File:Drawing of a Roman fresco found in the Casa della Danzatrice (Pompeii VI 17,9-10) depicting Hercules and Telamon rescuing Hesione from a sea monster sent by Neptune because the god was angry with Laomedon, the king of Troy.jpg

English: Drawing of a Roman fresco found in the Casa della Danzatrice (Pompeii VI 17,9-10) depicting Hercules and Telamon rescuing Hesione from a sea monster sent by Neptune because the god was angry with Laomedon, the king of Troy.

Translated full plate description: "Angered at Laomedon who had denied him the promised reward for building the walls of Ilion, Neptune sent a sea monster to desolate the coasts of Troad. The oracle, consulted, replied that it was necessary to expose a Trojan virgin to the fury of the monster, and the lot fell on Hesione, daughter of Laomedon. Hercules and Telamon, having arrived at Troy, delivered her. The beginning of the fight of the two heroes against their terrible adversary is the moment that the painter chose to represent this action in a historical landscape. The scene takes place outside the walls of Troy, which can be seen in the distance. In the plain situated between the gates and the shore, the girl of Laomedon, entirely naked and accompanied by her mother or her nurse, converses with one of the heroes who are going to fight for her. By the club he carries and by his stature, we recognize Hercules. However, Telamon, already on the shore, lifts a rock on his shoulders and prepares to throw it at the monster's head. The arrangement of the two characters in this fresco comes to justify, strangely enough, a host of doubts which were inspired in me, a long time ago, by the examination of the passage in which Valerius describes the same combat. Now, more than ever, I believe that it is necessary to make an equally active part of the two heroes, either throughout the course of the story, or particularly in these verses: Stat mediis elatus aquis, recipitque ruentem Alcides, saxoque prior surgentia colla Obruit: hic vastos nodosi roboris ictus Congeminat (1).

“Standing, unshakable within the waves, Alcide receives Him, and from the rock in this gaping abyss Plunges the enormous weight: Telamon however Has redoubled the blows of his heavy club (a)."

"I read here 'this' instead of 'hence', finding it unlikely that Hercules threw down his club to pick up a stone, then picked up the first weapon to hit the monster with it, not judging further that the friend and companion of Hercules, the future husband of Hésione, can play in this fight the role of simple spectator. This way of understanding the story agrees moreover with what Hygin reports: Hercules and Telamon... eodem venerunt et cetum interfecerunt (3); “Hercules and Telamon arrive and kill the monster. What does it matter that in the picture the club is left to Alcmene's son and the rock is lifted by his companion, while in the poem the roles are reversed! Perhaps it is not quite the same moment of the action; and what is only important, moreover, is that neither of the two heroes remain idle. On the left, on the very rock where Hésione would have been exposed if Hercules had not stopped her on the plain, we see a small structure, a small temple or rather a tomb. This is undoubtedly a monument raised to the victims of the plague that the monster has long since brought with it to these shores, or perhaps to the young girls who were devoted before fate designated Hésione. (All these details are indicated in two beautiful verses of the Argonautique, translated, alas! by four very weak verses:

Auxerat faaee locus, et facies moestissima capti Littorîs, and tumuli, coelumque quod incubât urbi.

“The effect of these heart-rending words is all heightened: This captive shore and its gloomy aspect, The brazen sky, which seems to crush the walls, And these tombs which have witnessed so many funerals."

'All these parts of the landscape seem well treated, and of a very true color: as for the figurines, they are of a vague tone, and rather indicated than painted.

"In the vignette, a rooster, whose movement is well studied, removes a few grapes with his beak". - Louis Barré, 1870