A) Euripides Herakles 830... Iris, messenger of the gods, says that Herakles has now finished the Labors (that is, those that had been assigned to him by his inferior cousin, Eurystheus). His Labors are called athloi at 827.

Iris: Take heart, old men, beholding her,/ Lyssa, the progeny of Night, and me, Iris, the servant of the gods./ No evil to the town [polis] do we bring,/ but war against the house of one man, 825 / whom fame reports the son of Zeus and your Alcmene. / While he was finishing his bitter struggles [athlos], / necessity protected [sôzô] him nor would his father / Zeus ever allow me, or Hera, to do him ill. / Since he has finished Eurystheus' mandates, 830 / Hera wills that he bathe his hands afresh in blood, / his children's blood; and I assent.

B) Euripides Herakles 678f, a chorus of old men is singing...

May I not live without the Muses, / but may I always be garlanded. / Still as an old man I sing / the song of Memory [Mnêmosunê] / Still the victory song 680 / of Herakles I sing, / as long as Bromios is a giver of wine / and the tortoise shell lyre of seven tones / and Libyan flute play the tune, / I shall not cease from 685 / the Muses who made me dance! ...Surpassing all in his striving [aretê], the noble son of Zeus, with great toil has made life tranquil for mortals, having destroyed the horrible beasts.

C) Euripides Herakles 348ff

The lament for Linos after the
song for success Phoibos sings,
drawing his golden plectron 350
over the beautiful voiced seven string lyre [kithara].
But I sing of the one who went below the earth
Whether I call him the son of Zeus
Or child of Amphitryon
I wish to sing a crown of his 355
toils through eulogy,
the striving for excellence [aretê] of his labors [ponoi]
are a glory to the dead.
First the sacred forest of Zeus he cleared
And he slew the lion 360
When over his manly limbs the victor wore
The tawny beast's shaggy hide,
Terrific with its yawning jaws upon his head.
Next with many a shaft winged
from his fatal bow, he slew the savage 365
mountain band of Centaurs
and laid the bleeding monsters low, ...

D) Euripides Herakles 425ff

He won prizes in many other races
And glorious conquest crowned his brow;
But now, his last of toils [ponoi], he sailed to Hades'
realms below...

E) Euripides Herakles 1015...

there he lies, / Wretched, having slain his sons and wife, / Not in a blessed [eudaimôn] repose; I know of no mortal / who is more wretched in his ordeals [athlos].

The reference to the horrific scene of Herakles' slaughter of his wife and sons as an athlos makes this scene equivalent to a Labor.

Read the on-line edition of Gregory Nagy's Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore, 1979) from the Johns Hopkins University Press.

Review the life and labors of Herakles on the Perseus Project's Hercules: Greece's Greatest Hero. The labors of Herakles were treated in several tragedies (including the Trachinian Women of Sophocles and the Herakles of Eurpidies) and they were summarized in Apollodorus' handbook of Greek mythology, all available in on-line editioms from the Perseus Project.