# the labors of Hercules

idiom · CEFR B2

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/the-labors-of-hercules
Updated: 2026-07-29

## Meaning

A long series of extremely difficult challenges that must all be overcome one after another.

## Examples

- Getting the visa felt like the labors of Hercules.
- Launching the product required the labors of Hercules: funding, licensing, testing, and hiring, each a battle of its own.
- Passing the reform through the legislature was like the labors of Hercules, a grinding sequence of committee fights, amendments, and rival lawsuits that had to be won in turn before the bill could ever become law.

## Origin

Seeking to cleanse himself of a terrible crime, Hercules was bound by the oracle to the service of King Eurystheus — a small, fearful man who envied the hero's strength and meant to use it against him. So he set Hercules not one impossible task but a whole chain of them, twelve in all, each intended to be the last. Hercules was sent first against the Nemean lion, then against the many-headed Hydra, whose necks grew back two for every one he severed. He chased a golden-horned deer for a full year, took a monstrous boar alive, and shot down the man-eating birds of a poisoned lake. No sooner had he returned from one ordeal than the king was waiting with the next. The tasks grew stranger and further-flung as they went. He fetched the belt of the queen of the Amazons and the cattle of a three-bodied giant from an island at the edge of the world. He gathered the golden apples of a garden guarded by a sleepless dragon. And for the last and worst, he went down into the land of the dead itself to bring back its three-headed hound. Twelve times he set out believing the end was near, and twelve times the finish line moved. It was never the difficulty of any single labour that made his name, but the sheer unrelenting succession of them — one impossible thing after another, with no rest in between. The labors of Hercules name exactly that: not a single hard job but a long series of them, each punishing in its own way, that a person must grind through one after another before the work is finally done.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.