Heracles was the most popular god-hero in Ancient Greece. He was really the greatest of the divine heroes so great that his mighty father Zeus made him a god after his death. He then became immortal.
Every where in Greece there would be a temple dedicated to him whereas for the other gods it would depend on their local popularity.
The life of Heracles with its ups and downs enabled everyone to relate to him. For all he was the perfect hero.
Heracles is another illegitimate son of Zeus, this time with the sweet, beautiful and peaceful Alcmene.
Alcmene is a mortal but more problematic for Zeus, she is faithful to her husband the general Amphitryon.
So the besotted Zeus, following the advice of the cunning Hermes, decided to take the appearance of her husband.
So as soon as Amphitryon would leave to go to war, a favourite pastime for the ancient cities, Zeus would take his place in his house without any knowledge of Alcmene. Soon she became pregnant with twins : one from her husband and will be named Iphikles, the other from her disguised lover, the all mighty Zeus and will be called … Heracles, so decided the ignorant Alcmene in honour of Hera.
Even as a new born Heracles has inherited from his father extraordinary powers.
When Hera, the legitimate wife of Zeus, tortured by jealousy and envy, sent two venomous serpents into his crib to kill the defenceless baby , Heracles, quite extraordinarily strangled them and threw them over giggling. Every one understood that Heracles was the son of Zeus.
Hercules grew into a great warrior. He single-handedly led the attack that drove the Minyans out of Thebes. In gratitude, Creon, king of Thebes offered his eldest daughter, Megara, to the hero.
Hercules and Megara got married and had three strong sons. The family lived happily together.
But Hera would never give up so easily. The innocent and carefree Heracles was going to face a terrible drama designed and implemented by a resentful, vengeful, pitiless Hera.
Heracles was going to be struck by Hera’s resentment in a most atrocious way.
On a quiet evening he drank a wine which the revengeful Hera had mixed with a powerful drug. It drove him mad. In his hallucinations he saw terrible monsters all around him and had to exterminate them to defend himself.
The next day when he finally woke up from his trance he had to face the most horrific reality and realised that he had murdered all his beloved : his loving wife and his own children.
In Ancient Greek time (as nowadays) there was no worse crime and outrage. Even Zeus could not saved his son. The gods had to find an appropriate punishment .
So as an atonement for these horrific murders , Apollo through the voice of the Pithy in the Oracle of Delphi sent Heracles to the King of Tirynthe, Eurystheus, a distant relative of Hera, famous for his greed and pettiness where the hero was to perform 10 tasks over ten years.
But the cunning and despicable king Eurystheus added 2 more making a list of 12 labours achieved by Heracles.
These labors were mainly suggested by Hera to Eurystheus and were all doomed as impossible tasks for Heracles with the clear objective for him to fail and be condemned to death or even better to die trying to accomplish them.
In chronological order the 12 labors were:
1-Killing the Nemean Lion, which had an impenetrable skin and was attacking the City of Nemea.
With just his bare hands Heracles killed the ferocious lion and skinned him, wearing his fur as a cloak.
2-Slaying the Lernean Hydra, that was guarding one of the entry of the Underworld Kingdom of the god Hades, located under the Lernaen Lake.
This fire-breathing monstrous creature had the body of a lion and nine serpent heads. As if it wasn’t enough, the Hydra had the horrific power to grow a new head back every time one was cut off. Needless to say that the Hydra was considered unbeatable.
Heracles, with the help of Iolaus, his young nephew , was finally able to kill it : they had to slay all of the heads and sealed the wounds with fire in order to prevent the Hydra from regenerating. After the death of the monster, Heracles plunged the tips of his arrows into the blood of the Hydra.
It was by all standards an amazing victory. But King Eurystheus argued that this amazing victory did not count as Heracles benefited from the help of Iolaus and decided to add one more task.
3-Capturing the Golden Hind of Artemis, , without inflicting any harm to the hind in order to avoid any resentment from the goddess.
Heracles had to run after the Golden Hind for almost a whole year until finally the hind had to take a rest and went to sleep.
The horrific King Eurystheus wanted to eat the hind but Heracles freed her.
4-Capturing the Erymanthian Boar, a huge and terrifying beast.
The problem for Heracles was to track the terrible boar as the beast was constantly on the run. So he started to cut all the trees and to dig traps.
Heracles finally trapped the beast and carried it alive on his shoulders to King Eurystheus.
5-Cleaning the Augean stables in one day.
Not only were these stables absolutely gigantic but they had not been cleaned in decades.
Heracles took all the horses away on the top of a hill close by, then he diverted the two nearby rivers which cleaned the stables.
Then Heracles put back the 2 rivers to their initial paths.
“Elementary, my dear Watson, isn’t it ?”
King Augeas was so overjoyed by the sparkling result that he rewarded Heracles with a whole purse full of gold.
This reward infuriated King Eurystheus as Heracles was his slave and a slave can not be paid. So he decided one more time that this task would not be accounted for and therefore he will add one additional task .
6-Slaying the Stymphalian Birds.
Sacred to Ares these horrific birds were man-eating birds with beaks and claws made of bronze .
These evil creatures were incredibly violent, overrunning Arcadia. Athena helped by asking Hephaestus to create a rattle which sounds frightened the birds. Once the birds were flying into the air, Heracles was able to shoot them down with his bow and his poisonous arrows.
Every one was overjoyed by this new victory of Heracles and in Arcadia he was considered as a saviour.
7- Capturing the Cretan Bull.
Just like the Erymanthian Boar, the Cretan bull was huge and fearsome. He was causing havoc on the island of Crete .
This bull had been a gift of the God Poseidon to the king of Crete, Minos. He should have been offered in sacrifice to the mighty god but dazzled by the power of the bull, king Minos committed an offence towards the gods by deciding to keep him for himself.
The gods had punished him immediately by making his wife passionately in love with the bull and she had given birth to the Minotaur which was hidden under the palace. The gigantic bull had been chased out of the palace and had been terrorising the population since.
Heracles was tasked by the envious Eurystheus to capture the formidable beast for his own profit.
With his bare hands, Heracles wrestled the bull to the ground, successfully mastering it and taking it back to Eurystheus.
In Crete, all were overjoyed and Heracles was celebrated as a hero.
8-Stealing the Mares of Diomedes.
These beautiful horses were a sight to behold except that these beautiful animals had been raised to be man-eaters
The cruel King Diomedes of Thrace had trained his horses to eat human flesh.
Heracles was tasked with bringing back these mares.
Heracles headed to Thrace and stayed awake all night until Diomedes fell asleep. Heracles
cut the bronze manger the horses were tied to and chased them to the end of the peninsula before digging a ditch around them, creating an island.
Eventually, Diomedes appeared and Heracles slew him, feeding him to the mares and calming them down so that he could sew their mouths shut and take them back safely to Eurystheus.
9—Obtaining the Girdle of Hippolyta, Queen of the warlike Amazons.
Heracles was tasked with retrieving the belt of the Queen of the Amazons, a fearsome group of warrior women, who accepted no man in their tribe.
Hippolyta , their queen was impressed with the exploits of Heracles, she felt in love at first sight with him and was ready to give him her belt, which was a gift from Ares.
Hera could not let Heracles go victorious one more time, so she intervened and appeared before the Amazons, saying that a stranger was on his way to steal their queen away.
The Amazons rushed to their camp, attacked Heracles, who then had to fight back.
The battle was terrible and Heracles killed all the Amazons, including Hippolyta unintentionally.
He took the belt, gave it to Eurystheus who offered it as a tribute to Hera.
How do you think Heracles felt about it ? Having unfortunately killed a woman he loved for the sake of making an offering to his arch-enemy ?
Still he had to endure this additional pain and humiliation.
10-Stealing the cattle of the 3-headed monster Geryon.
Geryon was a terrifying giant with three heads and six arms. He lived far away, on the shores of the ocean Atlantic. As if it wasn’t chilling enough, he has a two-headed watchdog named Orthrus.
So Heracles traveled west to steal the cattle of Geryon. On his way to Erythy, near Spain, Heracles could not stand the scorching heat and desperately fired arrows towards the sun. Apollo, instead of being offended, decided to help Heracles by offering him an immense bowl made of gold which has the super natural power of floating and navigating on the sea. Heracles was then able to reach Geryon’s territory very easily.
The giant attacked Heracles but succumbed with one of Heracles‘s arrow piercing Geryon’s forehead.
Heracles gave back the gold bowl to Helios and walked back to Greece with the precious cattle. It took him several years to achieve this trip back.
He had accomplished 10 impossible missions : would Eurystheus give him back his freedom ?
But Eurystheus, supported by Hera, claimed that 2 missions were not to be taken into account :
- the slaying of the Hydra (because Iolaus helped him)
- and the cleaning of the Augean stables (because the rivers did the work and because Heracles was financially rewarded).
- He then gave two additional tasks to Heracles making a total of 12 labours.
11- Stealing the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, the nymphs of evening and sunset.
The Hesperides were the 7 daughters of the Titan Atlas and they all lived in an impressive palace located where the sun set. They were also the gardians of the most wonderful garden where apples of gold would grow. No one else but them could enter this secret garden. But where to find this mysterious garden ?
Heracles was not only extraordinarily strong, he was also cunning. On his way , Heracles met Prometheus, freed him and killed the eagle that was devouring every day the liver of Prometheus.
Grateful, Prometheus advised Heracles to meet the father of the Hesperides, the god Atlas who had been condemned to hold up the heavens by Zeus after the war between the Titans and the Olympian gods.
Since Heracles didn’t know how to access the secret garden, he proposed to Atlas to support the heavens while Atlas go visit his beloved daughters. The only condition he gave for his help was that Atlas would bring him back a basket filled with golden apples.
Atlas accepted the deal with great pleasure. But when he came back with his basket full of apples he had a change of heart and decided not to take back his place. Has Heracles been trapped for eternity?
But Heracles was too cunning for the naive Atlas. He agreed with him but asked for a minuscule favour in return which Atlas being so relieved by his kind understanding was too happy to accept. He quietly asked Atlas to relieve him for one moment, just the time for him to adjust his cloak.
The naive Atlas took back the weight of the heavens and the cunning Heracles just walked away with the golden apples…
12-Bringing Cerberus, The Hound of the Underworld, for a visit.
Heracles was tasked with bringing back the three-headed dog, Cerberus, who guarded the gates of the underworld.
The problem was to find the way to the underworld. Two gods Athena and Hermes decided then that the punishment was unfair as it was taking such a long time and that they would therefore help secretly Heracles to speed up the process.
They took him to the gate of the underworld.
Heracles boarded with Chiron and asked Hades if he could bring Cerberus with him. Hades, who knew that Hera had decided Heracles list of Labours and thus the slaying of the Hydra, his own creature, accepted on the condition that Heracles could subdue the beast with only his bare hands, without real harm done to Cerberus.
Heracles was successful and slung Cerberus on his back, before walking back from the underworld and presenting the beast to Eurystheus.
Eurystheus was so fear stricken to meet Cerberus. While Heracles took back Cerberus to the underworld, Eurystheus and Hera got busy plotting to trick Heracles.
This time, for all the gods it was enough. Zeus had to intervene and liberated his now beloved son from any punishment. Heracles had finally atoned his tragic crimes.
He would go on to have more adventures, including with other famous Greek mythological heroes.
Many years later, Hercules remarried to Deianira, whose name means “man-destroyer” or “destroyer of her husband”. He should have think twice.
Deianira was tormented by her obsessive jealousy and tried everything she could, including black magic, to keep her dashing husband. So she coated a cloak with what she believed to be a magic balm that would guarantee his love for her forever. Unfortunately the balm was a deadly poison.
When Heracles put the cloak on, it began to burn him. Unable to get the cloak off, Heracles suffered a slow, atrocious death.
While he was going through an excruciating painful agony, Hera finally agreed to reconcile and all the gods gleefully welcomed Heracles to Mount Olympus. Zeus, his mighty and proud father, had granted him immortality.
How do we recognise him?
He is almost always portrayed as a bearded muscular man with a club, most of the time wearing his lion’s skin.
Heracles is one of the most popular characters in Classic and Western Art.