Heracles

A night made three times as long

Zeus visits Alcmena disguised as her husband Amphitryon, prolonging a single night to the length of three so that Heracles is conceived; Amphitryon returns the next day still ignorant of what has happened. Alcmena bears two sons from that stretch of nights, Heracles by Zeus and Iphicles, a night younger, by Amphitryon. When the child is eight months old, Hera sends two serpents into his bed, and the infant Heracles strangles them with his bare hands. Apollodorus records a rival account too, from Pherecydes: that it is Amphitryon who puts the serpents there, wanting to know which of the two boys is his own son, and that Iphicles flees while Heracles stands his ground (Library 2.4.8).

Even the timing of the birth is contested ground. Zeus had sworn that a descendant of Perseus born that day would rule Mycenae; Hera, jealous, had the Eileithyiae delay Alcmena’s labour and hastened the birth of Eurystheus, son of Sthenelus, so that the throne Zeus meant for his own son went instead to the cousin who spends the rest of the story giving him orders (Library 2.4.5).

The name he was not born with

He is not born Heracles. Apollodorus calls him Alcides until the day, purified after killing his own children in a fit of madness, he goes to Delphi to ask where he should live: “The Pythian priestess then first called him Hercules, for hitherto he was called Alcides,” and she sends him to Tiryns to serve Eurystheus for twelve years, promising immortality once his tasks are done (Library 2.4.12).

A madness placed twice

Where that madness belongs in his life is a question the sources answer two different ways. Apollodorus makes it the cause of the servitude at Tiryns: the killing of his children comes first, Delphi’s sentence follows (Library 2.4.12). Euripides’ Heracles reverses the order. By the time this play opens, Heracles has already fetched Cerberus and finished all twelve labours; his family, moments earlier, had feared him “beneath the earth” for good (Heracles 496-533). Only then do Iris and the spirit of Madness arrive, sent by Hera, because “until he had finished all his grievous labors, Destiny was preserving him, nor would father Zeus ever suffer me or Hera to harm him. But now that he has accomplished the labors of Eurystheus, Hera wishes to brand him with the guilt of shedding kindred blood by slaying his own children” (Heracles 822-852). One tradition makes the labours his punishment; the other makes them the reason Hera can finally reach him. Neither account resolves the other.

Two Heracles, since Homer

The earliest surviving Greek text about him already treats him as two things at once. In the underworld scene of the Odyssey, Odysseus meets “his phantom; for he himself among the immortal gods takes his joy in the feast, and has to wife Hebe,” while the phantom itself complains of the labours Eurystheus set him, naming the descent for “the hound of Hades,” guided there by Hermes and Athena (Odyssey 11.601-626). Hesiod’s Theogony gives the same double ending in miniature: once his “grievous toils” are finished, Heracles marries Hebe on Olympus and “lives amongst the undying gods, untroubled and unaging all his days” (Theogony 950-955).

Centuries later, Herodotus went looking on the ground for the origin of that doubleness. At Tyre he was shown a temple of Heracles the priests dated to the city’s own founding, “two thousand three hundred years ago.” At Thasos he found a temple built by Phoenician settlers “as much as five generations before the birth of Heracles the son of Amphitryon in Hellas.” His conclusion: the Greeks “have established and practise two worships of Heracles” are in the right, “sacrificing to one Heracles as to an immortal, and calling him the Olympian, but to the other bringing offerings as to a dead hero” (Histories 2.44).

The pyre on Oeta

He dies mortal. Deianira, fearing Heracles loves his captive Iole more than her, smears his robe with what she believes is a love charm: the blood of the Centaur Nessus, which is poison. The tunic clings to Heracles and tears away skin when he pulls at it. He climbs Mount Oeta, builds his own pyre and orders it lit. Nobody agrees until the shepherd Poeas passes.

Apollodorus has a cloud rise beneath the burning hero and carry him to heaven with thunder. Reconciled with Hera, Heracles marries her daughter Hebe. The source gives both processes without pretending they are one: a poisoned body burns on Oeta, and an immortal husband enters Olympus. The divided Heracles whom Odysseus meets is already present in the pyre.