When the two-headed dog saw Herakles he rushed at him with fury, and the herdsman also attacked him at the same time. Herakles slew them both with his club, took the cattle and fled toward the boat. Then Geryon sprang upon him and forced him to fight for his life. They had a dreadful battle, in which Herakles drew his bow and shot at the giant with one of his deadly arrows and Geryon died.
Herakles at once drove the oxen down to the boat, and after a safe voyage landed them in Iberia. Then he started for home on foot, driving his cattle northward over the Pyrenees into Gaul or France. Here he was attacked by hundreds of people who wanted to rob him of his cattle.
Herakles shot at them with his arrows and killed great numbers, and they stoned him in return with large stones. Herakles would have lost the battle but Zeus sent down a shower of rocks of vast size, and Herakles hurled them at his foes, driving them away like frightened sheep. These enormous rocks are still to be seen in the south of France.
After this adventure Herakles drove his cattle over the Alps and down into Italy across the Tiber, and they came to the Seven Hills of Rome. In one of these hills there was a cave, the home of a lawless giant named Cacus. He was a creature of iron strength, and was hideously ugly. He breathed out fire and smoke, often killing people in this way, and everybody in all the country about feared him. Cacus saw Herakles coming with his cattle over the river and among the hills, and he determined to steal the cattle and hide them in his den.
So when Herakles was asleep and the cattle were grazing quietly, Cacus slipped out of his cave and, seizing great numbers of them by the tails, dragged them backward into the cavern that their tracks might point away from the cave and not toward it. When Herakles awoke he missed his cattle and began to look for them. He found their tracks and went in the direction they seemed to point out, getting farther and farther from their place of hiding. The oxen bellowed, and their noises were muffled by the rocks of the cavern, but Herakles heard them and returned to the Seven Hills. Listening intently he traced them to the right hill, but Cacus had braced a stone slab against the opening and it could not be moved from the outside.
Herakles went around to the other side of the hill and, tearing the stones away, forced a new entrance. He sprang into the cave and seized the terrible monster by the throat. Cacus blew flames into the hero’s face and tried to burn him to death, but Herakles held on and strangled the giant to death. A volume of black smoke came from his mouth and a stream of melted lead as he fell back dead. Herakles tore the slab from the door of the cave and threw the body of Cacus out on the hill, and all the people came to see it and rejoice that their foe was slain. And they built an altar to Herakles and instituted games to be held every year in his honor.
Herakles left the Seven Hills and drove his cattle southward. Being tired, he lay down to rest on a mountain near Locri, and the grasshoppers came around him singing in such shrill tones that he could not sleep. He prayed to the gods to drive them away, and the gods swept them out of that region so that they never came back.
One of the wild oxen ran away to the southwest and escaped to an island. Herakles followed, driving the whole herd over to the island. The cattle swam across, and Herakles, sitting on the back of one of the oxen and holding on by its horns, was safely taken over. He captured the runaway and wandered for a long time through the island, enjoying the fresh water of the springs and the kindness of the people. Then he drove his cattle back to Italy and passed up the shores of the Ionian Sea.
But Hera sent gadflies to make the cattle wilder than they were before, and they scattered over the mountain-heights as clouds are scattered by a hot wind. They fled far to the east, until they came to Thrace. There Herakles gathered together as many as he could and brought them to Mykenæ, where Eurystheus sacrificed them to Hera.