Achelous and Hercules

Achelous and Hercules is a 1947 mural painting by Thomas Hart Benton. It depicts a bluejeans-wearing Heracles (Roman Hercules) wrestling with the horns of a bull, a shape the protean river god Achelous was able to assume. The myth was one of the explanations offered by Greco-Roman mythology for the origin of the cornucopia, a symbol of agricultural abundance. Benton sets the scene during harvest time in the U.S. Midwest.

The mural was formerly displayed at a department store in Kansas City, Missouri, and is now in the collections of the Smithsonian. It was the first of Benton's paintings on a river-related theme.