Hercules Is The Most Remarkable Figure Of

Greek Mythology Essay, Research Paper

Hercules Was the Most Remarkable Figure of Greek Mythology

Stories about the gods, called myths, were made up thousands of years ago. Was there a real Hercules, a man behind the stories. We will never know. Yet, his story is of a man so strong and courageous, whose deeds were so mighty, and who so endured all the hardships that were given to him, that when he died, Hercules was brought up to Mount Olympus to live with the Gods. Hercules was both the most famous hero of ancient times and most beloved. More stories were told about him than any other hero. Hercules was worshipped in many temples all over Greece and Rome.

There were many heroes who could claim Zeus as their father, but few were immortal. Hercules (also called Heracles) and his half brother Dionysus (Bacchus) claimed immortality as an accident attendant at birth. Dionysus was immortal because, although conceived by the mortal Semele, he was actually given birth to from the thigh of Zeus. Hercules’ father was also Zeus, but his final dose of immortality sprang from Hera whose milk he drank at birth.

Hercules’s mother was Alcmena or Alcmene, the wife of King Amphitryon of Troezen. His father was none other than Zeus, the king of the gods, who disguised himself as Amphitryon and visited Alcmena on a night that lasted as long as three ordinary nights.

Zeus’s wife, Hera, was furious when she learned that Alcmena was pregnant with Zeus’s

child. She sent witches to Troezen to stop Alcmena from going into labor, but the witches failed and Alcmena gave birth to twins: Hercules (or Heracles), Zeus’s son, and Iphicles, Amphitryon’s son.

Hera sent two giant snakes to kill Hercules in his cradle. His mother saw the snakes and called to her husband for help, but Hercules stood up and strangled the snakes with his bare hands. In another version of this story, it was Amphitryon who put the snakes in the babies’ bed. A soothsayer had told him of Zeus’s visit to Alcmena, and Amphitryon wanted to find out which twin was Zeus’s son. When Hercules killed the snakes while Iphicles cried and tried to escape, Amphitryon’s question was answered.

Amphitryon acted as a father to Hercules and even taught him to drive a chariot. Hercules had many teachers. A famous thief, Autolycus, taught him to wrestle. Prince Castor of Sparta taught him to fence, and Prince Eurytus of Oechalia taught him to shoot a bow. Hercules’s low intelligence and terrible temper sometimes interfered with his lessons. When his music teacher, Linus, hit him, Hercules went into a rage and smashed Linus with his lyre, killing him. He was tried for the murder, pleaded self-defense, and was acquitted.

Afraid that his stepson would kill someone else, Amphitryon sent Hercules away from Thebes, where the family was living, to a cattle ranch. There Hercules grew to be seven or eight feet tall. He was the strongest man on earth, a fact he demonstrated by

single-handedly killing a lion that attacked the cattle of King Thespius of Thespiae. After that he always wore the lion’s skin as a cloak, with its head as a helmet.

Thespius was so impressed with mighty young Hercules that he decided that each of his fifty daughters should have Hercules’s baby. He sent a different daughter to Hercules every night, and Hercules never noticed the difference – he thought they were all the same person! Altogether Thespius’s daughters had 51 babies by Hercules. (One of the daughters didn’t sleep with him, but two sisters had twins.) Hercules had many, many girlfriends and children in his career.

One day Hercules met some heralds who were going to Thebes to collect a yearly tribute of cattle Thebes owed to King Erginus of Orchomenus. The heralds told Hercules that the Thebans were lucky Erginus hadn’t previously cut off their ears, noses, and hands. Infuriated, Hercules promptly cut off the heralds’ ears, noses and hands and sent them home.

This was a terrible crime – you weren’t supposed to hurt a herald, no matter what he did. In retaliation Orchomenus attacked Thebes, and Hercules’s stepfather Amphitryon was killed in the fighting. Hercules commanded the Theban army and defeated the enemy. The king of Thebes was so grateful that he let Hercules marry his daughter Megara. Hercules’s brother Iphicles married Megara’s youngest sister. Their widowed mother later married Rhadamanthys, a son of Zeus.

Hercules and Megara had two or more sons. But Hera still hated Hercules, and eventually she drove him insane. He threw his sons, and two of his brother’s sons, into a fire – then returned to his senses and realized what he had done. He consulted an oracle to find out how he could be purified. The oracle told him that he must serve King Eurystheus of Tiryns for twelve years and perform ten labors for him. He was assisted in some of his labors by Iphicles’s young son, Iolaus.

The first labor Eurystheus gave Hercules was to kill the Nemean lion, which couldn’t be hurt by weapons. Hercules hit it with his club and shot it without success. Finally he strangled it to death and carried it on his shoulders back to Eurystheus. Terrified by Hercules’s strength, the king forbade him to enter the city again. He even had a bronze jar made that he could hide in when Hercules was around!

Hercules’s next labor was killing the Lernaean Hydra, a s