit can feed them on human flesh — can twist natural appetite into consumption that devours other people.

The person who feeds their need for validation by manipulating others. The one who feeds their hunger for control by diminishing those around them. The one who feeds their appetite for stimulation by consuming the labor, creativity, or emotional energy of others without reciprocity. These are Diomedes' mares — natural drives fed an unnatural diet until they become ravenous and monstrous.

Hercules' approach is brutally direct: he feeds Diomedes to his own horses. The king who created the monstrous appetite becomes its final meal. Once the mares have consumed their master, they become calm and docile — tame enough to be led by ordinary reins.

The allegory is unflinching: the only way to tame a destructive appetite is to feed it the identity that created it. The ego-structure that cultivated the pattern — the inner Diomedes who decided that consuming others was acceptable, who normalized the diet of destruction — must itself be sacrificed to the hunger it created. This is the death of the false self that maintained the addiction, the collapse of the identity that said "this is who I am, this is what I need."

Once the mares eat Diomedes, they become gentle. The appetite does not disappear — the horses still exist — but they are transformed. They eat grass now, not flesh. The natural hunger returns to its natural food. This is not the elimination of desire (that was the bull's teaching) but the reformation of appetite — the moment when you stop feeding your needs on other people and learn to nourish yourself from the earth, from honest work, from genuine connection.

In some versions, Hercules' companion Abderus is killed by the mares while Hercules is fighting Diomedes. Even in the act of reforming your appetites, the mares may consume someone you love. The old patterns are dangerous right up until the moment of transformation. Do not underestimate them. Do not turn your back.