Hylas

[charisstoma]

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/who-was-hylas/

The story of Hylas first turns up in surviving sources in Theocritus (Idyll 13), . He is a young lover of Heracles, who is pulled into the water by these nymphs, and lost. Heracles searches for him, but in vain. This is a variant on the ‘femme fatale’ of ancient, and Victorian, sexism (watch those women: with their destructive sexuality, they’ll literally destroy you).

Pederasty in ancient Greece was a socially acknowledged romantic relationship between an adult male (the erastes) and a younger male (the eromenos) usually in his teens.

As a young male grew up he moved onto heterosexual relations.

So the story of Hylas could be of a coming of age story, when he is indeed lost to Heracles to take up his responsibilities to the City-State siring new citizens.