HERO. – From the Greek ἥρως, “lord, prince,” of uncertain etymology, it generally denotes one who rises above others through strength, power, and nobility. The figure of the h. is found in the mythology and worship of all peoples because it responds to the need to embody in a human being, sublimated in the heaven of divinity, the history and character of the human group that fashioned II.
In general, the h. is a man, the author of glorious and difficult deeds for the benefit of his group, deeds that after his death earned him the veneration surrounding his tomb, which became a place of worship and the seat of oracles. That he is originally a human being is demonstrated by the fact that the kind of worship offered to the h. is that proper to the dead and to underworld divinities; that is: a sacrifice of an expiatory type (ἐναγνωμός), performed at night, not upon an altar but on a low mound of earth (ἐσχήρα) resembling the domestic hearth, with black victims sacrificed, their muzzles turned toward the ground, and the victim burned completely (holocaust). The difference from the funerary ritual consists in the diversity of purpose: for the dead, it is intended to sustain their shadowy life by giving them the blood of the victim to drink, whereas for the h. it is instead supplicatory, for the benefit of the person performing II. Greece is the country that most strongly accentuated the worship of the h., born of faith in the survival of those great spirits who, in life, had been benefactors of their own group. The influence radiating from their tomb is principally of two kinds: either salutary (Asclepius, Alcene, Jatro) or mantic (Calcante, Tiresia, Glauco, Anfarao, Trofonio). The Delphic sanctuary was the legislator of the worship of the h., since it was its responsibility to regulate the spread of the colonies,
establishing the worship to be offered to the founder h. (οἰκονής). At Delphi, an annual festival was celebrated in honor of the h., that is, of the dead of Delphi ἥρωις, Plut. Quart. gr., 12).
Also with regard to artistic representation, the h. is a deified ancestor; he is in fact depicted with the things used in life: horse, dog, weapons, or symbolized by a serpent, which is the quintessential chthonic animal. His relics, genuine or fictitious, are the radiating center of his power.
The h. is therefore a man deified after death because of his deeds: this is the ascending process of heroization, supported by E. Rohde, U. Wilamowitz, and M. Nilsson. But a descending process has also sometimes occurred: that is, when certain divinities have fallen to the level of demigods or heroes because of the spread of new, more comprehensive and universal divinities, a process that occurred in parallel with the greater unification of the Greek tribes (E. Meier, H. Usener, G. De Sanctis); this is the case of Agamennone, Menelao, and Neleo; the spread of the Homeric epic greatly contributed to this degradation.
An exception to this twofold process of heroization, ascending or descending, is represented by the myths proper to primitive populations with a totemistic social system. These generally recognize their mythical h. in an animal (wolf, kangaroo, crow, mantis), which is said to have performed extraordinary deeds by guiding the clan to its dwelling place, establishing tribal laws, and so forth. The emblem of this mythical h. adorns the entrance to the village and is reproduced on the weapons or bodies of the warriors; the living species representing it is made the object of special prohibitions and constitutes the center of a great festival directed toward the persistence and growth of the tribe.
The worship of the h. has always been favored among human groups, because their figure is closer to human beings than that of the gods.
In Greece, the illustrious dead, founders of colonies, political founders or restorers of cities, founders of a cultic association or of a philosophical school, and so forth, entered the category of the h.
With the Hellenistic period, which facilitated the emergence of new cult associations, the veneration of private h. also arose, until this epithet eventually became, as the inscriptions of the period attest, synonymous with deceased.