Transcript Heracles - UW Canvas

Heracles
Heracles (also Herakles, Latin Hercules)
• Etymology of name Heracles: "glory (kleos)
of/from Hera". But why should he be called this?
(Note story in Apollodorus p.34 of his previous
name, Alceides [alkê, “strength”])
• Parentage: Alcmene and double father,
Amphitryon and Zeus.
• Myth about birth of Heracles and Iphicles,
connection with the birth of cousin Eurystheus,
and the role of Hera.
Heracles as hero
• What is a hero?
• What does Hesiod (Works and Days) say about
the Age/Race of Heroes?
• Heracles as an unusual hero: simultaneously a
god, panhellenic as opposed to local
Heracles in Homer’s Odyssey (Book
11): hero or god?
And next I caught a glimpse of powerful
Heracles— His ghost I mean: the man himself
delights in the grand feasts of the deathless
gods on high... Around him cries of the dead
rang out like cries of birds scattering left and
right in horror as on he came like night…
Herodotus (Greek, 5th c. BCE) on the two kinds of cult for
Heracles (2.45):
•
“So I think those Greeks did just right who
established two kinds of cult for Heracles,
in one of which they sacrifice [thuein] to
Heracles as an immortal god—Olympian
Heracles, as he is known—while in the
other they make offerings [enagizein] to
him as a hero [hêrôs].”
Heroes and Hero cult
(Cf. G. Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans and
Greek Mythology and Poetics)
• Distinct feature of Greek religion; cult practices (e.g.
sacrifice) different from those for the gods
• Nagy: “A highly evolved transformation of the
worship of ancestors”
• Long history, definitive shaping in 8th century BCE
“A key part to the narrative of the hero's life is that s/he
undergoes some sort of ordeal. The hero, who is mortal,
not immortal like the gods, must suffer during his or her
lifetime, and, significantly, must die. Only after death can
the hero receive immortalization in cult and in song.”
-Hero undergoes ordeals, toils, labors (one term in Greek is
athla [plural]), either performing deeds or suffering
ordeals (or both)
-In cult, ordeals of the hero may be recreated by
worshippers (e.g. in athletic competition – which are
called athla) in order to compensate and honor the hero
Some typical features of Greek heroes
• Extreme and larger than life (in good and bad
ways)
• Unseasonal (untimely death and other
untimeliness)
• Often in myth has antagonistic relationship
with a god, often the god or goddess most
like him/her. In cult they may be worshipped
together, reconciliation.
Etymology of the word: hora, Hera, hero and
seasonality
• Greek hôra: natural time, natural life, natural life-cycle, 'season,
seasonality; time; timeliness'. (The English word hour is connected
with Greek hôra.)
• Connected with hôra (note plural Hôrai, goddesses of seasons,
things growing and reproducing at correct time, youth, beauty) is
the name of the goddess Hêra. Role as goddess of seasons, family,
marriage, in charge of making everything happen on time, happen
in season, happen in a timely way.
• Term for hero in Greek is hêrôs, same root. Connection with
seasonality/unseasonality: during lifetime (myth) is unseasonal,
after death in cult facilitates seasonality of community (fertility of
crops, animals, humans, safe transition to adulthood)
Types of heroes
• Male
• Female
• Children (often celebrated for sufferings rather than
actions)
• Often figures from the remote mythical past, but
heroes possible in contemporary times too.
• Mostly local, observed and worshipped by their own
community but sometimes panhellenic (worshipped in
all Greece) – e.g. Heracles
• Comparison with cult of saints and martyrs in
Christianity?
Heracles and Hera
• Hera’s malevolence: snakes sent into Heracles’ cradle;
madness that makes him kill his family; winds that blow him
off course at sea; gadfly that scatters the cattle of Geryoneus
• On Olympus, after his death and apotheosis (“becoming a
god”), Heracles marries Hera’s daughter Hebe (“youth”)
• Builds a shrine to Hera in Sparta
• Fights alongside Hera in the battle of gods and Giants
• “Adopted” by Hera after marrying Hebe
• Hera nurses Heracles ( in some versions in her sleep)
Apulian red
figure lekythos
(oil flask), mid 4th
c. BCE. Baby
Heracles at the
breast of Hera
(version in which
she is tricked by
Zeus into looking
after him; when
she finds out, she
removes her
breast quickly,
spurting milk
across the sky
(origin of Milky
Way!))
Etruscan bronze
mirror back
showing an adult
(?) Heracles and
Hera [called “Uni”
in Etruscan, cf.
Latin “Iuno” (Juno)]
as she suckles him.
How might we
interpret this
scene?
Heracles and Iphicles as babies. Heracles strangles
snakes sent by Hera. Athena on left, Alcmene on
right.
Childhood, adolescence, first marriage
• Myth about killing of music teacher, Linus.
• First marriage to Megara in Thebes
• Madness sent by Hera and destruction of wife
and children
• Servitude to (cousin) King Eurystheus of
Mycenae and the 12 labors
Heracles attacks (and kills) his music teacher, Linus, after being struck by the
latter during a lesson. Athenian red figure drinking cup, 1st half 5th c. BCE,
attributed to Douris.
The Labors of Heracles
• Greek athla (“struggles, contests, toils”) erga
(“works, deeds”) ponoi (“pains”, “sufferings”,
“toils”) cf. “athlete”, “athletics”.
• How many are there? How many does
Apollodorus say there are? How many were
shown on the metopes on the temple of Zeus at
Olympia?
• Concept of the canon (Greek kanôn, “measure,
ruler, standard”) and tendency for grouping and
listing, favouring of 9, 10, 12
• How can we group the labors of Heracles?
What is a metope? (lit. Gr. “forehead). Reconstruction
of temple of Zeus at Olympia (472-456 BCE)
Twelve labors of Heracles on metopes from temple of Zeus at Olympia
Map showing first 6 labors in
Peloponnese
1st labor: Nemean Lion. Athena
stands on the right.
2nd labor: Lernaean Hydra
3rd labor: Ceryneian/Cerynitian
Deer (or “Hind”)
4th labor: Erymanthian Boar
Heracles and Pholos (centaur) and the pithos of wine.
Athenian black figure hydria (kalpis), c. 520-510 BCE.
Heracles brings the Erymanthian boar to Eurystheus
5th labor: Augean Stables
• Heracles cleaning Augeias' Stables (Athena on the left), Metope from
Zeus temple, 460 BCE, Olympia
6th labor: Stymphalian Birds
Labors 7-12
• Move beyond the Peloponnese to other
parts of Greece (Crete, Thrace), to edges of
world (Amazons, Cattle of Geryon, Apples
of Hesperides), to beyond (Cerberus and
underworld)
Map of subsequent labors of Heracles
outside Peloponnese
7th labor: Cretan Bull
8th labor: Flesh-eating Horses of
Diomedes
Heracles Steals Diomedes' Mares, Stone relief, 2nd century
BCE, Museum of Delphi
9th labor: Girdle of Hippolyta
Heracles fighting the Amazons
10th labor: Cattle of Geryon
Heracles in the Cup of the Sun
Cattle of Geryon
• Lengthy travel to western edge of world,
surrounded by Ocean stream, and connection
with immortality, cattle of the Sun – theme of
conquering death?
• Adventures on journey back, myths of Heracles’
passage with cattle through non-Greek territory
(e.g. future site of Rome) as means of connection
with Greek tradition (slaying of local monsters,
robbers, sleeping with local nymphs, subsquent
offspring)
• Heracles as hero beyond Greece proper
11th labor: Apples of the Hesperides
(note variants on where these are located – Apollodorus)
12th labor: Cerberus
Heracles and the house of Eurytos
•Bow contest for the hand of Iole
•Eurytos refuses to give her up
•Heracles kills a guest, Eurytos’ son
Iphitos
•Hospitality
•Slavery at the court of Omphale
•Return, sack of Oichalia, capture of Iole
Heracles and Deianeira
•Heracles marries Deianeira
(after battling for her with Acheloos)
•Centaur Nessus and his parting gift
•Heracles sacks Oichalia and captures Iole
•The robe
•The apotheosis
Heracles and Achelous
Heracles and Acheloos
Heracles, Nessus, Deianeira
Apotheosis of Heracles
Heracles brought to Olympus.
Heracles, Athena, Zeus