A Stag with horns of gold and feet of brass,
On Maenalus bounds o'er th'unbending grass,
To Dian sacred, this he's doom'd to bring,
Unhurt into the presence of the King,
Forbid to wound, how take a Stag so fleet?
A twelvemonth's end scarce saw the task complete.
The Ceryneian Hind, also called Cerynitis, was an enormous hind sacred to Artemis, the chaste goddess of the hunt and moon. It had golden antlers like a stag and hooves of bronze or brass, and it was said that it could outrun an arrow in flight. The capture of the hind was one of The Twelve Labours of Heracles.
The hind was so fast it could outrun an arrow. When Heracles awoke from sleeping, he could see the hind from the glint on its antlers. Heracles chased the hind on foot for a full year through Greece, Thrace, Istria and the land of the Hyperboreans. In some versions, he captured the hind when it stopped to drink, rendering it lame by shooting it with an arrow that had not been poisoned with centaur/hydra blood, as most of his arrows were, in other versions he captured it when it was unable to run any further.
