Heracles
In
Greek mythology,
Heracles or
Herakles ("glory of
Hera",
+ , ) was a
divine hero, the son of
Zeus and
Alcmene, stepson of
Amphitryon[By his adoptive descent through Ampitryon, Heracles receives the epithet Alcides, as "of the line of Alcaeus", father of Amphitryon.] and great-grandson of
Perseus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, a paragon of masculinity, the ancestor of
royal clans and a champion of the
Olympian order against
chthonic monsters. In
Rome and the
modern West, he is known as
Hercules, with whom the later
Roman Emperors, in particular
Commodus and
Maximinus, often identified themselves. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, but added anecdotal detail of their own, some of it linking the hero with the geography of the Western Mediterranean. Details of
cult were adapted to Rome as well: see
Hercules.
Extraordinary strength,
courage, ingenuity, and sexual prowess with both males and females were among his characteristic attributes. Together with
Hermes he was the patron and protector of
gymnasia and
palaestrae.
[Pausanias, Guide to Greece, 4.32.1] His iconographic attributes are the
lion skin and the
club. These qualities did not prevent him from being regarded as a playful figure who used games to relax from his labors and played a great deal with children.
[Aelian, Varia Historia, 12.15] By conquering dangerous archaic forces he is said to have "made the world safe for mankind" and to be its benefactor.
[Aelian, Varia Historia, 5.3]Many popular stories were told of his life, the most famous being
The Twelve Labours of Heracles; Alexandrian poets of the Hellenistic age drew his mythology into a high poetic and tragic atmosphere
[Burkert 1985, pp. 208-9]. His figure, which initially drew on Near Eastern motifs such as the lion-fight, was known everywhere: his
Etruscan equivalent was
Hercle, a son of
Tinia and
Uni.
|
Ruins in Kos of the temple to Heracles, the Herakleion |
The greatest of Hellenic
chthonic heroes, yet unlike other Greek heroes, in that no tomb of Heracles was identified, Heracles was both hero and god, as
Pindar says
heros theos; at the same festival sacrifice was made to him, first as a hero, with a chthonic
libation, and then as a god, upon an altar: thus he embodies the closest Greek approach to a "
demi-god".
[ibid.] The core of the story of Heracles has been identified by Walter Burkert as originating in Neolithic hunter culture and traditions of
shamanistic crossings into the netherworld.
[Burkert 1985, pp. 208-212.]Christian dating
In Christian circles a
Euhemerist reading of the widespread Heracles/Hercules cult was attributed to a historical figure who had been offered cult status after his death, Thus
Eusebius,
Preparation of the Gospel (10.12),
Clement could offer historical dates for Hercules as a king in Argos: "from the reign of Hercules in
Argos to the
deification of Hercules himself and of
Asclepius there are comprised thirty-eight years, according to
Apollodorus the chronicler: and from that point to the deification of
Castor and
Pollux fifty-three years: and somewhere about this time was the capture of
Troy."
Christian readers with a literalist bent have asserted from this remark that, since Heracles ruled over
Tiryns in Argos at the same time that
Eurystheus ruled over
Mycenae, and since at about this time
Linus was Heracles' teacher, one can conclude based on
Jerome's date— in his universal history, his
Chronicon— for Linus' notoriety in teaching Heracles in
1264 BC that Heracles' death and deification occurred 38 years later in approximately 1226 BC.
The cult of Heracles
The ancient Greeks celebrated the festival of the
Herakleia, which commemorated the death of Heracles, on the second day of the month of Metageitnion (which would fall in late July or early August). What is believed to be an
Egyptian Temple of Heracles [
1] in the
Bahariya Oasis dates to 21 BC.
Birth and childhood
A major factor in the well-known tragedies surrounding Heracles is the hatred that the
goddess Hera, wife of
Zeus, had for him. A full account of Heracles must render it clear why Hercules was so tormented by Hera, when there are many illegitimate offspring sired by Zeus. Heracles was the fruit of the affair Zeus had with the mortal woman
Alcmene.
Zeus made love to her after disguising himself as her husband,
Amphitryon, home early from war. (Amphitryon did return later the same night, and Alcmene became pregnant with his son at the same time, a case of
superfetation, where a woman carries twins sired by different fathers.
Compare the two pairs of twins born to Leda and the "double" parentage of Theseus. Thus, Heracles' very existence proved at least one of Zeus's many illicit affairs, and Hera often conspired against Zeus's mortal offspring, as revenge for her husband's infidelities.
On the night the twins only sharing the same mother were to be born, Hera, knowing of her husband Zeus's adultery, persuaded Zeus to swear an oath that the child born that night to a member of the House of
Perseus would be High King. Once the oath was sworn, Hera hurried to Alcmene's dwelling and slowed the birth by sitting crosslegged with her clothing tied in knots. Meanwhile, she caused another boy
Eurystheus to be born prematurely, making him High King in place of Heracles. She would have permanently delayed Heracles' birth had she not been foiled by
Galanthis, her servant, who lied to her that she had already delivered the baby. Upon hearing this Hera jumped in surprise, therefore untying the knots and finally allowing
Alcmene to give birth. The child was originally given the name Alcides by his parents; it was only later on that he became known as Heracles.
One of the boys,
Iphicles, was Amphitryon's son and a
mortal, while the other was the
demi-god Heracles. Heracles was named in an unsuccessful attempt to mollify Hera. A few months after he was born, Hera sent two serpents to kill him as he lay in his cot. Heracles throttled a snake in each hand and was found by his nurse playing with their limp bodies as if they were child's toys.
Youth
After killing his music tutor with a
lute, he was sent to tend cattle on a mountain by his foster father
Amphitryon. Here, he was visited by two nymphs - Pleasure and Virtue - who offered him a choice between a pleasant and easy life or a severe but glorious life. He chose the latter. One of Hercules' challenges was put to him by King
Thespius of
Thespia who wished him to impregnate each of his 50 daughters. According to the legend, Hercules did this in one night.
Later in
Thebes, Heracles married King
Creon's daughter,
Megara. However, Hera drove Hercules into a fit of madness during which he killed his wife and children. Upon realizing what he had done, he fled to the
Oracle of Delphi. Unbeknownst to him, the Oracle was guided by Hera. He was directed to serve King
Eurystheus for 12 years and perform any task which he required, resulting in
The Twelve Labours of Hercules.
The Twelve Labors
 |
Heracles (). |
In a fit of madness induced by
Hera, Heracles slew his own and his brother's children. To expiate the crime, Heracles was required to carry out ten labors set by his arch-enemy,
Eurystheus, who had become king in Heracles' place. Heracles accomplished these tasks, but Hera ordered Eurystheus to give two more tasks to Heracles, which he then carried out.
Not all writers gave the labors in the same order.
Apollodorus (2.5.1-2.5.12) gives the following order:#The
Nemean Lion.#The
Lernaean Hydra.#The
Ceryneian Hind.#The
Erymanthian Boar.#The
Augean Stables.#The
Stymphalian Birds.#The
Cretan Bull.#The
Mares of Diomedes.#The Girdle of
Hippolyte.#The Cattle of
Geryon.#The Apples of the
Hesperides.#The Capture of
Cerberus, the guardian dog of
Hades.
Further adventures
After completing these tasks, Hercules joined the
Argonauts in the search of the
Golden Fleece. They rescued heroines, conquered Troy, and helped the gods fight against the
Gigantes. He also fell in love with Princess
Iole of
Oechalia. Hercules' advances were spurned by the king and his sons, except for one - Iole's brother
Iphitus. Iphitus became Heracles best friend. But once again, Hera drove Hercules mad and he threw Iphitus over the city wall to his death. Once again, Hercules purified himself through servitude - this time to Queen
Omphale of
Lydia.
Omphale
Omphale was a queen or princess of
Lydia. As penalty for a murder, Heracles was her slave. He was forced to do women's work and wear women's clothes, while she wore the skin of the
Nemean Lion and carried his
olive-wood club. After some time, Omphale freed Heracles and married him. Some sources mention a son born to them who is variously named. For further details see
Omphale. It was at that time that the
cercopes, mischievous wood spirits, stole Heracles' weapons. He punished them by tying them to a stick with their faces pointing downward.
Hylas
While walking through the wilderness, Heracles was set upon by the
Dryopians. He killed their king,
Theiodamas, and the others gave up and offered him Prince
Hylas. He took the youth on as his weapons bearer and beloved. Years later, Heracles and Hylas joined the crew of the
Argo. As
Argonauts they only participated in part of the journey. In
Mysia,
Hylas was kidnapped by a nymph. Heracles, heartbroken, searched for a long time but Hylas had fallen in love with the nymphs and never showed up again. The ship set sail without them.
Story of Heracles and HylasIole
King
Eurytus of
Oechalia promised his daughter,
Iole, to whoever could beat his sons in an archery contest. Heracles won but Eurytus abandoned his promise. Heracles killed him and his sonsâ€"excluding Iphitusâ€"and abducted Iole.
Laomedon of Troy
Before the
Trojan War,
Poseidon sent a sea monster to attack
Troy. The story is related in several digressions in the
Iliad (7.451-453, 20.145-148, 21.442-457) and is also found in
Apollodorus' Bibliotheke (2.5.9).
Laomedon planned on sacrificing his daughter
Hesione to Poseidon in the hope of appeasing him. Heracles happened to arrive (along with
Telamon and
Oicles) and agreed to kill the monster if Laomedon would give him the horses received from Zeus as compensation for Zeus' kidnapping
Ganymede. Laomedon agreed. Heracles killed the monster, but Laomedon went back on his word. Accordingly in a later expedition Heracles and his followers attacked Troy and sacked it and slew all Laomedon's sons present there save
Podarces, who saved his own life by giving Heracles a golden veil Hesione had made. Telamon took Hesione as a war prize; they were married and had a son,
Teucer.
Other adventures
* Heracles defeated the
Bebryces (ruled by King
Mygdon) and gave their land to Prince
Lycus of
Mysia, son of
Dascylus.
* He killed the robber
Termerus.
* Heracles visited
Evander with
Antor, who then stayed in Italy.
* Heracles killed King
Amyntor of the
Dolopes for not allowing him into his kingdom. He also killed King
Emathion of
Arabia.
* Heracles killed
Lityerses after beating him in a contest of harvesting.
* Heracles killed
Poriclymenus at
Pylos.
* Heracles founded the city
Tarentum (modern:
Taranto) in Italy.
* Heracles learned music from
Linus (and
Eumolpus), but killed him after Linus corrected his mistakes. He learned how to wrestle from
Autolycus. He killed the famous boxer
Eryx of
Sicily in a match.
* Heracles was an
Argonaut. He killed
Alastor and his brothers.
* When
Hippocoon overthrew his brother,
Tyndareus, as King of
Sparta, Heracles reinstated the rightful ruler and killed Hippocoon and his sons.
* Heracles slew the giants
Cycnus,
Porphyrion and
Mimas. The expedition against Cycnus, in which Iolaus accompanied Heracles, is the ostensible theme of a short epic attributed to
Hesiod,
The Shield of Heracles.
* Heracles went to war with
Augeias after he denied him a promised reward for clearing his stables. Augeias remained undefeated due to the skill of his two generals, the Molionides, and after Hercules fell ill his army was badly beaten. Later, however, he was able to ambush and kill the Molionides, and thus march into Elis, sack it, and kill Augeias and his sons.
Heracles had numerous liaisons with both women and youths, some of which linked his name with later dynasties of the historic period, who claimed descent from his offspring, collectively referred to as the
Heracleidae, among whom the most notable was
Macaria.
Heracles' women
During the course of his life, Heracles married three times. His first marriage was to
Megara, whose three children he murdered in a fit of madness and whom he later gave in marriage to his beloved
Iolaus, because the sight of her was too painful. His second wife was
Omphale, the
Lydian queen or princess to whom he was delivered as a slave.
His last marriage was to
Deianira, for whom he had to fight the river god
Achelous. (Upon Achelous' death, Heracles removed one of his horns and gave it to some nymphs who turned it into the
cornucopia.) Soon after they wed, Heracles and Deianira had to cross a river, and a
centaur named
Nessus offered to help Deianeira across but then attempted to rape her. Enraged, Heracles shot the centaur from the opposite shore with a poisoned arrow (tipped with the Lernean Hydra's blood) and killed him. As he lay dying, Nessus plotted revenge and told Deianira to gather up his blood and spilled semen and, if she ever wanted to make prevent Heracles from having affairs with other women, she should apply them to his vestments. Nessus knew that his blood had become tainted by the poisonous blood of the Hydra, and would burn through the skin of anyone it touched.
Later, when Deianira suspected that Heracles was fond of Iole, she soaked a shirt of his in the mixture. Heracles' servant,
Lichas, brought him the shirt and he put it on. Instantly he was in agony, the cloth burning into him. As he tried to remove it the flesh ripped from his bones. Heracles chose a voluntary death, asking that a pyre be built for him to end his suffering. After death the gods transformed him into an immortal, or alternatively, the fire burned away the mortal part of the demi-god, so that only the god remained. Because his mortal parts had been incinerated, he could now become a full god and join his father and the other Olympians on
Mount Olympus. He then married
Hebe.
No one but Heracles' friend
Philoctetes (in some versions:
Iolaus or
Poeas) would light his funeral pyre. For this action, Philoctetes (or Poeas) received Heracles' bow and arrows, which were later needed by the Greeks to defeat Troy in the Trojan War.Philoctetes confronted Paris and shot a poisoned arrow at him. The Hydra poison would subsequently lead to the death of Paris. The Trojan War, however, would continue until the
Trojan Horse was used to defeat
Troy.
Another episode of his female affairs that stands out was his stay at the palace of King Thespios, who encouraged Heracles to make love to his daughters, all fifty of them, in one night. They all got pregnant and all bore sons. Many of the kings of ancient Greece traced their lines to one or another of these, notably the kings of
Sparta and
Macedon.
Heracles' eromenoi
As paragon of masculinity and warriorship, Heracles also had a number of
pederastic male beloveds.
Plutarch, in his
Eroticos, maintains that Heracles' eromenoi (male lovers) were beyond counting. Of these, the one most closely linked to Heracles is the
Theban Iolaus. Their story, an
initiatory myth thought to be of ancient origin, contains many of the elements of the Greek pederastic apprenticeship in which the older warrior is the educator and the younger his helper in battle. Thus Iolaus is Heracles' charioteer and squire. Also in keeping with the initiatory pattern of the relationship, Heracles in the end gives his pupil a wife, symbolizing his entry into adulthood. Iolaus' ritual functions parallelled his relationship with Heracles. He was a patron of male love—Plutarch reports that down to his own time male couples would go to Iolaus' tomb in Thebes to swear an oath of loyalty to the hero and to each other
[Plutarch, Erotikos, 761d.]—and he presided over initiations in the historical era, such as the one at
Agyrion in central
Sicily.
[Bernard Sergent, Homosexuality in Greek Myth, Boston, 1986, pp. 141-152.] The tomb of Iolaus is also mentioned by Pindar.
[Pindar, Olympian Odes, 9.98-99.]One of Heracles' best known love affairs, and one frequently represented in ancient as well as modern art, is the one with
Hylas. Though it is of more recent vintage (dated to the third century) than that with Iolaus, it too exemplifies in detail the normal cycle of a youth's initiatory process, consisting of education through service to a warrior, including sexual relations, and concluding with promotion to adult status and marriage.
[Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, 1.1177-1357; Theocritus, Idyll 13.] [
2]
Sparta, as a warrior city where pederastic pedagogy—ostensibly of a chaste nature—was enshrined in the laws given by
Lycurgus, the quasi-mythical legislator, also provided Heracles with an
eromenos—
Elacatas, who was honored there with a sanctuary and yearly games. The myth of their love is an ancient one.
[Sosibius, in Hesychius of Alexandria's Lexicon, per Sergent, 1986, p. 163] Abdera's eponymous hero,
Abderus, was another of Heracles' beloveds. In what is considered to be initiatory myth, he was said to have been entrusted with—and slain by—the carnivorous mares of Thracian
Diomedes. Hercules founded the city of Abdera in
Thrace in his memory, where he was honored with athletic games. The topos of death in such stories is thought to symbolize the passage from one stage of life to another.
[Apollodorus 2.5.8; Ptolemaeus Chennus, 147b, in Photius' Bibliotheca]Among the lesser-known myths is that of
Iphitus. Heracles' subsequent murder of Iphitus is held to be evocative of an initiatory ritual.
[Ptolemaeus Chennus, in Photius' Bibliotheca; Sergent 1986, p. 297.] Another such story is the one of his love for
Nireus, who was "the most beautiful man who came beneath Ilion" (
Iliad, 673). Ptolemy adds that certain authors made Nireus out to be a son of Heracles, a fact thought to authenticate this tradition.
[Ptolemaeus Chennus, 147b; Sergent 1986, p. 298.] The last in this category—despite the fact that Greek literature preserves no mention of this role—is the story of
Philoctetes. He is also heir to the hero—and thus surely his disciple—and is the one who lights his pyre. Later he is the initiator of
Neoptolemus, son of
Achilles.
[Martial, Epigrams 2.84.]There is also a series of lovers who are either later inventions or purely literary conceits. Among these are
Admetus, who assisted in the hunt for the
Calydonian Boar;
[Plutarch, Erotikos, 761e.] Adonis;
[Ptolemaeus Chennus] Corythus;
[Ptolemaeus Chennus] Jason;
[Ptolemaeus Chennus] and
Nestor, who was said to have been loved for his wisdom. His role as eromenos was perhaps to explain why he was the only son of
Neleus to be spared by the hero.
[Ptolemaeus Chennus, 147e; Philostratus, Heroicus 696, per Sergent]], 1986, p. 163.]Heracles' children
Telephus is the son of Heracles and
Auge.
Hyllus is the son of Heracles and
Deianeira or
Melite.The sons of Heracles and
Hebe are
Alexiares and
Anicetus.
In Rome, Heracles was honored as
Hercules, and had a number of distinctively Roman myths and practices associated with him under that name.
Via the
Greco-Buddhist culture, Heraclean symbolism was transmitted to the far east. An example remains to this day in the
Nio guardian deities in front of
Japanese Buddhist temples.
Herodotus connected Heracles both to
Phoenician god
Melqart and to the
Egyptian god
Shu. Temples dedicated to Heracles abounded all along the
Mediterranean Sea coastal countries.
| Heracles myths as told by story tellers |
|---|
| 1. Heracles and Hylas, read by Timothy Carter |
| Bibliography of reconstruction: Homer, Odyssey, 12.072 (7th c. BC); Theocritus, Idylls, 13 (350–310 BC); Callimachus, Aetia (Causes), 24. Thiodamas the Dryopian, Fragments, 160. Hymn to Artemis (310–250? BC); Apollonios Rhodios, Argonautika, I. 1175 - 1280 (c. 250 BC); Apollodorus, Library and Epitome 1.9.19, 2.7.7 (140 BC); Sextus Propertius, Elegies, i.20.17ff (50–15 BC); Ovid, Ibis, 488 (AD 8 –18); Gaius Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica, I.110, III.535, 560, IV.1-57 (1st century); Hyginus, Fables, 14. Argonauts Assembled (1st century); Philostratus the Elder, Images, ii.24 Thiodamas (170–245); First Vatican Mythographer, 49. Hercules et Hylas |
|
*
Timeless Myths – Heracles The life and adventure of Heracles, including his twelve labours.
*
Heracles, Greek Mythology Link*
Heracles (in French)*
Vollmer: Herkules (1836, in German)*
Burkert, Walter, (1977) 1985.
Greek Religion (Harvard University Press).
