Heracles (1)

Other names: Hercules (Roman), Alcides, Alexikakos

The Greatest Greek hero possessing superhuman courage and strength with a large appetite for wine, sex and food. The traditions about Heracles appear in their national purity down to the time of Herodotus. Although there may be some foreign ingredients, the whole character of the hero, his armour, his exploits, and the scenes of his action, are all essentially Greek. But the poets of the time of Herodotus and of the subsequent periods introduced considerable alterations, which were probably derived from the east or Egypt. While in the earliest Greek legends Heracles is a purely human hero, as the conqueror of men and cities, he afterwards appears as the subduer of monstrous animals (the accounts of the Twelve Labours of Heracles are found only in later writers), and is connected in a variety of ways with astronomical phenomena.

Thebes was generally supposed to have been his birthplace. His birth is said to have been delayed by Hera because it had been ordained that of the two, Heracles and Eurystheus, the younger should serve the other. While he was an infant in the cradle, he strangled two serpents which Hera had sent to destroy him. According to a popular story (the Choice of Heracles), when he had arrived at the age of a young man, Virtue and Pleasure appeared to him personified as two women, each offering to be his guide. He preferred the former, and soon became renowned for his heroic exploits, the first of which was his victory over the lion of Cithaeron. He afterwards delivered Thebes from the annual tribute of a hundred oxen which that city was required to pay to Erginus. As a reward for this service, Creon, King of Thebes, gave him his daughter Megara in marriage.

Having consulted the oracle of Apollo, he was directed to serve Eurystheus for twelve years, after which he should become immortal. Eurystheus, who regarded him with jealousy and enmity, imposed on him a number of arduous enterprises, the Twelve Labours of Heracles.

Having been affected with insanity, he consulted an oracle, which advised him to sell himself as a slave for three years. He became a slave to Omphale, Queen of Lydia, for three years, and in whose service he wore the dress of a woman and was employed in spinning. He afterwards conducted a successful expedition against Troy to punish Laomedon for a breach of his promise, and he captured Troy and installed Priam as king. Later, he joined in the war against the Dryopes and the Lapiths.

He married Dejanira, to whom the centaur Nessus once offered violence. Heracles, with a poisoned arrow, killed Nessus, who, as he was about to die, persuaded Dejanira to preserve his blood as a love-charm. She became jealous, and applied this blood to a tunic, which he put on. He was poisoned by this garment, which produced violent pain, and stuck to his flesh when he tried to pull it off. He was about to seek relief by voluntary death on Mount Oeta, when he was conveyed by a cloud to Olympus and rewarded with immortality. Another account tells us that he prepared himself for his death and built a funeral pyre that was set alight by Poeas. He was afterwards worshipped as a divinity by all the Greeks. According to Homer, he dwelt in the Underworld.