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Herakles and the Idea of the Hero Corinne Ondine Pache Trinity University, Cpache@Trinity.Edu Trinity University Digital Commons @ Trinity Classical Studies Faculty Research Classical Studies Department 7-2014 Herakles and the Idea of the Hero Corinne Ondine Pache Trinity University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/class_faculty Part of the Classics Commons Repository Citation Pache, C. (2014, July). Herakles and the idea of the hero. Retrieved from http://youstories.com/resources/detail/essay--heracles-and- the-idea-of-the-hero This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Classical Studies Department at Digital Commons @ Trinity. It has been accepted for inclusion in Classical Studies Faculty Research by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Trinity. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HERAKLES AND THE IDEA OF THE HERO By Corinne Pache The son of a divine father, Zeus, Already in Homer’s Odyssey, and a mortal mother, Alkmene, Herakles is portrayed as the Herakles is often described by preeminent hero of the past, ancient sources as the greatest against whom even the great of the Greek heroes. When we Achilles and Odysseus measure think of Herakles (or Hercules, themselves. Yet Homer does not as the Romans called him) in the shy away from the more modern world, we remember troubling aspects of Herakles; in primarily his labors, and perhaps the Odyssey, the hero is described a few other legends surrounding as “the strong-hearted son of him, such as the one about how Zeus, the mortal Herakles, guilty his supernatural strength allowed of monstrous deeds, who killed him, even as a baby, to strangle Iphitus when he was a guest in the two massive snakes sent to his house” (Odyssey 21.25-27); kill him in the cradle by the ever- while in the Iliad, he is the jealous goddess Hera. The “savage” Herakles, who shoots ancient Greeks also thought of his arrows at the gods during his Herakles primarily in terms of attack on the Underworld (Iliad his extraordinary strength and 5.392-404). The first is a courage, the qualities he displays shocking transgression against in his completion of the twelve the divinely sanctioned labors. Yet for the ancient institution of hospitality, while Greeks, Herakles was a the other is a direct attack on the contradictory, even paradoxical gods themselves. figure: a being at once mortal ! and divine, protector and As the son of the most powerful destroyer, conqueror and slave; of the gods, Herakles is by an ideal ruler and drunken definition the greatest of heroes, reveler, a hyper masculine male and both his achievements and who sometimes wears the his sufferings are, in clothing of a woman. consequence, greater than those ! of any other hero. The principal cause of Herakles’ sufferings is Zeus’ wife, Hera, who is Alkibiades, who advocated characteristically and perhaps against a peace treaty with the understandably keen to punish Spartans and later convinced the the offspring that results from Athenians to invade Sicily in 415 Zeus’ adulterous one-night stand BCE, a doomed imperial with the Theban Alkmene. Her endeavor that would eventually intimate connection to the lead to Athens’ devastating loss greatness of Herakles, a in the Peloponnesian War. greatness that arises from his ! torments, is visible in the hero’s While Euripides draws on the name, which combines the name traditional myth concerning of the goddess, Hera, with the Herakles, he makes one change Greek term kleos, which means to the narrative that thoroughly “glory,” yielding a name that transforms the significance of signifies “the glory of Hera” or the story. In many of our other “glorious through Hera.” The sources, Hera causes Herakles’ goddess and the hero thus exist madness before the labors, in a relationship of productive which then can be seen as a way antagonism: Hera finds many of atoning for the hero’s murder ways to torment the hero, but in of his wife and children. By doing so she spurs him to inverting the chronology of accomplish the great deeds these events and by having through which Herakles gains Herakles kill his family after he his subsequent glory. The returns from his labors, suffering she inflicts, as only a Euripides changes the nature of goddess can, make him the the link between the labors and greatest of heroes. the murders, and offers a radical ! twist on the narrative of the Euripides’ Herakles Mainomenos returning hero. In the first half (“mad” or “crazed Herakles”) of the play, Herakles arrives was first produced in Athens in home to find his family 416 BCE. The historical context threatened by the new ruler, of the play is of paramount Lykos. He saves them, but his importance. After suffering a triumphant return and his happy humiliating defeat against the reunion with his family are soon Spartan forces at the Battle of marred by Hera, who sends Mantinea two years earlier in 418 Lyssa, “Madness,” to overcome BCE, the Athenians began to fall the hero. Under the influence of under the spell of the aristocrat this divinely sent madness, Herakles savagely slaughters his suicidal thoughts that plague him wife and children. The same skill when he returns to himself and at killing that previously allowed recognizes the terrible things he him to save them now causes has done. him to destroy them. Herakles ! emerges from his madness with But how can Herakles be no memory of his horrific thought of as a hero after he actions, and is driven to despair kills his own family? The by the discovery that he has contradictions we find in killed those who matter to him Herakles are in fact typical of the most. most Greek heroes, who ! embody in their actions a similar The audience at the Theater of tension between civilization and Dionysos in Athens in 416 BCE, savagery. Herakles can be probably mostly men and most understood as a hero of of them veterans, must have civilization, who rids the earth seen in the play a reflection of of natural threats and monsters, the extraordinary challenges that but he does so through acts of coming home can represent for the sheerest savagery: through returning war veterans. Euripides violence and slaughter. Like makes this connection explicit by other heroes such as Achilles or describing Herakles as having Odysseus, Herakles can thus be brought “war that is no war” to thought of as a “man of pain,” his children (apolemon … polemon, in both the active and passive 1133). Yet the play is also a senses: someone who can inflict powerful meditation on the pain on others—for good or bad struggle to hope in the face of a —but also someone who nearly overwhelming existential himself, and necessarily, despair. As Amphytrion puts it experiences a great deal of pain. at the beginning of the play, “the Like many other ancient heroes, bravest man is the one who Herakles undergoes great trusts in hope, while helplessness sufferings, and, ultimately, the belongs to the cowardly very qualities that allow him to man” (105-106). Amphytrion accomplish his storied deeds are and the chorus of old men have the same ones that can prove to face old age and mortality, deadly for the people whom he while the end of the play focuses is charged with protecting: his on Herakles’ acceptance of his community and his family. While fate and renunciation of the ostensibly about a great hero of the past, Herakles Mainomenos who do the actual fighting and remains today, as it was for its those who, having remained ancient audience, a play that behind, may believe themselves creates a space in which to think —falsely and tragically—beyond about war and its aftermath, its reach. about how the violence of war ! changes irrevocably both those ❦! SOME BIBLIOGRAPHY Cook, E. 1999. “‘Active’ and ‘Passive’ Heroics in the Odyssey.” Classical !World 93:149-167. Galinsky, K. 1972. The Herakles Theme: The Adaptations of the Hero in Literature from Homer to the Twentieth Century. Totowa, !NJ: Rowman & Littlefield. Nagy, G. 1998. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in !Archaic Greek Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins. Shay, J. 2003. Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of !Homecoming. New York: Scribner. !.
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