8. The Myth of Heracles
GA 87/1901-12-28/p030
·1901-12-28
·
English
HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Auch wenn die Mitschrift noch nicht die später übliche Genauigkeit aufweist» (Even though the transcript does not yet have the accuracy usual later). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 87), which calls the cycle the earliest of which a listener's transcript exists. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
[Eighth:] Now Heracles can accomplish a very important work. He can overcome the world hostile to man at his highest level. The trials are renewed again and again, and that which is now to be overcome presents itself to us in the eighth work, the overcoming of the "fire-breathing horses of the son of Ares Diomedes. These "fire-breathing horses become immediately clear to us when we hear that they have to be fed with human flesh. The misanthropic violence on the higher level is that which can still impose a test on man, even if he has already achieved a high level of spiritual conquest. Here he overcomes by presenting the horses himself and then leading them to Olympus, where they are torn apart by wild animals. Now he is able to carry out the further trials. We see how what man can achieve on his path of development gradually forms into a well-rounded whole.
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