Herakles’ heroic career

Herakles’ heroic career

1. As we transition from gods to heroes, just as the gods develop over time so does the idea of what it means to be a hero. So, before we import our own ideas of the heroic ideal, we should start with Greek concepts of heroism. First of all, the word hero is a Greek word (heros), and that’s only fitting because one of the things we’re apt to miss is that Greek myth is concerned with humans in a way that other mythologies aren’t.

2. Basic concepts of hero:

• Religion/cult: Beginning around the 10^th century but only becoming a widespread phenomenon in the 8^th – a hero is a dead man who either because he was thought to be exceptionally powerful in life  or because he died an unusual death is thought to retain power over events of this world even after death. Some of these are malign in nature and the sacrifices offered to him are apotropaic i.e. they are done to avert evil rather than ask for some good). Others are closer in nature to the Catholic cult of saints: you pray and offer sacrifices to them for protection, strength, etc. and they offer such aid from beyond the grave.

• In Homer and Hesiod, hero refers to men who were living in the remote past who fought at Thebes and Troy. Remember, Hesiod sandwiched them between the Bronze and Iron ages. For Homer and Hesiod both, some of these heroes are the offspring of one divine parent and a mortal. These are called hemi-theoi (semi-gods). They may be more powerful than the average human, but they are subject to the same constraints as the rest of us. They don’t become gods (except for Herakles).

Unlike religious heroes, Homer’s epics are populated with what he calls heroes who are very much alive. For the most part in Homer they are contrasted with the ordinary people of their community. There is almost a contractual arrangement between the heroes and their community that goes something like this: you get the best stuff, but when the community is under threat you have to fight on the front lines to ward off that threat (cp. Sarpedon to Glaucos in Iliad 12). In the Iliad, these heroes are fighting for honor: time/kleos (honor/long lasting fame). Of course, the prospect of obtaining enduring fame often comes at the cost of a significantly shortened lifespan. (This is the subject of the Iliad)

• The Tragic hero (i.e., the hero as she/he often appears in tragedy) is similar to the epic hero, but with a different emphasis: here too, the hero is outside the moral sensibilities of the rest of the community; but this difference of outlook is presented as a problem. Tragic heroes often set themselves on a course of action that they know will lead to their destruction but to fail to this is to negate their own sense of self. (This same tendency will sometimes be found in the philosophical concept of heroism that begins at least as early as Socrates, b. ca 469 BCE)

3. Anthropologists and folkorists of the 19^th and 20^th centuries began to approach heroic narrative by examining concepts of heroism across cultures in an attempt to find common elements. Some of the better-known theorists of this approach include Otto Rank, Lord Ragland, Joseph Campbell, Alan Dundes). In retrospect you will see much that applies quite marvelously to the mythical life of Herakles.

4. Herakles: Main points

• Best known, but also least understood – much of his life seems to correspond to the patterns seen in other heroes, but much is unique to him.
• The Pan-Hellenic hero: Most heroes are closely associated with one place (two if they migrate). Herakles is the one true hero of all of Greece and is associated not only with Greece but also Italy and other lands.
• Heros-theos (Hero-God): the gulf between gods and humans is unbridgeable: except for Herakles. Throughout the Greek world he is worshipped as both a god and a hero (different altars, different sacrificial rites). As the one who has overcome death, he is worshipped as kallinikos = the great victor, and in a Christological way, he is seen as offering others the possibility of overcoming death.
• He has no grave: most heroes have at least one. But a gravesite for Herakles would be something of a scandal because one of the main stories about him is that he was burned on a pyre and subsumed into heaven.
• Unlike most heroes he’s not a king. In fact, though the greatest of all heroes, he is sometimes a slave.
• He is a bundle of contradictions: most powerful, but at times the weakest; most masculine, but also feminine (e.g. has to dress as a woman and work at the loom); most ill-fated in life, but because he goes on to become a god, most fortunate; most barbaric, but he spends much of his life civilizing the planet; He’s a model of sophrosyne (temperance, moderation) in philosophy, but in comedy a drunkard and glutton.

5. Biography: While much of Herakles life corresponds quite well to the folklorist hero patterns we’ve already looked at, there are problems in trying to organize his life into a neat package. He simply does too much. So, we often divide his life into the birth narrative, the Labors, and Exploits (Greek parerga, which is just a catch all for things not included in the Labors). Here are some of the better-known stories:

• Conception and birth: Alcmene, Zeus, Amphitryon
• Infancy: Hera sends snakes to kill him
• Kills his music teacher Linus
• War with Orchomenos
• Daughters of Thespios
• First wife, Megara – in a fit of madness he kills their children (and in some versions, Megara too)
• Goes to Delphi for expiation; told to submit to the will of his cousin Eurystheus. Eurystheus, in turn, decides to send him on a series of adventures that are intended to kill him.
• 12 Labors: (1-6: in the Peloponnese; 7-9: in Crete and Black Sea; 10-12: far west, suggestive of overcoming death)
• Parerga & exploits: various encounters with centaurs, wars, etc. Some of these are side adventures while on his way to perform the Labors, others are not.
• Second wife Deianera (tries to pawn his first wife off on his nephew Iolaus)
• On returning from a war expedition, he brings home a concubine named Iole. Deineira, sensing a threat, uses a love charm to try to turn Herakles back to her, but the love charm is actually poison that kills him in horrible fashion.
• As he is dying, Herakles constructs a pyre, throws himself on it and asks his friend Philoctetes to set it on fire. In some versions Herakles becomes a god, in others, he just dies an agonizing death after having lived an agonizing life.

Addendum: Herakles as a mythological character is remarkably flexible. We can see this, for instance, in the Xenophon story. The story Xenophon tells comes from the Sophist Prodicus (5^th century BCE) and as far as we know was invented by him. But it becomes one of the best-known Herakles stories in the Renaissance and after. It is frequently depicted in art of the 16^th century and in music is the subject of a Bach secular cantata and a Handel oratorio.