Birth and Early Life

Hercules
The greatest of all heroes in Greek mythology, Hercules was the strongest man on earth. Besides tremendous physical strength, he had great self-confidence and considered himself equal to the gods. Hercules was not blessed with great intelligence, but his bravery made up for any lack of cunning. Easily angered, his sudden outbursts of rage often harmed innocent bystanders. When the fury passed, though, Hercules was full of sorrow and guilt for what he had done and ready to accept any punishment for his misdeeds. Only supernatural forces could defeat him, and it was magic that ended his mortal life.
Birth and Early Life
Hercules was the son of Zeus and Alcmene, the wife of Amphitryon, a distinguished Greek warrior and heir to the throne of Tiryns. One night while Amphitryon was away, Zeus came to Alcmene disguised as her husband. The next day, the real Amphitryon returned and slept with his wife. Concerned that Amphitryon did not remember being with Alcmene on both nights, the couple consulted the blind prophet Tiresias, who told them that Zeus (disguised as her husband) had slept with Alcmene the first night, and predicted that she would bear a child who would become a great hero.

Alcmene bore twin boys – Hercules, the son of Zeus, and Iphicles, the son of Amphitryon. When the goddess, Hera, discovered that Zeus had seduced Alcmene and fathered Hercules, she was furious. His name means “Glory of Hera,” which is ironic considering that Hera, Zeus’s wife, relentlessly tormented Hercules throughout his life; even driving him crazy. Hera was fiercely jealous of Zeus’s lovers and children and pursued them mercilessly. She tried to kill the infant Hercules by having two poisonous snakes placed in his crib one night. However, the infant grabbed the snakes and strangled them. Though Hera failed to kill Hercules, she persecuted him throughout his life, causing many of the events that led to his great suffering and punishments. When Hercules was first born, he was first named Alcide “the strong” but was renamed Heracles “glory of Hera” after overcoming the tests that were imposed on him by Hera.

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, was teaching him to play the lyre, Hercules became frustrated and went into a rage and smashed Linus with his lyre, killing him instantly. Hercules was shocked and very sorry. He had not meant to kill his teacher. He just did not know his own strength. This was the first time he dealt a fatal blow without intending it. Hercules was tried for murder, but was acquitted on a claim of self-defense.
Amphitryon feared his adopted son (most likely due to his strength) and sent him to a Scythian cattleman, Teutarus, in Thebes who taught Hercules archery. At the age of 18, Hercules spent 50 days trying to kill the lion of Cithaeron, which was destroying the flocks of Thespius, king of Thespius. Because, Thespius wanted to have Hercules father his grandchildren he put one of his 50 daughters in Hercules’ bed each night. Thus, Hercules had 50 sons, the Thespeiades, who would eventually colonize Sicily. Hercules eventually killed the lion.
While still a young man, Hercules went to fight the Minyans, a people who had been forcing Thebes to pay a tribute of 100 cattle each year to Erginus, king of the Minyans Hercules attacked a group of heralds from the Minyans, and cut off their ears, noses, and hands. He then tied them around their necks and told them to take those for tribute to Erginus. Erginus made war on Thebes, but Hercules defeated them with his fellow Thebans after arming them with weapons from temples. Erginus was killed and the Minyans were forced to pay double the previous tribute. As a reward for conquering the Minyans, the new king of Thebes gave Hercules the hand of his daughter, Megara. Hercules was devoted to Megara and the three children she bore him.
One day after Hercules returned home from a journey, Hera struck him with a fit of madness during which he killed his wife, Megara, and their three children. When he came to his senses, Hercules was horrified by what he had done. Devastated with sorrow and guilt, the hero went to the oracle at Delphi to ask how he could atone for his misdeed. The oracle told him to go to King Eurystheus of Tiryns to be purified and submit to any punishment asked of him. He went willingly, ready to do anything that could make him clean again. The oracle also announced that if Hercules completed the tasks set before him, he would become immortal. The 12 tasks were created to be impossible and it was believed that Hera urged Eurystheus to create these tasks. Hercules was assisted in some of his labors by his nephew, Iphicles’s young son, Iolaus.
The Twelve Labors of Hercules




The First Labor: the Nemean Lion.

The first task Eurystheus demanded was to kill a savage lion, a child of Typhoeus that was ravaging the country around Nemea, northwest of Mycenae. In early versions of the story, Hercules simply cut himself a club at Nemea and killed the lion. Later versions tell how he fired at it with bow and arrows, then realized, when his arrows bounced off, that the beast had an impenetrable skin. Hercules therefore chased the lion into its lair, a tunnel through a mound with an opening at either end. He blocked up one end and crawled into the other. Since his weapons were useless, he seized the beast in a wrestler’s grip, threw it to the ground, and through brute strength snapped his neck. When he tried to skin the lion, Hercules discovered that his weapons could not break his skin. He took one of the lion’s own claws and with this unbreakable tool cut the pelt. Ever after he wore the skin around his shoulders, its gaping jaws embracing his head like a helmet, and he always toted the club he had cut at Nemea.

Hercules brought the dead lion back to Eurystheus, but the king skulked in a corner of his palace, bellowing out orders that Hercules never again be allowed into the city with his booty. Henceforth he would have to announce his results to the herald (Copreus), “dungman.” To be on the safe side Eurystheus also had an enormous bronze jar set into the ground in which he could take refuge when Hercules was anywhere near.


The Second Labor: the Lernaen Hydra.

Hercules’ second labor was to destroy an enormous serpent, the Hydra “water serpent” with nine heads which lived near the swamps of Lerna, southeast of Mycenae, where it ravaged the fields and livestock. Even its breath was deathly. Iolaus, Hercules’ nephew, accompanied him to the springs. Hercules soon drove the monster from its lair by shooting burning arrows, then moved in close, brandishing a short curved sword. But the hydra wrapped its coils around one of his feet, while a giant crab crept from the swamp and attacked the other. Every time Hercules succeeded in cutting off one head, two new ones grew in its place. The middle head, furthermore, was immortal.

Though he managed to smash the crab, the outcome was still uncertain. Hercules cried out for help. Iolaus set fire to a nearby forest and brought Hercules firebrands to burn off each new head as it sprouted and cauterize the stump. At last, the mortal heads were destroyed. He cut off the immortal one and buried it beneath a massive rock, then ripped open the fiend’s body, spilling on the ground filth of deadly bile. He dipped his arrows into the black gall, so poisonous that even a trace would kill a man. This would later be the cause of Hercules’ death. The crab became the constellation Cancer.
The Third Labor: the Cerynean Hind.

His next task was to bring in a deer living in Ceryneia, a remote mountain in the northern Peloponnesus. This magical animal, though female, had golden antlers and brazen hooves and belonged to Artemis. Hercules spotted her near Argos. Wishing neither to kill nor harm the animal, he tracked it for a full year until he overtook it in Arcadia, where he wounded it with an arrow as it crossed the river, Ladon. He seized it by the antlers, threw it over his shoulder, and headed for Mycenae. On the way, he met Artemis and Apollo walking together. Apollo tried to take the deer away and reproached Hercules for wounding and capturing his sister’s sacred animal. The hero apologized, saying that he was under orders from Eurystheus. Artemis allowed him to show the deer to Copreus, after which Hercules let it go..

The Fourth Labor: the Erymanthian Boar.

The fourth labor was to capture alive the Erymanthian boar, which lived on Mt. Erymanthius in Arcadia. While trying to pick up its trail, Hercules stopped to visit a centaur named Pholus, who lived in a remote cave. Pholus wished to be hospitable and offered Hercules cook meat (he himself only ate raw). When Hercules asked for some wine, pointing to a large cask at the back of the cave, Pholus explained that the wine belonged to all the centaurs and that he ought not to open it. Hercules assured Pholus that there would be no problem, but when he opened the cast, the strong scent of the aged liquor wafted across the mountain tops, and soon the neighboring centaurs gathered, carrying stones and ash trees as weapons.

Alarmed at their aggressive manner, Hercules threw torches at them and fired arrows at others. They fled and took refuge with the one wise centaur, Chiron, who migrated down from Mt. Pelion in northern Greece, near Iolcus. Unlike the other centaurs, Chiron was immortal. In the chaos, he was wounded by one of Hercules’ poisoned arrows so that the venom that always killed coursed through the veins of a being that could not die. Prometheus, chained on Mt. Caucasus, eventually traded his mortality for Chiron’s agonizing immortality, allowing Chiron to dies (though he is somehow still alive a generation later to serve as tutor to Achilles). The other centaurs, including Nessus, later instrumental in the death of Hercules, scattered to the four winds.

After the battle, the friendly Pholus picked up a stray arrow, astonished that such a tiny thing could bring down a large, powerful centaur. He let the arrow slip, it struck his hoof, and Pholus, too, fell dead from the Hydra’s poison.

Hercules at last drove the boar from the thick brush with his magnificent voice, ran it down in a snow bank, threw it across his back, and carried to boar to Eurystheus, who beheld it in terror from the bottom of his bronze jar.
The Fifth Labor: the Augean Stables.

Augeas, son of the sun god, Helios, was king of the district of Elis. His father had given him many herds, but Augeas never cleaned his stables. After 30 years of neglect, they were deeply packed with an enormous quantity of dung. Eurystheus, wishing to humiliate Hercules by making him shovel excrement, ordered him to go to clean the stables. Without revealing that he was under orders from an overlord, Hercules bargained with Augeas, who agreed that if he cleaned all the stables in a single day – an obvious impossibility – he would receive one-tenth of Augeas’ cattle.

Hercules easily accomplished the task by diverting the nearby Alpheus and Peneus rivers through the stables and flushing them out. But when Augeas learned of Hercules’ obligation to Eurystheus, he refused to pay.




The Sixth Labor: the Stymphalian Birds.

The sixth task involved driving away the Stymphalian Birds, a mighty flock of death-dealing birds with claws and beaks of iron, arrow-firing wings, and armor-piercing beaks that ate humans and were terrorizing the countryside. Helped by the goddess Athena, Hercules forced the birds from their nests in the thick forest around the lake by clanging together bronze castanets and shot them with his bow and arrows.

The Seventh Labor: the Cretan Bull.

Now Hercules was ordered to capture the bull summoned from the sea by Minos, the one who impregnated Pasiphae as she hunched in the wooden cow. Hercules sailed to Crete and asked for Minos’ help, since the animal was untamable. Minos politely refused, but gave Hercules permission to take the bull away if he could capture it unaided.

Hercules charged at the bull, seized it by the horns, tossed it in the sea, then jumped on its back and so rode back to the Peloponnesus. Hercules showed it to Copreus, but the bull got away and wandered north across the Isthmus. It ended up on the plain of Marathon, where Theseus caught it.
The Eighth Labor: the Horses of Diomedes.

The next task was to capture the horses of Diomedes, a son of Ares and king of the Bistones, a savage tribe in Thrace. These horses were no ordinary animals because they dined on human flesh. When Hercules reached Thrace, he promptly captured the horses. Since they enjoyed human flesh, he fed them their master, Diomedes, thus arousing the wrath of the Bistones, who rose up and besieged him and his young lover, Abderus. Hercules turned the horses over to Abderus while he drove back the attack, but by the time he returned, the horses had eaten Abderus. Sadly, Hercules buried what bits remained and near the tomb founded the important classical city of Abdera.

Hercules herded the horses back to Mycenae and showed them to Copreus. Afterward, they escaped and made their way back north, to Mt. Olympus, where they were eaten by wolves-though their descendants were said to be alive in the time of Alexander the Great.
The Ninth Labor: Hippolyte’s Girdle.

Eurystheus ordered Hercules to get the girdle from the Amazon queen (Hippolyta, or Antiope) for his daughter. The girdle was a sort of belt that women wore just above their hips: to loosen it was to offer oneself sexually, to take it forcibly was rape. The labor was a sexual one directed against the queen of the man-hating Amazons. They were very warlike and held several flourishing cities. It was their custom to bring up only the female children; the boys were either sent away to the neighboring nations or put to death.

Hercules gathered some companions and set out on the long journey to the river Thermodon on the southern shore of the Black Sea. After various adventures, he pulled into the harbor of Themiscyra in the land of the Amazons. Surprisingly, Hippolyta greeted him in a friendly way and offered him the belt-Hercules’ charms were so great that, though an Amazon, the queen surrendered to him immediately.

Hera, being sadistic toward Hercules, did not like this turn of events. Disguised as an Amazon, she ran through the city proclaiming that Hercules, the brute male foreigner, had abducted their queen. The Amazons donned their armor, mounted their steeds and attacked the ship. Hercules, fearing treachery, reached across the table, strangled Hippolyta, and sailed way. He went to Troy for a side adventure and returned to Mycenae, where he gave the girdle to Eurystheus.

The Tenth Labor: the Cattle of Geryon.

Hercules was sent on his tenth labor to capture the cattle of Geryon, who had three bodies joined at the waist and lived on the island of Eythia, near the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar). Geryon was the son of Pegasus Chrysaor and an Oceanid, Callirhoe, and he possessed a herd of red cattle watched over by Eurytion and his two-headed dog, Orthus, which was a child of Echidna and Typhoeus.

Hercules trudged through the sands of northern Africa, finally reaching the narrows separating the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Here he set up pillars on both sides of the straits. Hercules traveled into North African desert sands, and became tired from the intense heat. He shot a bow at the sun, and Helios admired his boldness. Helios lent Hercules a cup, which he used to travel east at night.

Hercules landed in Erythia and Orthus smelled him and attacked. Hercules bashed Orthus’ brains and then killed Eurytion, who came to assist Orthus. He then moved the cattle past a river, before Geryon attacked. Hercules shot him with an arrow, put the cattle into the cut and went to Tartessus, at the edge of the world, where he returned the cup to Helios. Hercules brought the cattle to Eurystheus who sacrificed them to Hera.

The Eleventh Labor: the Golden Apples of the Hesperides.

The eleventh labor was the most difficult labor of all because involved bringing back the golden apples of the Hesperides “the nymphs of the West.” Hercules did not know where to find them. These apples grew on a magical tree with golden bark and golden leaves, which Zeus had given to Hera as a wedding present and Hera planted in a garden at the foot of Mt. Atlas. Hera had entrusted the apples to the daughters of Hesperus, which were also guarded by a hundred-headed dragon named Ladon.

Hercules didn’t know where to find these apples, so he sought Nereus, the sea-god, who knew everything, but was very elusive. Some nymphs knew where Nereus slept and Hercules went there and tied him down. He didn’t release him, although Nereus changed shape to try to escape. Nereus provided directions.

Hercules went to North Africa and was attacked by Antaeus, a mighty giant and wrestler, whose strength was invincible so long as he remained in contact with his mother Earth. He compelled all strangers to his country to wrestle him, on the condition that if conquered (which always happened), they should be put to death. Hercules encountered him, and threw him to the ground, but Antaeus got stronger every time he hit the ground. Hercules knew this, because Antaeus was a child of Gaea, so he held him above his head and strangled him.

After various adventures, Hercules arrived at Mount Atlas in Africa. According to one account, Hercules requested help from the Hesperides' father, the giant Atlas, who held up the sky. Hercules offered to take Atlas's place under the sky if he would fetch the apples from his daughters. Atlas agreed and obtained the apples, but then he refused to take back the sky. Hercules asked Atlas to hold the sky for a just moment while he got a pad to ease the burden on his shoulders. Atlas agreed. But as soon as Atlas took back the sky, Hercules grabbed the apples and fled. On his way to find the golden apples, Hercules found Prometheus chained to Mt. Caucasus where the eagle was devouring his intestines. Hercules shot the eagle with one of his poison-tipped arrows, killing the bird, and thus releasing Prometheus from 30,000 years of torment.

Eurystheus gave the apples back to Hercules, who gave them to Athena, who eventually returned them back to the Hesperides.

The Twelfth Labor: the Capture of Cerberus.

At the twelfth labor Hercules was ordered to descend into the Underworld and bring back it 3-headed guard, Cerberus. Like any good Greek preparing to face death, he first went to Athens, was purified of pollution for having killed the Centaurs, and was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. He traveled to the entrance to Hades at Taenaron, a system of caves near Sparta.

As he came down from the upper world, all the ghosts fled before him. The Gorgon’s head rose up, and he drew his swords against it. He seized one of Hades’ own cows and sacrificed it to the Lord of the Dead. A herdsman tried to stop him, but Hercules wrestled him down and broke his ribs.

He appeared before the king and the queen of the dead and requested permission to take Cerberus. Hades agreed, as long as Hercules did not use any weapons. Protected by his lion’s skin and breastplate, he seized the hound by its throat and held it, though Cerberus’ snake-tail lashed around and savagely bit him. Hercules passed a chain around the beast and dragged it, foaming and snarling, out of the darkness and into the light. Wherever a piece of foam from Cerberus’ mouth struck the ground, up sprang deadly wolfsbane or aconite. Hercules reached Mycenae, and displayed the monster to Eurystheus who very sensibly did not want to keep him, and made Hercules carry him back.

Thus having completed his twelve acceptable labors, Hercules was released from his obligation to the king and at long last allowed to pursue his own happiness.

Other Adventures and Later Life

Hercules had many other adventures during his lifetime. He killed other beasts and monsters, engaged in numerous battles against his enemies, joined the expedition of Jason and the Argonauts, which he later abandoned, and even fought the god Apollo. Throughout, he faced the hatred of Hera, who continued to persecute him because she could not forgive him for being the son of Zeus.

Hercules in a fit of madness killed his friend Iphitus, by pushing him off a cliff, and was condemned for this offense to become the slave of Queen Omphale of Lydia for three years. While imprisoned, his nature changed, oftentimes wearing the dress of a woman, and spinning wool with the hand-maidens.

Later in his life, Hercules married Deianeira (man-killer), a princess whose hand he had won by fighting the river god Achelous. Hercules also saved Deianeira from a centaur named Nessus, who tried to run away with her as she was crossing a river. Hercules heard her cries and shot an arrow into the heart of Nessus. As Nessus lay dying from Hercules' poisoned arrows, he urged Deianeira to take some of his blood, which was now poisoned from the hydra, telling her it would act as a magic potion that could secure her husband's love forever.

Some years later, fearing that Hercules had fallen in love with another woman named Iole, Deianeira took the potion and smeared it on a robe for her husband, thinking that now he would always love only her. The potion was really a terrible poison, and when Hercules put on the poisoned garment, it burned his skin, causing an agonizing pain that could not be stopped. He wrenched off the garmet, but it stuck to his flesh, and with it he tore away whole pieces of his body. When Deianeira discovered what had happened, she killed herself.

The dying Hercules ordered his son to build a funeral pyre on Mount OEta. He gave his bow and arrows to Philoctetes, and laid himself down upon the pyre. As the flames of the pyre grew, a great cloud appeared, a bolt of lightning struck, and the body of Hercules disappeared. Hercules, now an immortal god, had been taken to Mount Olympus in a four-horse chariot to be with his father, Zeus, and the other gods. Even Hera welcomed him and allowed him to marry her daughter Hebe.

There is no other story about Hercules which shows so clearly his character as the Greeks saw it: his simplicity and blundering stupidity; his inability not to get roaring drunk in a house where someone was dead; his quick penitence and desire to make amends at no matter what cost; his perfect confidence that not even Death was his match.