Heracles, Hercules, Ercle, - whatever you call him, there's no mistaking the iconic demigod and wonder-worker in the muddle known as Greek and Roman mythology. From the earliest Homeric poems to Disney animation, it's well known that he was believed to be the son of Zeus, king of the Gods residing on Mount Olympus, and after murdering his family in a fit of rage, sought to redeem himself by fulfilling Twelve Labours that were asked of him, blundering around the known world in the process. Equated by classical writers with the Phoenician demigod Melqart, he's in all respects the pre-Christian equivalent of a saint or prophet, earning his way back to paradise through good deeds.
The nature and the spread of the myth of Heracles has long been studied by both ancient and modern authors, but there is an interesting thread to the myth that hasn't been as well explored. Heracles appears as the founder of many Greek and colonial Greek dynasties, and the many variants of the tale of his Labours frequently allude to historical places. events and figures, placing him within a chronological timeframe. Much of these are found within ostensibly historical sources, or at least sources that purport to be historical. Could there be, therefore, a kernel of truth to the legend? Was Heracles, or his prototype, based upon the actions of a real, historical figure?
If there is a glimmer of fact to the stories of the demigod, perhaps in the same way that Priam, Agamemnon and other Homeric characters may have a historical basis, it is worth looking over what the ancient Greeks credited him with. Euripides' Heracles, written in the mid-5th century BCE, provides the most complete account. After bludgeoning his family to death, Heracles prayed for forgiveness at a nearby Temple of Apollo, where an oracle ordered him to serve Eurystheus, the king of Tirynis (or Argos) and a family rival. Eurystheus sentenced him to perform Twelve Labours, which if completed would absolve him of his crime and allow him to live freely.
The first of his Labours was to slay the so-called Nemean Lion, an invincible animal which prowled around the hills surrounding Nemea. He arrived at the nearby town of Cleonae, where he stayed as a guest of a workman who promised that he would sacrifice to him, rather than Zeus, if he died trying to kill the lion. Nevertheless, with a good deal of luck and brute clubbing force Heracles brought back a dead Nemean Lion to the court of Eurystheus, who alarmed by his success refused to meet him in person. The second Labour was the famous slaying of the Hydra, which dwelled in the swamps around Lerna. He lured the hydra with the help of his uncle Iolaus and decapitated its nine heads, but Eurystheus was dissastified by the fact that Heracles could not slay the beast alone and refused to count it as part of his sentence.
Regardless, Heracles embarked on his third Labour, hunting the Hind of Ceryneia, Diana's favourite pet which dwelt roughly seventy kilometres from Mycenae. Becasue he was afraid of incurring Diana's wrath, when he eventually caught the animal he carried it back alive and explained his situation with the goddess, who soon understood and let the Hind go with him. Accomplishing this task, he then set off to hunt the Erymanthian Boar, which he achieved with the help of his centuar friend Pholus, who died in the undertaking. This act further frightened Eurystheus. who hid in a partly-buried bronze jar within the walls of Tirynis.
The next Labour was an especially pungent one: cleaning the cattle-shed of King Augeas in a single day. Heracles asked for a tenth of the cattle in exchange for the feat, which Augeas initially accepted but after the feat was accomplished, by means of a clever act of hydraulic engineering. he discovered his debt to Eurystheus and refused to exchange anything. Enraged, Heracles took the matter to court and persuaded Augeas' son to testify in his favour. The resulting verdict spun Augeas into a frenzy, and he banned Heracles from stepping foot in his Kingdom again, and to make the situation worse Eurystheus discounted the Labour entirely, as he had tried to be paid for it.
The sixth, seventh and eighth labours saw Heracles shoo away birds, tame the proud bull of King Minos and catch the man-eating horses of Bistonia, a Thracian land, and after the latter the demigod founded the city of Abdera on the northern Aegean coast after his fallen companion Abderos. Despite all this, Eurystheus ordered him further afield, sailing to the Pontic coast to fight the Amazons, and them ordering him to accomplish the most impossible Labour yet: stealing the red cattle of the giant known as Geryon, who ruled the petty kingdom of Erythria at the western edge of the world. Along the way, Heracles decided to mark his long journey by building pillars that straddled Europe and Libya; the Pillars of Hercules. He then reached Erythria and slayed Geryon's attack-dog Orthus, along with his half-horse bodyguard Eurytion. Local herdsmen reported this to the giant, who attempted to retaliate but was eventually shot down.
The cattle were difficult for Heracles to herd back to Mycenae, and some were lost around the coasts of Liguria and southern Calabria, where afterwards a city was founded and known as Erythra. One bull was caught by Poseidon's son Eryx, a ruler of a kingdom in Sicily, which Heracles won back in a wrestling contest. The Labour almost came to nothing when Hera sent gadflies to scatter the cattle all around Greece, with some wondering over to Thracia, but sure enough, the demigod accomplished the feat and the cattle were duly sacrificed.
This was supposed to be the end of his punishment, but since the second and fourth Labours were seen as invalid by the Tiyrnian king, he ordered the exhausted demigod to accomplish two more. The first was to steal the fabled apples of the Hesperides, which Heracles eventually found after wandering across Europe and Libya. To fetch the apples, however, he had to promise the god Atlas to fetch them for him, in exchange for holding the earth's weight on his shoulders in his place. In the end, as the apples were divine, they were given to Athena to return to the Hesperides. The twelth and final Labour was slaying the guardian of the Underworld, the three-headed hound Cerebus (fifty-headed, according to the earlier Hesiod), which Heracles reached through a deep cave in Taenarus, a town in southern Laconia, bringing the dog to Tirynis and then returning it to its owner, Hades.
Locations associated with Heracles in Greek literature and in local foundation legends. Not comprehensive - many more towns, cities and places claimed some connection or another to the demigod.
After all that, Heracles was finally allowed to rest, and he sought to marry Iole, the princess of Oechalia in Thessaly. However, this was resisted by her brother Iphitus, angering the demigod who threw him over the walls of the city. Once again, he was commanded by the Gods to redeem himself, by serving Queen Omphale and being forced to do women's work, but eventually Omphale married Heracles and he lived for many more years as a free hero, eventually poisoned unwittingly by another of his wives Deianira.
Ancient sources credit Heracles with yet more adventures and feats than his Twelve Labours. Apollodorus claims that he killed the Egyptian pharaoh Busiris, and sacked the city of Troy before the Mycenaeans arrived; Diodorus of Sicily claims that he founded a colony in Sardinia with his friend Ioulaus, and the ethnographer Herodotus credits him with fathering the Scythians as a people. The timeframe they all give for his life is within the realms of history, most following Herodotus as around about 1300 BCE, three or four generations before the Trojan Wars.
His actions, legendary or not, reverberated across the ancient world. Egyptians began to worship him in the guise of the god Heryshaf, who was previously a ram-god and a guardian of the Nile, while Berber communities, according to some writers, celebrated him for peopling Iberia and the western Mediterranean with his companions from Media and Persia. The name Monaco even comes from a former temple to Heracles Monikos, or Heracles the Lone-Traveller.
Clearly, a lot to take in. Evidently, there's too much to the legend for it to be a fable made up by Greek writers, most of whom rarely ventured far from the peninsula.
So how much is history? I'll continue this tangent in the following part....
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