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See also: The Olympian gods 24–31 ■ Prometheus helps mankind 36–39 ■
The many affairs of Zeus 42–47 ■ The madness of Dionysus 52Alcmene
The daughter of Electryon,
Perseus’s and Andromeda’s
son, Alcmene was celebrated
as a paragon of feminine
beauty and virtue in ancient
Greece. Despite the duplicity
that led to Herakles’s
conception, she and her
husband, Amphitryon, loved
her son and brought him up
alongside their own two
children. They were twins:
a son, Iphicles, who later
died in battle, and a daughter,
Laonome, who married
an Argonaut.
According to Pausanias,
the jealous Hera sought to
punish Alcmene for carrying
Zeus’s child, sending witches
to make her childbirth as
difficult as possible. In Ovid’s
account, Alcmene struggled to
give birth to the enormous
Herakles, but the goddess of
childbirth, Eileithyia, refused
to help—terrified of upsetting
Hera, Eileithyia crossed
Alcmene’s legs to hinder the
birth. In both versions of the
myth, Alcmene was saved by
a maidservant, who tricked
Hera’s minions into believing
the baby was already born.Megara of Thebes and the couple
had a son and daughter. But Hera
was still jealous of Zeus’s behavior
and temporarily sent Herakles mad.
Losing all control, he slaughtered
his wife and his two children.The labors begin
Grief-stricken Herakles was now
branded a murderer, and would
have to be punished. Hera coerced
the Delphic Oracle into imposing a
series of tasks as punishment.
Herakles was sentenced to serve
King Eurystheus of Mycenae and
perform 10 labors of his choosing.
Devising the most challenging and
dangerous tasks imaginable, the
king first ordered Herakles to findand kill the Nemean lion. The beast
had been abducting women from
the area of Nemea and imprisoning
them in its den nearby. Herakles
tracked down the lion and shot at it
with his bow and arrows, but the
arrow tips merely bounced off the
lion’s impervious hide. Cornering
the lion in its cave, he knocked it
down with his club, then strangled
it. As a result, Herakles is always
depicted with his club and the skin
from the lion he killed.The Hydra
Next, Herakles faced an even more
dreadful monster. Living in Lake
Lerna, near the city of Argos, the
Hydra was a giant water snake
with nine heads waving, hissing,
and spitting poison. Its very breath
was venomous; its blood corroded
everything it came into contact
with; its skin was deadly to the
touch. When Herakles chopped off
one head, two new ones would
spring back in its place.
Unable to defeat the creature,
Herakles begged his nephew Iolaus
for help. Iolaus brought a blazing
brand so Herakles could cauterize
the wound as he cut off each head.
Stopping the blood prevented a ❯❯ANCIENT GREECE
Herakles strangles the serpents
sent by Hera to murder him in his
cradle. His parents, Alcmene and
Amphitryon, look on in awe in this
1743 painting by Pompeo Batoni.The Hydra had a gigantic
body, with nine huge heads—
eight of them mortal.
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