Heracles- Greek DemigodDemigod"The Greatest of Heroes"

The Son of Zeus

Zeus came to Alcmene of Thebes disguised as her husband Amphitryon while the real man was away at war. He stretched that single night to the length of three. From this union came Heracles, whose name means "Glory of Hera," the goddess who would spend his life trying to destroy him.

Hera moved against him before he was born. She sent Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, to delay Alcmene's labor while hastening the birth of Eurystheus, ensuring that Eurystheus, not Heracles, would be born first and inherit the kingdom Zeus had promised to the next-born descendant of Perseus. Then she sent two serpents to kill the infant in his crib. The nurse found him at dawn, laughing, holding the strangled serpents in his fists.

Youth and Madness

Heracles grew up in Thebes under the name Alcides. Linus taught him music until Heracles, frustrated by criticism, struck his teacher dead with a lyre.

Xenophon records a story from Prodicus: at a crossroads, two women appeared to the young Heracles. Vice offered ease and pleasure. Virtue offered hardship and glory. He chose Virtue. He defended Thebes against the Minyans, and King Creon gave him his daughter Megara as a reward. For a time he had a wife, children, and the gratitude of his city.

Hera ended it. She struck him with divine madness, a frenzy in which he could not tell friend from foe. He saw enemies where his family stood and killed his own children. When sanity returned, the oracle at Delphi told him he must serve Eurystheus, the very man who had stolen his birthright, and complete whatever tasks were set. For twelve years he would be a servant. Eurystheus set tasks he hoped would prove fatal.

The Twelve Labors

The first labor set the pattern. The Nemean Lion's hide could not be pierced by any weapon. Heracles cornered the beast in its cave and strangled it with his bare hands, then wore its skin as armor for the rest of his life. The second, the Lernaean Hydra, grew two new heads for each one severed. With his nephew Iolaus cauterizing each stump, Heracles killed it and dipped his arrows in its venom. Those arrows would one day kill him.

Twelve tasks in all, each designed to be fatal. He diverted the rivers Alpheus and Peneus through the Augean Stables, washing thirty years of filth away in a single day. At the garden of the Hesperides he took the weight of the sky on his shoulders while Atlas fetched the golden apples. When Atlas returned and suggested Heracles keep holding the sky, Heracles asked him to hold it for just a moment while he shifted a pad onto his shoulders. Atlas took the sky. Heracles took the apples and walked away.

The last labor sent him where no living mortal had gone: into Hades, to bring back Cerberus. Hades agreed on one condition: no weapons. Heracles seized the three-headed dog with his bare hands and wrestled it into submission, carried the beast to the surface, and returned it unharmed.

Beyond the Labors

When Queen Alcestis gave her life so that her husband Admetus could live, Heracles wrestled Thanatos at her tomb and dragged Death away until the god agreed to release her.

On Mount Caucasus he found Prometheus chained to the rock where Zeus had bound him, an eagle tearing at his liver day after day. Heracles killed the eagle and broke the chains, freeing the fire-bringer with Zeus's consent.

An oracle had declared that the Giants could only be killed if a mortal struck the final blow. In the Gigantomachy, Heracles fought beside the gods. His poisoned arrows felled giant after giant while the Olympians held them at bay.

Death and Apotheosis

After his labors, Heracles married Deianira of Calydon, winning her by defeating the river god Achelous in combat. Achelous shifted from serpent to bull, but Heracles broke off one of his horns and forced his surrender.

His death came through treachery, though not by an enemy's hand. The centaur Nessus had tried to assault Deianira at a river crossing. Heracles shot him with an arrow dipped in the Hydra's venom. Dying, Nessus told Deianira his blood was a love charm to keep her husband faithful. She kept it. Years later, when Heracles took the princess Iole as a concubine, the jealous Deianira smeared the blood on a robe and sent it to him.

The moment Heracles put it on, the Hydra's venom began to burn through his flesh. The fabric fused to his skin. When he tried to tear it off, his own flesh came with it. Unable to bear the agony, he built his own funeral pyre on Mount Oeta and commanded Philoctetes to light the flames. In return, he gave Philoctetes his bow and arrows.

Zeus sent a thunderbolt. The fire consumed the mortal half. What rose from the flames was a god. Hera, after a lifetime of enmity, was finally reconciled and gave him her daughter Hebe, goddess of youth, as his bride on Olympus.