Very little mention is made in Christie's work about this part of his life, but in " The Nemean Lion " ( 1939 ) Poirot himself refers to a Belgian case of his in which " a wealthy soap manufacturer poisoned his wife in order to be free to marry his secretary ".

Heracles ' first task was to slay the Nemean Lion and bring back its skin, which Heracles decided to wear.

# Slay the Nemean Lion.

# Slay the Nemean Lion.

He was forced to do women's work and to wear women's clothes, while she wore the skin of the Nemean Lion and carried his olive-wood club.

From Orthos and either Chimera or Echidna were born the Sphinx and the Nemean Lion.

Tetradrachm of Rhegion with the Nemean Lion.

On the mainland of Greece, the spring called Adrasteia was at the site of the Temple of Nemean Zeus, a late Classic temple of c 330 BC, but built on an archaic platform in a very ancient sanctuary near the cave of the Nemean Lion.

* The Nemean Lion was a gigantic lion with impenetrable skin.

She also had a monster as a brother, the Nemean Lion, and fifty half-sisters, the Menae.

Eurystheus and Hera were greatly angered to find that Heracles had managed to escape from the claws of the Nemean Lion and the fangs of the Lernaean Hydra, and so decided to spend more time thinking up a third task that would spell doom for the hero.

Plutarch, in his vita of Pericles, 24, mentions lost comedies of Kratinos and Eupolis, which alluded to the contemporary capacity of Aspasia in the household of Pericles, and to Sophocles in The Trachiniae it was shameful for Heracles to serve an Oriental woman in this fashion, but there are many late Hellenistic and Roman references in texts and art to Heracles being forced to do women's work and even wear women's clothing and hold a basket of wool while Omphale and her maidens did their spinning, as Ovid tells: Omphale even wore the skin of the Nemean Lion and carried Heracles ' olive-wood club.

In addition, the magical hide armor that Hercules made for himself from the skin of the Nemean Lion, at the end of Hercules ' first labor, might also be seen as an early idea of a magical cloak.

Here he devoted himself to crafting medals, the most famous of which are " Hercules and the Nemean Lion ", in gold repoussé work, and " Atlas supporting the Sphere ", in chased gold, the latter eventually falling into the possession of Francis I of France.

They were said to have been founded by Heracles after he defeated the Nemean Lion ; another myth said that they originated as the funeral games of a child named Opheltes.

Other legends attribute the institution of the Nemean games to Heracles, after he had slain the Nemean Lion ; but the alternative tradition was that he had either revived the ancient games, or at least introduced the alteration by which they were from this time celebrated in honour of Zeus.

Other recurring creatures like the Nemean Lion, the Lernaean Hydra, the Erymanthian Boar, and the Stymphalian Birds were taken directly from Hercules ' Twelve Labors, but most weren't presented as trials for him to overcome.

For an example of the former style and voices, watch the episodes " The Minotaur " or " The Chair Of Forgetfulness "; for an example of the latter, watch " The Nemean Lion " or " The Chameleon Creature ".

Leaning on his knobby club which is draped with the pelt of the Nemean Lion, he holds the apples of the Hesperides in his right hand, but conceals them behind his back like a baseball pitcher with a knuckleball.

Image: Hercules with Nemean Lion-Labor-1-Girolamo Muziano-1565-Sala di Ercole-Villa d ' Este, Tivoli. jpg | Hercules slaying Nemean Lion – First Labor ( 1565 ), Villa d ' Este, Tivoli.

Here in Greek mythology Heracles overcame the Nemean Lion of the Lady Hera, and here during Antiquity the Nemean Games were played, in three sequence, ending about 235 BCE, celebrated in the eleven Nemean odes of Pindar.

Theseus overpowered the Minotaur with his strength and stabbed the beast in the throat with his sword ( according to one scholium on Pindar's Fifth Nemean Ode, Theseus strangled it ).

Bacchylides begins his ode with the tale of Heracles fighting the Nemean lion, employing the battle to explain why pancration tournaments are now held during the Nemean games.

According to some sources, it was he rather than Typhon that sired, with Echidna, further chthonic monstrous creatures: the Chimera, the Sphinx, the Lernaean Hydra, and even, Hesiod says, the Nemean lion, and Cerberus.

While there are different genealogies, in one version the Chimera mated with her brother Orthrus and mothered the Sphinx and the Nemean lion ( others have Orthrus and their mother, Echidna, mating ; most attribute all to Typhon and Echidna ).

In 208 BC Philip of Macedonia was honoured by the Argives with the presidency at the Nemean games, and Quintius Flamininus proclaimed at the Nemea the freedom of the Argives.

As with the Nemean Games, the Isthmian Games were held both the year before and the year after the Olympic Games ( the second and fourth years of an Olympiad ), while the Pythian Games were held in the third year of the Olympiad cycle.

So to ease their minds, and free them from any superstitious thoughts or forebodings of evil, Timoleon halted, and concluded an address suitable to the occasion, by saying, that a garland of triumph was here luckily brought them, and had fallen into their hands of its own accord, as an anticipation of victory: the same with which the Corinthians crown the victors in the Isthmian games, accounting chaplets of parsley the sacred wreath proper to their country ; parsley being at that time still the emblem of victory at the Isthmian, as it is now at the Nemean sports ; and it is not so very long ago that the pine first began to be used in its place .” “” ( Plutarch, Life of Timoleon ).</ ref > Victors could also be honored with a statue or an ode.

Pindar, in his 11th Nemean Ode, hints at a group of Peloponnesians, the children of the fighters at Troy, occupying Tenedos, with Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, landing straight on the island ; specifically he refers to a Spartan Peisandros and his descendant Aristagoras, with Peisandaros having come over with Orestes.

Thus several amphoras of this group show Heracles with Geryon or the Nemean Lion, and increasingly Theseus and the Minotaur, as well as the birth of Athena.

The Nemean lion of pre-literate Greek myth is associated with the Labours of Herakles. When King Xerxes of Persia advanced through Macedon in 480 BC, several of his baggage camels were killed by lions, but the fourth-century compiler of the Historia Animalium attributed to Aristotle had apparently never seen a lion: " The lion has its neck composed of one single bone instead of vertebrae ".

The title Cypria, associating the epic with Cyprus, demanded some explanation: the epic was said in one ancient tradition to have been given by Homer as a dowry to his son-in-law, a Stasinus of Cyprus mentioned in no other context ; there was apparently an allusion to this in a lost Nemean ode by Pindar.

Poirot is reacquainted with Miss Carnaby, the companion from the episode of the Nemean Lion, who Poirot praises as one of the most successful criminals he ever met.

While she is speaking her ward, Opheltes is killed by a snake ; in Book 6, the Argives perform games for the dead child, instituting the Nemean Games.

According to one version of the myth, the Nemean lion took women as hostages to its lair in a cave near Nemea, luring warriors from nearby towns to save the damsel in distress.

File: Herakles Nemean lion BM B621. jpg | Oinochoe, 520-500 BC, from Vulci

When the other children saw the skin of the Nemean lion, they ran from it in terror, thinking that it was alive.

Apart from the Olympics, the best respected were the Isthmian Games in Corinth, the Nemean Games, the Pythian Games in Delphi, and the Panathenaic Games in Athens, where the winner of the four-horse chariot race was given 140 amphorae of olive oil ( much sought after and precious in ancient times ).

* Nemean lion, a creature from Greek mythology

Nemea was famous in Greek myth as the home of the Nemean Lion, which was killed by the hero Heracles, and as the place where the infant Opheltes, lying on a bed of parsley, was killed by a serpent while his nurse fetched water for the Seven on their way from Argos to Thebes.

The Nemean Games were documented from 573 BC, or earlier, at the sanctuary of Zeus at Nemea.

Ancient Roman sculpture | Roman relief sculpture | relief ( 3rd century CE ) depicting a sequence of the Labours of Hercules, representing from left to right the Nemean Lion, the Lernaean Hydra, the Erymanthian Boar, the Ceryneian Hind, the Stymphalian birds, the Girdle of Hippolyte, the Augean stables, the Cretan Bull and the Mares of Diomedes

Heracles and the Nemean lion ( oinochoe, 520-500 BC, from Vulci )

According to one version of the myth, the Nemean lion took women as hostages to its lair in a cave near Nemea, luring warriors from nearby towns to save the damsel in distress.

Eurystheus and Hera were greatly angered to find that Hercules had managed to escape from the claws of the Nemean Lion and the fangs of the Lernaean Hydra, and so decided to spend more time thinking up a third task that would spell doom for the hero.