Heracles ('Ηρακλῆς)

HERACLES ('Ηρακλῆς). - Hero of ancient Greece, son of Alcmene and of Zeus, who had appeared to her in the guise of her husband. Some scholars see in him an essentially Greek hero; for others he is pre-Hellenic or an Oriental deity who passed into Greece.

In more recent ages he had a very widespread cult, and the epithets under which he was venerated are numerous; both of the royal houses of Sparta boasted of descending from him; in his honor festivals were celebrated with contests and agones; animals were sacrificed, including those that had already worked, along with fruits and natural products. He was the protector of the ephebes (a great part of the sanctuaries are in the vicinity of the gymnasia where he was venerated together with Hermes), protector of springs and of baths, a physician, a musician and an astrologer.

In the archaic age he seems above all to have been famous for his very numerous myths, among which the best known are: 1) the hatred of Hera, who delayed his birth, obliged him to serve Eurystheus and sent against him two serpents that H. strangled; 2) the twelve labors, imposed by Eurystheus at Hera's instigation: the killing of the Nemean lion, whose skin he habitually wore; the killing of the Lernaean hydra, a monster with numerous heads; the capture of the Erymanthian boar, a favorite subject of vase painting; the capture, for Euripides the killing, of the Ceryneian hind; the killing of the birds of the Stymphalian marsh; the cleaning of the stables of Augeas; the capture of the Cretan bull; the capture of the mares of Diomedes; the conquest of the belt of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, a belt that in historical times was hung in the Heraion of Argos; the capture of the herd of Geryon, for which he sailed on the Ocean in the golden cup of the Sun; the capture of Cerberus, the three-headed dog guarding the underworld; the conquest of the apples of the Hesperides. With these are interwoven or interspersed numerous warlike exploits. H. was assisted by his nephew Iolaus and protected by Athena; 3) the death of the hero and the final apotheosis: tormented by a shirt soaked in the blood of the centaur Nessus, which his wife Deianira had made him put on, H. climbed onto the pyre, from which he was transported to Olympus and, reconciled with Hera, received immortality as his reward.

HERACLES IN ROME

According to Roman myth, H. (in Latin Hercules), returning from the slaying of Geryon, crossed the Italian territory; passing through the places of the future Rome, he was robbed of his herd by the monstrous brigand Cacus; having recovered the oxen, H. killed Cacus and in gratitude set up an altar to Iuppiter Inventor. The Arcadian Evander, who then dwelt on the Palatine, recognizing the divinity of the hero, dedicated an altar to him. Thus the Roman cult of H., and precisely the two sanctuaries of the Porta Trigemina and of the Ara Maxima, was traced back to times prior to the founding of Rome.

Even historically the cult is of notable antiquity: the Ara Maxima in the Forum Boarium stood in an open enclosure, included within the pomerium of the City. But the annual sacrifice was performed according to the Greek rite. Women were excluded; it was said that dogs and flies could not enter the enclosure. The cult was originally practiced by the two Roman gentes, the Potitii and the Pinarii: but Appius Claudius Caecus, in 312 B.C., attached it to the public cults of the State. Not far from the Ara Maxima was the sanctuary, perhaps even more ancient, of the Porta Trigemina. During the centuries of the Republic, H. had other important sanctuaries near the Porta Collina, the Circus Flaminius and the Circus Maximus.

The figure of the god was derived by the Romans from the Greek colonies of southern Italy: it was widespread in Etruria and also in Latium, where, for example, at Lanuvium and at Tibur, it appeared as one of the principal divinities of the city. While outside Rome he appears associated above all with Juno, at Rome he seems to have some connection with Diana: the festival of the sanctuary of the Porta Trigemina coincided with that of Diana Aventina, and in the lectisternium of 399 B.C. H. and Diana form a pair.

His character as conqueror, documented as early as his most ancient cultic epithets (Invictus, Victor), subsequently determined his popularity, both in private cult, in which this character was interpreted philosophically as a triumph over the passions and over death (H. in sepulchral representations), and in public cult, in which it was placed in connection with the aspirations of the Roman Empire: already the emperor Commodus had himself called Romanus Hercules, while alongside Diocletian Iovius the emperor Maximian would assume the epithet of Hercules.

Angelo Brelich