Of all the heroes of ancient Greek mythology, Hercules probably garners the most attention. Rightfully so! Hercules was both a man’s man and the subject of many women’s dreams. He was heroism personified. He saved damsels in distress, defeated mythical beasts that no one else could kill, and fought the gods on the behalf of mankind.
Hercules was half-god and half-mortal; a product of yet another one of Zeus’s affairs with mortal women. Alcamene. was, by all accounts, exceedingly beautiful. However, it was not her beauty alone that caught the eye of Zeus. She radiated a warmth and charm that was uncommon among Greek women of the time. She was also full of energy, ambition, and unparalleled compassion. It would have, in fact, been odd had the king of the gods not noticed her.
Hercules was the result of their brief love affair and soon became the light of his mother’s life. Though, he seldom acknowledged it, Zeus also had a soft spot in his heart for the young boy who were grow up to become a savior of mankind. He gifted his son with extraordinary strength.
However, Hera, queen of the gods, was tired of Zeus’s wandering eye and decided to take her wrath out on his newest son. She even tried to prevent the birth of the boy while he slumbered peacefully in his mother’s womb. When that didn’t work, she sent snakes to attack the baby in his crib. However, from the very beginning Hercules seemed determined to live and easily strangled the reptiles with his bare hands.
The second failure to kill Zeus’s son caused Hera to become even angrier. She vowed to get her revenge against the innocent boy no matter what or how long it took. She, indeed, spent most of life trying to make certain that Hercules never experienced sustained happiness.
Her cruelest act of all was perpetrated not against the half-god himself, but against his beloved family – – his wife Megara and their two children. She accomplished this in the most heartless manner possible. She poisoned Hercules with an hallucinogenic drug that nearly drove the young man insane. During his fit of madness, Hercules killed his own wife and children.
Haunted by what he had done, the half-god beseeched the sun god Apollo to help rid him of his shame through a punishment befitting of his crime. In response, Apollo bade Hercules to serve an evil king named Eurystheus for twelve years. During that time he was assigned a series of labors to perform.
In anyone else’s hands, the labors assigned would have either failed miserably or resulted in death. However, Hercules had incentive enough to keep him going and the occasional help of a sympathetic god to help him.
The first task assigned was to kill the Nemean Lion and bring back its skin. However, the animal had a tough skin that was unpenetrable by traditional methods. With no weapons to help, Hercules wrestled the lion, eventually choking it to death. Unfortunately, even dead, the beast was impossible to skin by traditional means. With a bit of insight offered by the goddess Athena, Hercules figured the best way to tackle the hide was with its own claws.
Hercules’s second task was to slay the Hydra, a cross between a serpent and a dragon that breathed fire and emitted poisonous dung. The warrior quickly realized that killing the Hydra wasn’t going to be easy. With each head that he cut off, two grew in its place. After fighting the serpent unsuccessfully for hours, it occurred to him to use his torch to burn the area after cutting off a head. The trick worked and the Greek hero was able to complete his second labor.
The third task assigned didn’t involve the death of another animal. However, it did involve the capture of the goddess Artemis’s sacred animal – the Hind. The animal was believed to be the swiftest animal on earth, so fast in fact that no hunter’s arrow could catch it. Hercules chased the Hind for a full year without success. Just as he was about to give up, he captured the beast when it stopped to drink by laming it so that it could no longer run away.
The next labor involved the capture of a boar. With guidance from the centaurs, Hercules easily completed the task. However, in the process he killed one of the centaurs and made himself their lifelong enemy.
For his fifth task, Hercules was tasked with cleaning the Augean stables. To accomplish this labor, Hercules rerouted two rivers to wash out the stables.
Hercules’s sixth task was to kill the Stymphalian Birds; man-eaters with claws of brass and metallic feathers that they used like sharp arrows to kill their victims. To kill the birds Hercules used cymbals to scare the birds into flight so that he could bring them down with arrows.
The seventh labor assigned was to capture the Minotaur, which had been running amok on the island of Crete. Hercules strangled the animal with sheer brute strength.
The next labor involved stealing the Mares of Diomedes, wild man-eating animals that were bound to Diomedes by leather reigns. Killing Diomedes in his sleep, Hercules was able to free the mares. To calm them, he fed Diomedes’s body to them. He then bound their mouths shut and harnessed them, taking back to the king.
Labor nine involved obtaining the girdle of Hippolyta. The queen of the Amazons put up very little fight and eventually gave the girdle to Hercules willingly. Her actions, however, angered her followers who hated all men. They, therefore, put their own queen to death for her perceived betrayal.
The tenth labor, which was originally slated to be the last, was to obtain the cows of Geryon. However, the warrior wasn’t willing to give up his cattle without a fight. The two men fought endlessly until Hercules pierced Geryon’s forehead with a poisoned arrow. With Geryon dead, Hercules drove the cattle back to the king.
After completing his first ten labors, Hercules believed his debt to be paid. However, Hera whispered into the ear of Eurystheus that he had been helped in two of his tasks. Consequently, the king demanded two additional labors as further punishment.
The eleventh labor was to steal the apples from the garden of Hersperides. Realizing that he couldn’t obtain the golden apples on his own, Hercules tricked Atlas into letting him bear the weight of the world on his shoulder while the titan obtained the apples for him.
Once he had finished his task, however, Atlas didn’t want to take back his heavy weight. Once again, Hercules tricked Atlas by convincing him to take back the world long enough for Hercules to get a better grip. Of course, once the world was safely back on Atlas’s able shoulders, Hercules escaped with the apples.
The final task was to capture Cerberus, the watchdog of Hades. Hercules took the direct approach, asking Hades and Persophne for permission to remove the dog from Hades. They agreed with the stipulation that he not harm the dog. Therefore, he wrestled Cerberus into submission with doing any permanent harm.
With the labors completed, Hercules was released from his guilt as Apollo promised. However, he decided to continue to do labors on half of mankind and became more popular among the Greek people than many of the gods and goddesses.
Hercules eventually married a second time, taking as his wife the lovely Deianira. To show her abiding love for her husband, the maiden wove a cloak containing what she believed to be a magical balm that would bind Hercules to her forever. However, in truth, the balm was yet another trick of Hera. It was really poison that burned the young warrior severely once he donned his wife’s gift.
Unable to remove the cloak and in agonizing pain, Hercules bade his friends to build him a funeral pyre upon which he intended to die. However, as the flames burned the Greek hero alive, the gods convinced Hera that he had suffered enough.
Something in his agony must have touched the goddess’s heart because she sent her chariot down from Mount Olypmus to bring the warrior home to his father. There he remained until the time that the old gods faded away.
