The Mythology Book

72

AFTER THE

LABORS HAD BEEN

ACCOMPLISHED,

HE WOULD BE

IMMORTAL

THE LABORS OF HERAKLES

A

lthough he would grow up

to become a hero, Herakles

owed his existence to a

deception. Zeus tricked the lovely

Alcmene into having sex with him

by disguising himself as her

husband, Amphitryon. When

Alcmene gave birth to Zeus’s son

Herakles, the god ignored him.

Amphitryon brought up the baby

as his own. When she heard about

Zeus’s misdeeds, the goddess Hera

went into a jealous rage and sent

two giant serpents to kill baby

Herakles. But not only was Herakles

huge in size, his strength was

already superhuman. He strangled

the serpents with his bare hands.

Later, Herakles married Princess

IN BRIEF

THEME

Atonement

SOURCES

Women of Trachis,

Sophocles, ca. 450 bce;

Library, Pseudo-Apollodorus,

ca. 10 0 ce; Description of

Greece, Pausanias, ca. 150 ce.

SETTING

Greece, Crete, North Africa,

the Caucasus, and Asia Minor.

KEY FIGURES

Herakles Son of Zeus and

Alcmene.

Zeus Father of Herakles; king

of the gods.

Hera Wife of Zeus.

Alcmene Mother of Herakles;

the tallest, most beautiful, and

wisest of mortal women.

Amphitryon Husband of

Alcmene.

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73

See also: The Olympian gods 24–31 ■ Prometheus helps mankind 36–39 ■

The many affairs of Zeus 42–47 ■ The madness of Dionysus 52

Alcmene

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 find

and 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.

Library

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