In the grand feasts of the deathless gods on high …Īround him cries of the dead rang out like cries of birds
His ghost I mean: the man himself delights This created an awkwardness in the encounter with Odysseus in the episode of Odyssey XI, called the Nekuia, where Odysseus encounters Heracles in Hades:Īnd next I caught a glimpse of powerful Heracles. Heracles’ role as a culture hero, whose death could be a subject of mythic telling (see below), was accepted into the Olympian Pantheon during Classical times. Based on commonalities in the legends of Heracles and Odysseus, author Steven Sora suggested that they were both based on the same historical person, who made his mark prior to recorded history. It is possible that the myths surrounding Heracles were based on the life of a real person or several people whose accomplishments became exaggerated with time. The core of the story of Heracles has been identified by Walter Burkert as originating in Neolithic hunter culture and traditions of shamanistic crossings into the netherworld. Heracles was both hero and god, as Pindar says heros theos at the same festival sacrifice was made to him, first as a hero, with a chthonic libation, and then as a god, upon an altar: thus he embodies the closest Greek approach to a “demi-god”. Heracles was the greatest of Hellenic chthonic heroes, but unlike other Greek heroes, no tomb was identified as his. His figure, which initially drew on Near Eastern motifs such as the lion-fight, was widely known. Many popular stories were told of his life, the most famous being The Twelve Labours of Heracles Alexandrian poets of the Hellenistic age drew his mythology into a high poetic and tragic atmosphere. Photo by Bibi Saint-Pol, Louvre Museum, Wikimedia Commons Side A of a black-figured amphora from Euboea, ca. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, but added anecdotal detail of their own, some of it linking the hero with the geography of the Central Mediterranean.
In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae, and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. He was a great-grandson and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus) of Perseus.
Heracles, born Alcaeus (Ἀλκαῖος, Alkaios) or Alcides, was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon. The core of the story of Heracles has been identified as originating in Neolithic hunter culture and traditions of shamanistic crossings into the netherworld. Photo by Paul Stevenson, Wikimedia Commons One of the most famous depictions of Heracles, Farnese Hercules, Roman marble statue on the basis of an original by Lysippos, 216 CE. National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy.
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