Heracles

This article is about the Greek divine hero. For the similar figure in Roman mythology, see Hercules.

"Herakles" redirects here. For other uses, see Herakles (disambiguation) and Heracles (disambiguation).

Heracles
God of strength and heroes Divine protector of mankind and the patron of the gymnasium
One of the most famous depictions of Heracles, Farnese Hercules, Roman marble statue on the basis of an original by Lysippos, 216 CE. National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy
Abode	Mount Olympus
Symbol	Club, lion skin
Genealogy
Born	Thebes, Boeotia, Greece
Died	Mount Oeta, Phocis, Greece
Parents	Zeus and Alcmene
Siblings	maternal: Iphicles, Laonome; paternal: Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Dionysus, Helen of Troy, Perseus and many others
Consort	Megara, Omphale, Deianira, Hebe
Children	Alexiares and Anicetus, Telephus, Hyllus, Tlepolemus
Equivalents
Canaanite	Melqart
Roman	Hercules

Heracles carrying his son Hyllus looks at the centaur Nessus, who is about to carry Deianira across the river on his back. Antique fresco from Pompeii.

Heracles (/ˈhɛrəkliːz/ ^ⓘ Ancient Greek: Ἡρακλῆς, lit. 'glory/fame of Hera'), born Alcaeus (Ἀλκαῖος, Alkaios) or Alcides (Ἀλκείδης, Alkeidēs), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon. He was a descendant of Perseus, another son of Zeus. Much of his mythology turns on the enmity of Hera, the wife of Zeus, who opposed him from before his birth onwards. He occupied an unusual position between hero and god: no tomb was ever identified as his, and at some festivals sacrifice was offered to him first as a hero and then, upon an altar, as a god. He was widely worshipped as a patron of young men and of gymnasia.

Driven mad by Hera, Heracles killed his wife Megara and their children; in expiation the oracle at Delphi directed him to serve Eurystheus, king of Mycenae. The tasks imposed on him became known as the Labours, conventionally numbered twelve, ranging from the killing of the Nemean lion and the Lernaean Hydra to the theft of the golden apples of the Hesperides and the capture of Cerberus. Other traditions place his madness after the Labours rather than before them. Episodes outside the cycle have him sailing with the Argonauts, sacking Troy in the generation before the Trojan War, freeing Prometheus, and serving a further term of slavery to Omphale, queen of Lydia.

He died after Deianira, deceived by the dying centaur Nessus, gave him a garment smeared with poisoned blood. Unable to remove it, he had a pyre built on Mount Oeta that burned away his mortal part, and ascended to Olympus as a god, reconciled with Hera and married to her daughter Hebe.

He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans known as Heracleidae (Ἡρακλεῖδαι), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well. He married four times and fathered a large number of children; ancient tradition also records many male lovers, of whom Iolaus and Hylas are the best known. Greek writers identified him with gods worshipped elsewhere, among them the Phoenician Melqart and the Egyptian Heryshaf and Khonsu. Through Greco-Buddhist art his iconography travelled east, where it was absorbed into depictions of Vajrapani and, in Japan, the Niō guardians of Buddhist temples. His name survives in the Pillars of Hercules, in the ancient cities named Heraclea, in the plant genus Heracleum and in given names such as Iraklis and Irakli, and he remains a frequent subject of Western art and popular culture.