November 20, 2024 • 43 mins
Heracles was like, a really big deal. Examining the historical and cultural impact of a 1000+ year old hero. Help keep LTAMB going by subscribing to Liv's Patreon for bonus content!
CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.
Sources: The Oxford Handbook to Heracles, edited by Daniel Ogden; Herakles by Emma Stafford (including the Diodorus Siculus quote/translation); Early Greek Myths by Timothy Gantz; Pseudo-Apollodorus' Library of Greek Mythology.
Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hello, this is Let's talk about myths baby, and I'm
your host live. She has developed a real love of
looking at like the cultural history of ancient Greek mythology,
what it meant for real people, just how it's so
vastly different from what we often think of now, Like God.
(00:54):
The way this show has changed the way I see
myth It's wild, and then I get to share it
all with you, slash inflicted upon you. Who's to say,
but the absolute best example of this concept is Heracles.
But real quick before we get to him. If you're
(01:16):
listening on Spotify, make sure you interact at the end
of the episode. I'm adding in some fun like Q
and a's and polls to new episodes to play around
with this new feature and hear what you think and
just get your thoughts on any and everything, and then
your questions get published so that they show up right
on the Spotify page. It's pretty fun and cute, So
join in. Heracles, Heracles, Heracles. Last week we looked at
(01:43):
the woman hidden behind the hero, Heracles's mother, Alchemenie, who
doesn't get nearly enough credit for her own mythology. But today, well,
Alchemenie is She's kind of left behind in Heracles's story,
you know, surprise, surprise. Without him, well she doesn't really
get much else of her but her son, well, he was,
you know, a little bit interesting for the most part.
(02:06):
Unsurprisingly stories of the heroes, aren't, you know, my favorite
bits about Greek myth save I guess for like the
Odyssey and the Iliad. But Heracles is different, not for
his character really, or even for the stories themselves, but
for just every single thing else to do with him
as this piece of cultural history, cultural identity. Even Heracles
(02:31):
is unique. He's completely different from the rest of the
Greek heroes, and that alone makes him someone that, like
I want to examine in far more detail. Clearly, he
was Greece's hero, like devoted to and beloved by the
whole of the ancient Greek world in a way that
just does not exist with others. That is what makes
him so interesting. That and he's got about like ten
(02:54):
times more stories than anyone else in like a thousand
plus years of those stories growing and changing, not quite surviving,
like existing in fragments and visual representation and concepts. So
purely for my own selfish needing content reasons and having
(03:14):
a ridiculously expensive book I want to use. We're gonna
dive a little deeper into him as a character, him
as an archetype, as a hero for all of Greece
and all of its mythology, and what all of those
things mean from like a cultural and historical context, because
God's they meant so much. There's a reason why Theseus
(03:40):
was intentionally mirroring Heracles in his story. And it isn't
because the guy looked up to his cousin. It's because
if you're gonna make a hero that's like intentionally Athenian
propaganda like Theseus, you want him to emulate, to be
as similar as possible to the number one hero for
all of Greece, Heracles, And hey, you know, like why
(04:02):
not add in a little familial relation to you know,
just for good measure. But fortunately for us, while I
wouldn't go so far as to say that Heracles is
much less problematic or even committed, you know, any fewer
crimes compared to Theseus, he is, well, like, he's just
considerably less obnoxious. And thus I'm not gonna spend entire
(04:26):
episodes talking about just how shitty he was, because you know,
for all his crimes, Heracles at least defeated a bunch
of seriously interesting and scary creatures along with you know,
all the other wild and fascinating things that he did
in his ridiculously prolific heroic career. This is episode two
(04:57):
twenty nine. Nobody labors like Heracles, the cultural history of
the pan Hellenic hero. What we do and do not
(05:20):
know about Heracles and the many stories from myth that
involve him, well, God's it's banned about a millennial's worth
of culture, of history of Greece and well well beyond,
and so you know, it's a little bit uh fragmentary,
because remember, Heracles is, you know, the Greek name for Hercules.
(05:40):
Heracles is his original name. Even if the Roman Hercules
became far more famous, Heracles survives in our earliest sources
for Greek myth. And while that's true of a lot
of the heroes, he still manages to differentiate himself from
the others. He's a regional hero, but simultaneously he is
the hero for all of Greece. He is Theban and
(06:03):
also Peloponnesian, and he is everything in between and beyond.
But he's also this deeply fascinatingly fragmentary hero. The details
of Heracles's childhood are few and far between, at least
when it comes to earlier sources, until Pseudo Apollodorus and
(06:24):
some others writing while Greece is being ruled by the
Roman Empire, so a good eight or so, you know,
one hundred years after a source like Homer. Until that time,
we have little about Heracles's childhood beyond some visual representations. Meanwhile,
when Apollodorus does come along, he adds in all these details, which, well,
(06:46):
that's the nature of a character like this. The details
and stories offered by Pseudo Apolydorus might have been well
known before his time, and it's maybe only that he
survives to tell us about them, or the might have
been later additions and inventions, like elaborations. Even unlike many
of the other major heroes, Heracles didn't lose any of
(07:09):
his fame or popularity even after a good you know,
thousand years of mythology and history had passed. The Romans
took him on in a way that they did not
bother with the others. He became immortal in a completely
different way. And as a reminder, you know, he's the
only traditional hero who became explicitly immortal, an actual god
(07:31):
in the mythology before the time of Pseudopolydorus. Though we
know of Heracles's mother, you know everything I shared with
you last week, and we know that as a baby, well,
you know, he strangled a couple of snakes, basically confirming
to everyone around him that he was going to be
a totally normal child. You know, might be destined for
some impressive things, though, But aside from that, there is
(07:53):
little in the way of detail. Like there's a piece
of pottery from the late sixth century that depicts Heracles
wandering off with Hermes, you know, heading towards Chyron. We
assume for his hero training. I guess, yes, think Danny DeVito.
There is no other way to see the hero training
than Danny DeVito as phil in Disney's Hercules, a character
(08:15):
who is a beautiful little amalgamation of real mythological characters
Tyron and Philikteini's but motioned to a satyr. Okay, I'll stop.
So we think maybe that's what Heracles did as a child.
Maybe his parents knew what they had with him, you know,
after the whole snake incident, and they sent him off
to train as this hero. But well that that's like
(08:38):
that's a bit of a later construct too, that there
was any kind of hero training available. So maybe it
was just that one painter who wanted that bit of
his story to exist. Or there's a time he accidentally
killed his music teacher, a nice man named Linus who
had a very unfortunate fate. That too, existed mostly in
(08:59):
Potter depictions, including apparently one where Heracles is literally swinging
part of a stool at his teacher. I read this
in a book without pictures, unfortunately, so maybe this, you know,
wasn't necessarily part of his story beyond art work. In
the case of the poor dead music teacher Linus, there's
more evidence that it was like a pre existing story.
(09:22):
It actually appears on a few different pieces of art,
and art is often overlooked as a way that we
have learned Greek mythological stories, but it's actually an enormous
source for so much of what we have had to
interpret because text is lost because still at least until
due to a Polydorus, it does not survive in any
(09:44):
text form. Fortunately, though, you know, we still care about
what Apolyodorus had to say about Heracles, because if we didn't,
we would be left with like a hell of a
lot less detail and far more boring surviving textual sources
because of Polydorus. While bre gives us the deats, he
tells us that Heracles learned a whole host of skills
(10:06):
as a child, as one would expect of a hero
like him. His adoptive father and Vitrion taught him how
to drive a chariot. A guy named Atilicus, who we
will hear from again in Heracles's wider story, taught him
to wrestle. And remember, wrestling in agent Greece is a
seriously impressive and important skill. They did invent the Olympics,
after all, they absolutely loved a good naked wrestling sash
(10:30):
between bros. So what Tilicus taught him wrestling? And a
man named Eurytus taught him to shoot a bow. Famous
Castor of Troy, a Polyodorus says, taught him swordsmanship. But no,
don't think too hard about that one, because Castor, absolutely
without question, should have been born well after Heracles. And
(10:52):
then there was Linus, Linus who taught Heracles music and
was even the brother of the one and only Orpheus
according to a Polydora, which again, don't think too hard
about that, because there is no question that in this
section of Polydorus is really hyping up the importance of
the people associated with Heracles' childhood, his learning, and his training.
(11:14):
What little of mythological chronology that we can define is
it's just being tossed right out of the window with
this list still Orpheus relation aside. A Polydorus tells us
that Linus traveled to Thebes to teach young Heracles musical skills,
but that he made the mistake of hitting Heracles during
one of his lessons. I get the sense that Heracles
didn't find himself to be particularly musically inclined, but he did, however,
(11:37):
find himself unable to control his temper like the good,
strong masculine man that he was, and so when Linus
hit him, well, he flew into a rage and smashed
a chair over the man's head, killing him. Flying into
a rage and killing people is going to become a
theme in Heracles' life, because toxic masculinity looked about the
same in the ancient world as it does now. Heracles
(11:59):
was very nearly punished for, you know, straight up murdering
a guy. But Apollodora says that when he was on
trial he quoted a law of the underworld judge Radamanthus
that basically meant that because Heracles saw it as self defense,
it wasn't murder. This is almost certainly like an invention
again of this later time, like more of a means
(12:19):
of introducing a concept that existed by the time this
was being written, you know, well into the Roman period.
But it's interesting all the same because if it was,
you know, based in an older mythology, I imagine it
would have been the usual post accidental murder plot point.
You just have to seek some purification from another kingdom,
and all is forgiven. But that in itself you know
that it isn't handled that way. Is this fascinating extra
(12:42):
detail that gives some insight into the time period of
the sourcing and what might have influenced it. And yet
it's kind of all we have when it comes to
any kind of detail about this part of Heracles' life.
And something similar is happening in what a Polyodorus tells
us next that why Heracles was still young, he was
only eighteen, he slew a lion on Mount Kytheron outside
(13:06):
of Thebes, which had been terrorizing the region along with
the nearby city of Thespia. It's only a Polydorus that
adds in this lion because it's not the Nimian lion
that Heracles is so famous for. And yet Apollodorus uses
this story to account for Heracles's famous lion skin hood.
(13:27):
It's a kind of like almost retconning of this story,
like a reason for him to have these iconic clothes
before he ever gets to his labors. But it's also
just a great example of this fact that, like everything
is so fragmentary other than this really longstanding tradition of
icronography of art depicting Heracles, because in that case, he's
(13:48):
always wearing that damn lionskin, and Apolyodors is accounting for that.
And then there's the things that Heracles did in Thespia
according to pseudo Apollodorus. Picture that side eye emoji here,
would you? Yeah? Thespia. Few the things these late sources
(14:26):
say about what went down in Thespia. See around the
time that Heracles was said to have defeated this lion,
he also visited a king named Thespius, he will become
the mythological founder of the region of Thespia. And well,
he was said to have had fifty daughters. Have you
(14:48):
heard this one before? Yeah, so Heracles was said to
have visited Thespius. And well, honestly, this bit, it just
needs to be read as a direct quote. It's hard
to do a justice. This is how a Pollodorus tells
us Us Heracles's visit with Thespius went down. Quote. The
king entertained him for fifty days, and each night, as
(15:09):
Hercules went forth to the hunt, Thespius bedded one of
his daughters with him, fifty daughters having been born to
him by Mega, made daughter of Arnaeus, for he was
anxious that all of them should have children by Hercules. Yeah,
fifty knights, fifty daughters. Iconic Heracles action right there in
(15:33):
more ways than one. But if you think that's wild,
wait until you hear how the other late sources describe it.
According to Herodorus, whose work doesn't survive, but he was
referenced a lot by Plutarch, Heracles had sex with all
fifty of the daughters of Thespius, not over fifty days,
(15:54):
but just seven, So yeah, like, imagine how that might
have gone down or better Yet, Pausanias says that actually
it was only forty nine daughters, but that he did
them all in a single fucking night, pun not intended,
but absolutely kept in after the fact. Pausanias also explains
(16:17):
that he only had sex with forty nine of them
because one of them didn't want to, and of course
that wouldn't stand, so she was punished by being made
a priestess who would remain a virgin. That gross and
sad detail aside, what this account does do is suggest that,
at least mythologically, the other forty nine were into it.
Small wins by almost all accounts, though the end result
(16:41):
is clear forty nine or fifty new babies by Heracles.
But well, it's important to remember that almost every reference
to this comes from very very late in the grand
scheme of Heracles. So let's dip a bit deeper into
what that means and why it matters now full disclosure,
(17:01):
This work by Herodros, which I will mention again later,
would have been written earlier than the others, somewhere around
the four hundred spcees, so you know earlier. But this
note about the daughters of Thespius is referenced in Plutarch,
who is referencing Herodorus, but who is of course writing
very late and during the Roman period. So it's tough
(17:22):
to say whether this fifty daughters storyline existed in the earlier,
more ancient Greek versions of his story, or whether it
is this later invention to tie him to the region,
something that came along closer to the Roman period. That's
a major through line when it comes to Heracles mythology.
You know, he traveled the Greek world, and he fathered
a lot of babies. Usually it seems fairly consensual too,
(17:46):
because it's not really about him or the mother. It
is about the procreation and the spreading of his Yeah,
i'm gonna say it, his Heraclean seed, you know, all
around the Greek world, just tying all these places to
you know, the Greek hero. Because of course, when it
(18:07):
comes to these fifty or forty nine daughters, making babies
is the key to this story, as was aligning this
mythological king with the founding of the region of Thespia.
It's a very intentional story, and Thespia is an often
overlooked area. You might remember. They were actually one of
the major forgotten police of the Battle of Thermopylae. They
(18:30):
were there too, Sparta. Now I realized, so far this
episode has been, you know, very narratively frustrating, because Heracles,
his childhood and his youth specifically, but honestly all of
him is well narratively frustrating. But that only makes him
and this cultural history surrounding him more worthy of our study.
(18:53):
Like trying to sort through the historical timeline for Heracles' life,
it only made me more keen to devoting this episode
to the broader context of him, the concept of Heracles
as a cultural icon rather than a fictional character, the
centuries that his story spanned, and what they looked like
(19:14):
throughout that time period. He is uniquely perfect for this
kind of episode examining this concept, one that looks at
the cultural history of the mythology rather than just the
stories as they exist. Because, like I said, basically all
that I've told you about, you know, his younger years
does not survive in any text form prior to say,
(19:38):
the first century CE, maybe a bit earlier. We're talking
a good seven or eight hundred years minimum after the
stories of Heracles were probably first being told, and they
could have been even older. So what's happening in sources
like these is either they're working off of lost text
sourcing or just this broad cultural novel, which is likely
(20:02):
the case for the music teacher bit, you know, maybe
even being trained by Chiron too, since both of these
stories have survived in depictions in art and pottery, you know,
as far back as the sixth century BC. Or these
authors are working off of newer traditions that were developed
or even just changed and adjusted over those intervening seven
(20:24):
or so hundred years. And that's what interests me, and
I'm forcing it to interest you. But it's also one
of the most important aspects of studying Heracles. Like not
only was he the most famous mythological hero from as
far back as Homer, i e. You know, as far
back as we possess today, but he remained that way
(20:48):
and the stories that surround him are evidence of that
long lasting importance in the broader ancient Mediterranean world. The
(21:26):
fragmentary nature of Heracles's stories and sources is yes, I know,
it's frustrating because maybe you're just screaming at me to
tell a story, damn it. There's also an incredible example
of how much of Heracles's story as we know it
now was not necessarily ever written down in any detail
(21:50):
prior to the later sources, or at least does not
survive in any detail, not because it wasn't a popular
story or didn't exist at all, but simply because I think,
I mean, he was so popular, so important that his
stories were just broadly known across the ancient Greek world.
(22:12):
It's certainly possible that when it comes to certain aspects
of his story, written sources never existed because something like
that wasn't necessary when your entire culture broadly knows the
stories and tells them to each other, passes them down
to their children, depicts them in art. If that's the case,
(22:34):
you know why bother recording it in any kind of
major written source. But with that said, there are cases
of lost or fragmentary sources that we do know existed.
We just don't necessarily know what details they included, what
depths they might have gone into, or what aspects of
his many, many many stories they might have covered. Like
(22:59):
there was an epic called Heraclia, essentially the Deeds of
Heracles by a man named Pysandros of Rhodes, which it
would have been written somewhere around the beginning of the
seventh century BCE, so very old, just like those references
we have of him and Homer and Hesiid, though in
that case it was devoted to the hero completely. Apparently
from what we know, it might have focused more on
(23:21):
some of Heracles. It's more obscure stories, at least those
that are obscure to us now, rather than his labors,
which are the most popular to us now but might
not have been in the ancient world. Aristotle, though he
was not a fan, but his complaints were more about
the plot. Just because it's about one person does not
a unified plot make, was essentially his argument. We know
(23:45):
of other works that existed two one by Pharrachides from
the fifth century BCE, another by the very appropriately named
Herodorus from Heraclia that I mentioned earlier, which was seriously long.
But what we don't know is what they actually talked about,
and if they covered certain aspects of his life and
(24:06):
stories like, what those details might have actually been. By
the time we do have surviving sources, the stories of
Heracles would have been going around the entirety of the
Greek world and far beyond. For like I said, nearly
a millennia. So we get these people like Pseudoopolydorus, who
(24:26):
gives us a straightforward and infinitely helpful account of his story.
The other major surviving source, again from this later Imperial
Roman time period, is Diodorus Siculus. He wasn't writing myth
like a Polydorus, though. Instead he was like mythologizing history,
or maybe historifying mythology. This is a better way of
(24:48):
saying it. He was writing myths as though they were history.
He is where we get some fascinating accounts of Medea
and her family, which I've talked about in the past.
Didorusiculus summarizes well Heracles generally, but also definitely this episode
of the podcast when he said quote for it is
generally agreed that this man has come down to us,
(25:11):
having surpassed in the greatness of the deeds he accomplished,
all those handed down in memory from antiquity. So it
is difficult to report each of his exploits in a
worthy manner, and to make the account equal to such
deeds the greatness of which won him the prize of immortality.
(25:32):
See it isn't just me like even in the ancient
world itself, Authors like Dietorusiculus recognize the difficulty in writing
about a character like Heracles. His story served a very
different purpose than the other heroes. Perseus is probably the
closest Heracles we have in terms of his cultural relevance,
and yet he doesn't come remotely close to Heracles in
(25:54):
in terms of stories or his general importance in the
broader cultural history of the whole region. Perseus had set
things that he needed to do. His story is pretty
cut and dry, with a few exceptions. But even those exceptions,
you know, the additional details that might have been tossed
in later, do not come close to how widespread and
(26:16):
deeply convoluted the stories of Heracles are. Because of how
widespread and important they were. He did too many things Heracles.
He meant too much to the Greek world for him
to ever be appropriately summarized. And yeah, sometimes the things
he did were great and impressive and aided a whole region,
(26:39):
like defeating the Nimian lion or the Hydra. And sometimes
while sometimes he hung out in the east and played
around with his gender identities, swapping clothes with the queen
for a while, or you know, sometimes he had sex
with fifty women in a single night so that they
could have his fifty babies. He contained multitudes. Remember in
(27:17):
the old days of the podcast, where I would just
tell you the simplest version of a myth. Do you
miss those days? Yeah? Me, neither. There's nothing wrong with
reading myths in that way, like in finding a chronologically
and narratively satisfying take on the story and just like
going with that. Nothing wrong with that. Back then, I
had a book of myths written by a scholar that
just succinctly retold the stories, you know, as if they
(27:40):
existed in this way in the sources. That's the main
source that I worked with back then. Now, though, like
my own knowledge waste has grown so much that I
absolutely love being able to tell you more about the
cultural context, like the how and the why and obviously
all the many varied versions. But I really think it's
so important because unless you have access to this type
(28:00):
of background, you really just come at it thinking like, hey,
here's the story of Heracles. He did all these labors,
he did all these things. It's just cut and dry,
and the sources and oh my god, it's not. He's
one of these characters that is both uniquely prolific in
terms of version, stories, everything and anything the most prolific.
(28:21):
It's annoying. But because he is all of those things,
he's also one of the most confusing in that deeply
satisfying kind of way. The stories of his labors, for instance,
is often presented as one of the most straightforward aspects
of his story, and yet even there there's just so
much nuance. From as far back as the Iliad, we
(28:46):
know that Heracles was the original Greek hero. He's mentioned
in that epic often as a kind of predecessor to
all the great heroes at Troy, many of whom claim
to be descendants or relations of his in some way,
because that made them even more impressive. But of course,
his story was never straightforward, because if it were, it
simply wouldn't be Greek myth at all. In the Iliad,
(29:08):
while we know he was, you know, major and important
as shit, only one of his famous labors is ever mentioned,
the time he traveled to the underworld to steal Cerberus
he see it. Meanwhile, the other source we go for
for the earliest surviving aspects of myth puts equal importance
in Heracles. He's mentioned, among other places, in the Theogony,
(29:30):
that oldest text that we have for the stories of
the gods, you know, beyond the war. There more of
his famous labors are mentioned, stealing the cattle of Garyon,
defeating the Hydra and the Nimian lion. There's also beyond
his labors mention of his interactions with the Hesperities and
Atlas and Cerberus, but without the link to his labors.
(29:52):
There's a list of all of the references to his
labors in this companion book I've been using. You remember,
it's the reason we returned Heracles, because I'm determined to
get my money's worth. But it lists many other sources
throughout the history of Greek myth, which you know, over centuries,
detail bits and pieces of his labors. As far as
(30:14):
we know from surviving bits and pieces. The first reference
we have to all twelve of his famous labors isn't
even in a text source, but it's depicted on the
temple of Zeus at Olympia. There we have all the
labors referenced together in one place, though they're not even
(30:35):
in the order that we see them in later text sources.
There are other slightly later references to more of his labors,
though again they differ from the canonical twelve that we
will come to know. Like in the Euripides play Heracles,
there are twelve things that he is said to have done,
but they aren't all part of the generally accepted list
of twelve labors. It isn't until the Hellenistic period, a
(30:57):
good five or so hundred years after sources like Homer Ahesiate,
where we get the established canon twelve labors, and it
isn't until the first century BC that a text source
survives that actually retells the stories of the labors rather
than just listing the deeds themselves. Just take that in.
(31:21):
I think it's incredibly important in terms of understanding not
only the mythology of the most famous Greek hero, but
also just this good reminder about how mythology functioned in
the ancient world compared to how it's often portrayed to
us now. I know this is my favorite topic to
harp on, but it is that for a reason we
think of Heracles as this hero whose story is ancient,
(31:45):
as everyone else who did these very specific things that
are so deeply tied to the fabric of Greek myth.
You know, the Twelve Labors. They're iconic, arguably some of
the most iconic pieces from traditionally Greek myth that we
think of today. And yet it's nearly a millennia of
Greek mythological sources before some survive that have actual stories
(32:10):
of all of those labors. Instead, we work off the
bits and pieces, the little references here and there, both
in art and text, that hint at all the things
that he was thought to have done. And I don't
want you to think that this means that the Twelve
Labors as we know them were established as late as
(32:31):
the Hellenistic period. Instead, it's this reminder that the purpose
of Greek myth in the ancient world was not to
be written down. It wasn't fiction as we know it.
It wasn't meant to be read and understood in that form. Instead,
particularly for heroes like Heracles, Perseus being maybe the only
other example that comes close to Heracles. The thing to
(32:52):
take away is that these stories were just by and
large known. The everyday people of the a the chin
Greek world just knew Heracles. They might not have known
all of his deeds all of his stories, but they
would have known at least a handful. They would have
been able to recognize them in art, on pottery, on temples.
You could just look at something and know that's Heracles,
(33:16):
and he was everywhere. In terms of surviving pottery that
we have today, Heracles and the Amazons are the most
commonly depicted subjects, so much of what we know about
him is from iconography, and the Temple of Zeus at
Olympia is the best example of this. It dates to
(33:39):
the fifth century BCE, so it's it's fairly old, but
definitely you know, young in the grand scheme of myth,
a good few hundred years later than Homer or Hesiod's work,
and that it was at Olympia. That's the key. Olympia
wasn't just any old Greek city state. It wasn't some
local reference being made there, you know, a temple where
(34:00):
only people of the neighboring regions would have visited. Unlike
you know, probably most other temples in the ancient Greek world,
this particular temple was meant to be viewed by everyone.
Olympia was, unsurprisingly where the ancient Olympics took place, so
(34:20):
unlike most other regions, say, for like maybe Delfi or something.
It was a kind of like global city in the
sense that the globe was like just the ancient Greek police.
So everyone, and by everyone I mean primarily meant because
ladies were not even allowed to watch the Olympics, don't
be crazy. Everyone would have visited this temple. They would
(34:43):
have looked up at those metalpez the art carved above
the columns, and they would have been able to immediately
recognize the labors of Heracles. A lot of these pieces
are in the Louver, and I didn't know that I
was in the louver last year, I guess, and I
literally just looked at the thing and I was like,
that's Heracles. Like that is that is what these people
(35:05):
would have been able to see. You see a guy
doing certain specific things and you immediately know that it's Heracles.
That's something to remember, even when we're considering lost works
that we do know existed. Like sure, there were certainly
a couple of ancient epics about Heracles, and they likely
had loads of details that we will never know about.
But the readership or even the audience more broadly for
(35:27):
something like that, probably wouldn't remotely have compared to the
stories of him that were just floating around the people,
even just you know, existing in ancient Greece, people would
have seen Heracles on every other piece of pottery, on
temples far beyond the one in Olympia. Literally he was everywhere.
(35:50):
So it almost just doesn't matter what the actual details
of his story were. You don't need to know the
nitty gritty of how he defeated the hide, just that
he did it, and because of him, you're not liable
to run into a multi headed serpent monster. We think
of these things as stories today, as narratives with plots
and details, character arcs, and growth. But those things just
(36:13):
did not matter in the same way in the ancient world.
I'm not saying they weren't appreciated or utilized, but they
were not even close to the most important part of
a character like Heracles. Heracles was important because he was Heracles,
because across the ancient Greek world, everyone could name at
least one great thing that he did, at least one
(36:34):
impressive child that he fothered, probably even one weird ass
thing that he was involved in, because everyone loves a
bit of weird. I know, this kind of thing is
just so in the weeds it's sticky and weird and
obviously fragmentary as shit and difficult for me as one
person telling you things to convey in an entertaining way.
But when it comes to Heracles, it's just so important
(36:58):
to consider him as the culture rual icon that he was,
rather than a guy who did some labors which made
it into some stories later. He was just larger than
life for people of the ancient world, and whether or
not you'd heard a poet sing about him or read
something somewhere, you would have heard about Heracles. You would
(37:19):
know the things that he did. It seems to me
like he would be a kind of people's hero in
that way. You didn't have to be able to read
or have access to a more wealthy form of entertainment.
He was iconic enough and widespread enough across the Greek
world that even the poorest people would know about him,
even the enslaved people would know about him, because yeah,
(37:41):
there's even stories of him having been enslaved for a time.
So he really just would have appealed to everyone, no
matter who they were or what lives they led in
the ancient world. Frankly, I don't get enough chances to
talk about that kind of impact, the way everyday people
would have inter racted with somebody like Heracles. But it
(38:03):
is so important to remember that, for all we think
of Greek myth today as these fun and entertaining stories,
it was a culture. It was everyday life. It was
something to aspire to, to hold on to for very
real people of all walks of life and wealth and
(38:23):
lack thereof just real people in the ancient world. Nerds,
(38:46):
thank you for indulging me in this episode. Now. I
fully set out to have this be like a regular
storytelling episode, but the more I started researching even just
like his childhood, the more I realized that I actually
just wanted to talk about Heracles as this cultural concept
more than a character in stories. It applies to many
people from myth, but I do think he stands out
(39:06):
completely like he is unique in the way that he
would have appealed to everyone in his own way, and
the way his achievements were so broadly celebrated just he
that made him a piece of ancient culture in this
very real and visceral way. There's a reason he had
so many varied stories all around the Greek world, and
(39:27):
a varying types levels of so called heroism. All of
these things were meant to just make him appeal to
like everyone. But before I leave Heracles for today, I
have to tell you that I found out a little
detail about his childhood that I didn't see in time
to put into last week's episode, but it simply must
be shared. See, it seems there's an alternate version to
(39:51):
the whole baby Heracles strangling snakes sent by Hara story.
Apparently Farrakides said that it was actually Emphytrion, Heracles's adoptive Dan,
who put the snakes into his crib, rather than Hara,
and it wasn't in any kind of show of like
jealousy or anger or like intent to harm. Instead, it
was cie Alchemeni had given birth to the two kids,
(40:12):
and then Fitchrion knew that one was his and the
other was Zeus, And apparently this moment with the snakes
was actually just an attempt at figuring out which baby
had which father, so he like dropped some snakes in
on the children. And when Heracles's brother Ificcalles ran away
in fear, and Heracles stood his ground, and Vitrion was
(40:33):
able to know once and for all which son was
his biologically and on which was Zeus's. And if that
isn't the funniest case of awful fucking parenting in the
ancient world, I don't know what is, man. I can
talk a lot. I swear every script these days is
at least a thousand words longer than the ones that
I did, even like a year or two ago. I
(40:54):
can't help myself, but as always, let's end with a
five star review from one of you wonderful listeners. Thank
you to everyone who reviews on Apple, it really honestly
means the world. And thank you to those of you
on Spotify who are playing around with this new Q
and A feature and poles and whatever. They're really fun,
so I'm thrilled that you're enjoying them too. This review
comes from Lauren M eight in Great Britain, best podcast,
(41:19):
great show and a wonderful host. This is both convinced
and helped me study Latin and the ancient world. I
hope this show goes on for very long time so
I can continue listening. My favorites are the plays. Thank you, Lauren,
though I'm a little offended that you took up Latin
and not Greek. It's fine. I fucking love the plays too,
so thank you and God we still have so many
(41:42):
of those to cover. Let's talk about Miss Baby as
written and produced by me Live. Albert MICHAELA. Smith is
the Hermes to my Olympians, better known as the assistant producer.
The podcast is hosted and monetized by iHeartMedia. Listen on
Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Help me continue
bringing you the world of Greek mythology and the Ancient
Mediterranean byb I'm a patron. Will you get bonus episodes
and mower visit patron Accomplishments Baby, or click the link
(42:05):
in this episode's description. Thank you all, you're so nerdy
and cool. We do have fun. I am live and
I love this shit. The
Hello, this is Let's talk about myths baby, and I'm
your host live. She has developed a real love of
looking at like the cultural history of ancient Greek mythology,
what it meant for real people, just how it's so
vastly different from what we often think of now, Like God.
(00:54):
The way this show has changed the way I see
myth It's wild, and then I get to share it
all with you, slash inflicted upon you. Who's to say,
but the absolute best example of this concept is Heracles.
But real quick before we get to him. If you're
(01:16):
listening on Spotify, make sure you interact at the end
of the episode. I'm adding in some fun like Q
and a's and polls to new episodes to play around
with this new feature and hear what you think and
just get your thoughts on any and everything, and then
your questions get published so that they show up right
on the Spotify page. It's pretty fun and cute, So
join in. Heracles, Heracles, Heracles. Last week we looked at
(01:43):
the woman hidden behind the hero, Heracles's mother, Alchemenie, who
doesn't get nearly enough credit for her own mythology. But today, well,
Alchemenie is She's kind of left behind in Heracles's story,
you know, surprise, surprise. Without him, well she doesn't really
get much else of her but her son, well, he was,
you know, a little bit interesting for the most part.
(02:06):
Unsurprisingly stories of the heroes, aren't, you know, my favorite
bits about Greek myth save I guess for like the
Odyssey and the Iliad. But Heracles is different, not for
his character really, or even for the stories themselves, but
for just every single thing else to do with him
as this piece of cultural history, cultural identity. Even Heracles
(02:31):
is unique. He's completely different from the rest of the
Greek heroes, and that alone makes him someone that, like
I want to examine in far more detail. Clearly, he
was Greece's hero, like devoted to and beloved by the
whole of the ancient Greek world in a way that
just does not exist with others. That is what makes
him so interesting. That and he's got about like ten
(02:54):
times more stories than anyone else in like a thousand
plus years of those stories growing and changing, not quite surviving,
like existing in fragments and visual representation and concepts. So
purely for my own selfish needing content reasons and having
(03:14):
a ridiculously expensive book I want to use. We're gonna
dive a little deeper into him as a character, him
as an archetype, as a hero for all of Greece
and all of its mythology, and what all of those
things mean from like a cultural and historical context, because
God's they meant so much. There's a reason why Theseus
(03:40):
was intentionally mirroring Heracles in his story. And it isn't
because the guy looked up to his cousin. It's because
if you're gonna make a hero that's like intentionally Athenian
propaganda like Theseus, you want him to emulate, to be
as similar as possible to the number one hero for
all of Greece, Heracles, And hey, you know, like why
(04:02):
not add in a little familial relation to you know,
just for good measure. But fortunately for us, while I
wouldn't go so far as to say that Heracles is
much less problematic or even committed, you know, any fewer
crimes compared to Theseus, he is, well, like, he's just
considerably less obnoxious. And thus I'm not gonna spend entire
(04:26):
episodes talking about just how shitty he was, because you know,
for all his crimes, Heracles at least defeated a bunch
of seriously interesting and scary creatures along with you know,
all the other wild and fascinating things that he did
in his ridiculously prolific heroic career. This is episode two
(04:57):
twenty nine. Nobody labors like Heracles, the cultural history of
the pan Hellenic hero. What we do and do not
(05:20):
know about Heracles and the many stories from myth that
involve him, well, God's it's banned about a millennial's worth
of culture, of history of Greece and well well beyond,
and so you know, it's a little bit uh fragmentary,
because remember, Heracles is, you know, the Greek name for Hercules.
(05:40):
Heracles is his original name. Even if the Roman Hercules
became far more famous, Heracles survives in our earliest sources
for Greek myth. And while that's true of a lot
of the heroes, he still manages to differentiate himself from
the others. He's a regional hero, but simultaneously he is
the hero for all of Greece. He is Theban and
(06:03):
also Peloponnesian, and he is everything in between and beyond.
But he's also this deeply fascinatingly fragmentary hero. The details
of Heracles's childhood are few and far between, at least
when it comes to earlier sources, until Pseudo Apollodorus and
(06:24):
some others writing while Greece is being ruled by the
Roman Empire, so a good eight or so, you know,
one hundred years after a source like Homer. Until that time,
we have little about Heracles's childhood beyond some visual representations. Meanwhile,
when Apollodorus does come along, he adds in all these details, which, well,
(06:46):
that's the nature of a character like this. The details
and stories offered by Pseudo Apolydorus might have been well
known before his time, and it's maybe only that he
survives to tell us about them, or the might have
been later additions and inventions, like elaborations. Even unlike many
of the other major heroes, Heracles didn't lose any of
(07:09):
his fame or popularity even after a good you know,
thousand years of mythology and history had passed. The Romans
took him on in a way that they did not
bother with the others. He became immortal in a completely
different way. And as a reminder, you know, he's the
only traditional hero who became explicitly immortal, an actual god
(07:31):
in the mythology before the time of Pseudopolydorus. Though we
know of Heracles's mother, you know everything I shared with
you last week, and we know that as a baby, well,
you know, he strangled a couple of snakes, basically confirming
to everyone around him that he was going to be
a totally normal child. You know, might be destined for
some impressive things, though, But aside from that, there is
(07:53):
little in the way of detail. Like there's a piece
of pottery from the late sixth century that depicts Heracles
wandering off with Hermes, you know, heading towards Chyron. We
assume for his hero training. I guess, yes, think Danny DeVito.
There is no other way to see the hero training
than Danny DeVito as phil in Disney's Hercules, a character
(08:15):
who is a beautiful little amalgamation of real mythological characters
Tyron and Philikteini's but motioned to a satyr. Okay, I'll stop.
So we think maybe that's what Heracles did as a child.
Maybe his parents knew what they had with him, you know,
after the whole snake incident, and they sent him off
to train as this hero. But well that that's like
(08:38):
that's a bit of a later construct too, that there
was any kind of hero training available. So maybe it
was just that one painter who wanted that bit of
his story to exist. Or there's a time he accidentally
killed his music teacher, a nice man named Linus who
had a very unfortunate fate. That too, existed mostly in
(08:59):
Potter depictions, including apparently one where Heracles is literally swinging
part of a stool at his teacher. I read this
in a book without pictures, unfortunately, so maybe this, you know,
wasn't necessarily part of his story beyond art work. In
the case of the poor dead music teacher Linus, there's
more evidence that it was like a pre existing story.
(09:22):
It actually appears on a few different pieces of art,
and art is often overlooked as a way that we
have learned Greek mythological stories, but it's actually an enormous
source for so much of what we have had to
interpret because text is lost because still at least until
due to a Polydorus, it does not survive in any
(09:44):
text form. Fortunately, though, you know, we still care about
what Apolyodorus had to say about Heracles, because if we didn't,
we would be left with like a hell of a
lot less detail and far more boring surviving textual sources
because of Polydorus. While bre gives us the deats, he
tells us that Heracles learned a whole host of skills
(10:06):
as a child, as one would expect of a hero
like him. His adoptive father and Vitrion taught him how
to drive a chariot. A guy named Atilicus, who we
will hear from again in Heracles's wider story, taught him
to wrestle. And remember, wrestling in agent Greece is a
seriously impressive and important skill. They did invent the Olympics,
after all, they absolutely loved a good naked wrestling sash
(10:30):
between bros. So what Tilicus taught him wrestling? And a
man named Eurytus taught him to shoot a bow. Famous
Castor of Troy, a Polyodorus says, taught him swordsmanship. But no,
don't think too hard about that one, because Castor, absolutely
without question, should have been born well after Heracles. And
(10:52):
then there was Linus, Linus who taught Heracles music and
was even the brother of the one and only Orpheus
according to a Polydora, which again, don't think too hard
about that, because there is no question that in this
section of Polydorus is really hyping up the importance of
the people associated with Heracles' childhood, his learning, and his training.
(11:14):
What little of mythological chronology that we can define is
it's just being tossed right out of the window with
this list still Orpheus relation aside. A Polydorus tells us
that Linus traveled to Thebes to teach young Heracles musical skills,
but that he made the mistake of hitting Heracles during
one of his lessons. I get the sense that Heracles
didn't find himself to be particularly musically inclined, but he did, however,
(11:37):
find himself unable to control his temper like the good,
strong masculine man that he was, and so when Linus
hit him, well, he flew into a rage and smashed
a chair over the man's head, killing him. Flying into
a rage and killing people is going to become a
theme in Heracles' life, because toxic masculinity looked about the
same in the ancient world as it does now. Heracles
(11:59):
was very nearly punished for, you know, straight up murdering
a guy. But Apollodora says that when he was on
trial he quoted a law of the underworld judge Radamanthus
that basically meant that because Heracles saw it as self defense,
it wasn't murder. This is almost certainly like an invention
again of this later time, like more of a means
(12:19):
of introducing a concept that existed by the time this
was being written, you know, well into the Roman period.
But it's interesting all the same because if it was,
you know, based in an older mythology, I imagine it
would have been the usual post accidental murder plot point.
You just have to seek some purification from another kingdom,
and all is forgiven. But that in itself you know
that it isn't handled that way. Is this fascinating extra
(12:42):
detail that gives some insight into the time period of
the sourcing and what might have influenced it. And yet
it's kind of all we have when it comes to
any kind of detail about this part of Heracles' life.
And something similar is happening in what a Polyodorus tells
us next that why Heracles was still young, he was
only eighteen, he slew a lion on Mount Kytheron outside
(13:06):
of Thebes, which had been terrorizing the region along with
the nearby city of Thespia. It's only a Polydorus that
adds in this lion because it's not the Nimian lion
that Heracles is so famous for. And yet Apollodorus uses
this story to account for Heracles's famous lion skin hood.
(13:27):
It's a kind of like almost retconning of this story,
like a reason for him to have these iconic clothes
before he ever gets to his labors. But it's also
just a great example of this fact that, like everything
is so fragmentary other than this really longstanding tradition of
icronography of art depicting Heracles, because in that case, he's
(13:48):
always wearing that damn lionskin, and Apolyodors is accounting for that.
And then there's the things that Heracles did in Thespia
according to pseudo Apollodorus. Picture that side eye emoji here,
would you? Yeah? Thespia. Few the things these late sources
(14:26):
say about what went down in Thespia. See around the
time that Heracles was said to have defeated this lion,
he also visited a king named Thespius, he will become
the mythological founder of the region of Thespia. And well,
he was said to have had fifty daughters. Have you
(14:48):
heard this one before? Yeah, so Heracles was said to
have visited Thespius. And well, honestly, this bit, it just
needs to be read as a direct quote. It's hard
to do a justice. This is how a Pollodorus tells
us Us Heracles's visit with Thespius went down. Quote. The
king entertained him for fifty days, and each night, as
(15:09):
Hercules went forth to the hunt, Thespius bedded one of
his daughters with him, fifty daughters having been born to
him by Mega, made daughter of Arnaeus, for he was
anxious that all of them should have children by Hercules. Yeah,
fifty knights, fifty daughters. Iconic Heracles action right there in
(15:33):
more ways than one. But if you think that's wild,
wait until you hear how the other late sources describe it.
According to Herodorus, whose work doesn't survive, but he was
referenced a lot by Plutarch, Heracles had sex with all
fifty of the daughters of Thespius, not over fifty days,
(15:54):
but just seven, So yeah, like, imagine how that might
have gone down or better Yet, Pausanias says that actually
it was only forty nine daughters, but that he did
them all in a single fucking night, pun not intended,
but absolutely kept in after the fact. Pausanias also explains
(16:17):
that he only had sex with forty nine of them
because one of them didn't want to, and of course
that wouldn't stand, so she was punished by being made
a priestess who would remain a virgin. That gross and
sad detail aside, what this account does do is suggest that,
at least mythologically, the other forty nine were into it.
Small wins by almost all accounts, though the end result
(16:41):
is clear forty nine or fifty new babies by Heracles.
But well, it's important to remember that almost every reference
to this comes from very very late in the grand
scheme of Heracles. So let's dip a bit deeper into
what that means and why it matters now full disclosure,
(17:01):
This work by Herodros, which I will mention again later,
would have been written earlier than the others, somewhere around
the four hundred spcees, so you know earlier. But this
note about the daughters of Thespius is referenced in Plutarch,
who is referencing Herodorus, but who is of course writing
very late and during the Roman period. So it's tough
(17:22):
to say whether this fifty daughters storyline existed in the earlier,
more ancient Greek versions of his story, or whether it
is this later invention to tie him to the region,
something that came along closer to the Roman period. That's
a major through line when it comes to Heracles mythology.
You know, he traveled the Greek world, and he fathered
a lot of babies. Usually it seems fairly consensual too,
(17:46):
because it's not really about him or the mother. It
is about the procreation and the spreading of his Yeah,
i'm gonna say it, his Heraclean seed, you know, all
around the Greek world, just tying all these places to
you know, the Greek hero. Because of course, when it
(18:07):
comes to these fifty or forty nine daughters, making babies
is the key to this story, as was aligning this
mythological king with the founding of the region of Thespia.
It's a very intentional story, and Thespia is an often
overlooked area. You might remember. They were actually one of
the major forgotten police of the Battle of Thermopylae. They
(18:30):
were there too, Sparta. Now I realized, so far this
episode has been, you know, very narratively frustrating, because Heracles,
his childhood and his youth specifically, but honestly all of
him is well narratively frustrating. But that only makes him
and this cultural history surrounding him more worthy of our study.
(18:53):
Like trying to sort through the historical timeline for Heracles' life,
it only made me more keen to devoting this episode
to the broader context of him, the concept of Heracles
as a cultural icon rather than a fictional character, the
centuries that his story spanned, and what they looked like
(19:14):
throughout that time period. He is uniquely perfect for this
kind of episode examining this concept, one that looks at
the cultural history of the mythology rather than just the
stories as they exist. Because, like I said, basically all
that I've told you about, you know, his younger years
does not survive in any text form prior to say,
(19:38):
the first century CE, maybe a bit earlier. We're talking
a good seven or eight hundred years minimum after the
stories of Heracles were probably first being told, and they
could have been even older. So what's happening in sources
like these is either they're working off of lost text
sourcing or just this broad cultural novel, which is likely
(20:02):
the case for the music teacher bit, you know, maybe
even being trained by Chiron too, since both of these
stories have survived in depictions in art and pottery, you know,
as far back as the sixth century BC. Or these
authors are working off of newer traditions that were developed
or even just changed and adjusted over those intervening seven
(20:24):
or so hundred years. And that's what interests me, and
I'm forcing it to interest you. But it's also one
of the most important aspects of studying Heracles. Like not
only was he the most famous mythological hero from as
far back as Homer, i e. You know, as far
back as we possess today, but he remained that way
(20:48):
and the stories that surround him are evidence of that
long lasting importance in the broader ancient Mediterranean world. The
(21:26):
fragmentary nature of Heracles's stories and sources is yes, I know,
it's frustrating because maybe you're just screaming at me to
tell a story, damn it. There's also an incredible example
of how much of Heracles's story as we know it
now was not necessarily ever written down in any detail
(21:50):
prior to the later sources, or at least does not
survive in any detail, not because it wasn't a popular
story or didn't exist at all, but simply because I think,
I mean, he was so popular, so important that his
stories were just broadly known across the ancient Greek world.
(22:12):
It's certainly possible that when it comes to certain aspects
of his story, written sources never existed because something like
that wasn't necessary when your entire culture broadly knows the
stories and tells them to each other, passes them down
to their children, depicts them in art. If that's the case,
(22:34):
you know why bother recording it in any kind of
major written source. But with that said, there are cases
of lost or fragmentary sources that we do know existed.
We just don't necessarily know what details they included, what
depths they might have gone into, or what aspects of
his many, many many stories they might have covered. Like
(22:59):
there was an epic called Heraclia, essentially the Deeds of
Heracles by a man named Pysandros of Rhodes, which it
would have been written somewhere around the beginning of the
seventh century BCE, so very old, just like those references
we have of him and Homer and Hesiid, though in
that case it was devoted to the hero completely. Apparently
from what we know, it might have focused more on
(23:21):
some of Heracles. It's more obscure stories, at least those
that are obscure to us now, rather than his labors,
which are the most popular to us now but might
not have been in the ancient world. Aristotle, though he
was not a fan, but his complaints were more about
the plot. Just because it's about one person does not
a unified plot make, was essentially his argument. We know
(23:45):
of other works that existed two one by Pharrachides from
the fifth century BCE, another by the very appropriately named
Herodorus from Heraclia that I mentioned earlier, which was seriously long.
But what we don't know is what they actually talked about,
and if they covered certain aspects of his life and
(24:06):
stories like, what those details might have actually been. By
the time we do have surviving sources, the stories of
Heracles would have been going around the entirety of the
Greek world and far beyond. For like I said, nearly
a millennia. So we get these people like Pseudoopolydorus, who
(24:26):
gives us a straightforward and infinitely helpful account of his story.
The other major surviving source, again from this later Imperial
Roman time period, is Diodorus Siculus. He wasn't writing myth
like a Polydorus, though. Instead he was like mythologizing history,
or maybe historifying mythology. This is a better way of
(24:48):
saying it. He was writing myths as though they were history.
He is where we get some fascinating accounts of Medea
and her family, which I've talked about in the past.
Didorusiculus summarizes well Heracles generally, but also definitely this episode
of the podcast when he said quote for it is
generally agreed that this man has come down to us,
(25:11):
having surpassed in the greatness of the deeds he accomplished,
all those handed down in memory from antiquity. So it
is difficult to report each of his exploits in a
worthy manner, and to make the account equal to such
deeds the greatness of which won him the prize of immortality.
(25:32):
See it isn't just me like even in the ancient
world itself, Authors like Dietorusiculus recognize the difficulty in writing
about a character like Heracles. His story served a very
different purpose than the other heroes. Perseus is probably the
closest Heracles we have in terms of his cultural relevance,
and yet he doesn't come remotely close to Heracles in
(25:54):
in terms of stories or his general importance in the
broader cultural history of the whole region. Perseus had set
things that he needed to do. His story is pretty
cut and dry, with a few exceptions. But even those exceptions,
you know, the additional details that might have been tossed
in later, do not come close to how widespread and
(26:16):
deeply convoluted the stories of Heracles are. Because of how
widespread and important they were. He did too many things Heracles.
He meant too much to the Greek world for him
to ever be appropriately summarized. And yeah, sometimes the things
he did were great and impressive and aided a whole region,
(26:39):
like defeating the Nimian lion or the Hydra. And sometimes
while sometimes he hung out in the east and played
around with his gender identities, swapping clothes with the queen
for a while, or you know, sometimes he had sex
with fifty women in a single night so that they
could have his fifty babies. He contained multitudes. Remember in
(27:17):
the old days of the podcast, where I would just
tell you the simplest version of a myth. Do you
miss those days? Yeah? Me, neither. There's nothing wrong with
reading myths in that way, like in finding a chronologically
and narratively satisfying take on the story and just like
going with that. Nothing wrong with that. Back then, I
had a book of myths written by a scholar that
just succinctly retold the stories, you know, as if they
(27:40):
existed in this way in the sources. That's the main
source that I worked with back then. Now, though, like
my own knowledge waste has grown so much that I
absolutely love being able to tell you more about the
cultural context, like the how and the why and obviously
all the many varied versions. But I really think it's
so important because unless you have access to this type
(28:00):
of background, you really just come at it thinking like, hey,
here's the story of Heracles. He did all these labors,
he did all these things. It's just cut and dry,
and the sources and oh my god, it's not. He's
one of these characters that is both uniquely prolific in
terms of version, stories, everything and anything the most prolific.
(28:21):
It's annoying. But because he is all of those things,
he's also one of the most confusing in that deeply
satisfying kind of way. The stories of his labors, for instance,
is often presented as one of the most straightforward aspects
of his story, and yet even there there's just so
much nuance. From as far back as the Iliad, we
(28:46):
know that Heracles was the original Greek hero. He's mentioned
in that epic often as a kind of predecessor to
all the great heroes at Troy, many of whom claim
to be descendants or relations of his in some way,
because that made them even more impressive. But of course,
his story was never straightforward, because if it were, it
simply wouldn't be Greek myth at all. In the Iliad,
(29:08):
while we know he was, you know, major and important
as shit, only one of his famous labors is ever mentioned,
the time he traveled to the underworld to steal Cerberus
he see it. Meanwhile, the other source we go for
for the earliest surviving aspects of myth puts equal importance
in Heracles. He's mentioned, among other places, in the Theogony,
(29:30):
that oldest text that we have for the stories of
the gods, you know, beyond the war. There more of
his famous labors are mentioned, stealing the cattle of Garyon,
defeating the Hydra and the Nimian lion. There's also beyond
his labors mention of his interactions with the Hesperities and
Atlas and Cerberus, but without the link to his labors.
(29:52):
There's a list of all of the references to his
labors in this companion book I've been using. You remember,
it's the reason we returned Heracles, because I'm determined to
get my money's worth. But it lists many other sources
throughout the history of Greek myth, which you know, over centuries,
detail bits and pieces of his labors. As far as
(30:14):
we know from surviving bits and pieces. The first reference
we have to all twelve of his famous labors isn't
even in a text source, but it's depicted on the
temple of Zeus at Olympia. There we have all the
labors referenced together in one place, though they're not even
(30:35):
in the order that we see them in later text sources.
There are other slightly later references to more of his labors,
though again they differ from the canonical twelve that we
will come to know. Like in the Euripides play Heracles,
there are twelve things that he is said to have done,
but they aren't all part of the generally accepted list
of twelve labors. It isn't until the Hellenistic period, a
(30:57):
good five or so hundred years after sources like Homer Ahesiate,
where we get the established canon twelve labors, and it
isn't until the first century BC that a text source
survives that actually retells the stories of the labors rather
than just listing the deeds themselves. Just take that in.
(31:21):
I think it's incredibly important in terms of understanding not
only the mythology of the most famous Greek hero, but
also just this good reminder about how mythology functioned in
the ancient world compared to how it's often portrayed to
us now. I know this is my favorite topic to
harp on, but it is that for a reason we
think of Heracles as this hero whose story is ancient,
(31:45):
as everyone else who did these very specific things that
are so deeply tied to the fabric of Greek myth.
You know, the Twelve Labors. They're iconic, arguably some of
the most iconic pieces from traditionally Greek myth that we
think of today. And yet it's nearly a millennia of
Greek mythological sources before some survive that have actual stories
(32:10):
of all of those labors. Instead, we work off the
bits and pieces, the little references here and there, both
in art and text, that hint at all the things
that he was thought to have done. And I don't
want you to think that this means that the Twelve
Labors as we know them were established as late as
(32:31):
the Hellenistic period. Instead, it's this reminder that the purpose
of Greek myth in the ancient world was not to
be written down. It wasn't fiction as we know it.
It wasn't meant to be read and understood in that form. Instead,
particularly for heroes like Heracles, Perseus being maybe the only
other example that comes close to Heracles. The thing to
(32:52):
take away is that these stories were just by and
large known. The everyday people of the a the chin
Greek world just knew Heracles. They might not have known
all of his deeds all of his stories, but they
would have known at least a handful. They would have
been able to recognize them in art, on pottery, on temples.
You could just look at something and know that's Heracles,
(33:16):
and he was everywhere. In terms of surviving pottery that
we have today, Heracles and the Amazons are the most
commonly depicted subjects, so much of what we know about
him is from iconography, and the Temple of Zeus at
Olympia is the best example of this. It dates to
(33:39):
the fifth century BCE, so it's it's fairly old, but
definitely you know, young in the grand scheme of myth,
a good few hundred years later than Homer or Hesiod's work,
and that it was at Olympia. That's the key. Olympia
wasn't just any old Greek city state. It wasn't some
local reference being made there, you know, a temple where
(34:00):
only people of the neighboring regions would have visited. Unlike
you know, probably most other temples in the ancient Greek world,
this particular temple was meant to be viewed by everyone.
Olympia was, unsurprisingly where the ancient Olympics took place, so
(34:20):
unlike most other regions, say, for like maybe Delfi or something.
It was a kind of like global city in the
sense that the globe was like just the ancient Greek police.
So everyone, and by everyone I mean primarily meant because
ladies were not even allowed to watch the Olympics, don't
be crazy. Everyone would have visited this temple. They would
(34:43):
have looked up at those metalpez the art carved above
the columns, and they would have been able to immediately
recognize the labors of Heracles. A lot of these pieces
are in the Louver, and I didn't know that I
was in the louver last year, I guess, and I
literally just looked at the thing and I was like,
that's Heracles. Like that is that is what these people
(35:05):
would have been able to see. You see a guy
doing certain specific things and you immediately know that it's Heracles.
That's something to remember, even when we're considering lost works
that we do know existed. Like sure, there were certainly
a couple of ancient epics about Heracles, and they likely
had loads of details that we will never know about.
But the readership or even the audience more broadly for
(35:27):
something like that, probably wouldn't remotely have compared to the
stories of him that were just floating around the people,
even just you know, existing in ancient Greece, people would
have seen Heracles on every other piece of pottery, on
temples far beyond the one in Olympia. Literally he was everywhere.
(35:50):
So it almost just doesn't matter what the actual details
of his story were. You don't need to know the
nitty gritty of how he defeated the hide, just that
he did it, and because of him, you're not liable
to run into a multi headed serpent monster. We think
of these things as stories today, as narratives with plots
and details, character arcs, and growth. But those things just
(36:13):
did not matter in the same way in the ancient world.
I'm not saying they weren't appreciated or utilized, but they
were not even close to the most important part of
a character like Heracles. Heracles was important because he was Heracles,
because across the ancient Greek world, everyone could name at
least one great thing that he did, at least one
(36:34):
impressive child that he fothered, probably even one weird ass
thing that he was involved in, because everyone loves a
bit of weird. I know, this kind of thing is
just so in the weeds it's sticky and weird and
obviously fragmentary as shit and difficult for me as one
person telling you things to convey in an entertaining way.
But when it comes to Heracles, it's just so important
(36:58):
to consider him as the culture rual icon that he was,
rather than a guy who did some labors which made
it into some stories later. He was just larger than
life for people of the ancient world, and whether or
not you'd heard a poet sing about him or read
something somewhere, you would have heard about Heracles. You would
(37:19):
know the things that he did. It seems to me
like he would be a kind of people's hero in
that way. You didn't have to be able to read
or have access to a more wealthy form of entertainment.
He was iconic enough and widespread enough across the Greek
world that even the poorest people would know about him,
even the enslaved people would know about him, because yeah,
(37:41):
there's even stories of him having been enslaved for a time.
So he really just would have appealed to everyone, no
matter who they were or what lives they led in
the ancient world. Frankly, I don't get enough chances to
talk about that kind of impact, the way everyday people
would have inter racted with somebody like Heracles. But it
(38:03):
is so important to remember that, for all we think
of Greek myth today as these fun and entertaining stories,
it was a culture. It was everyday life. It was
something to aspire to, to hold on to for very
real people of all walks of life and wealth and
(38:23):
lack thereof just real people in the ancient world. Nerds,
(38:46):
thank you for indulging me in this episode. Now. I
fully set out to have this be like a regular
storytelling episode, but the more I started researching even just
like his childhood, the more I realized that I actually
just wanted to talk about Heracles as this cultural concept
more than a character in stories. It applies to many
people from myth, but I do think he stands out
(39:06):
completely like he is unique in the way that he
would have appealed to everyone in his own way, and
the way his achievements were so broadly celebrated just he
that made him a piece of ancient culture in this
very real and visceral way. There's a reason he had
so many varied stories all around the Greek world, and
(39:27):
a varying types levels of so called heroism. All of
these things were meant to just make him appeal to
like everyone. But before I leave Heracles for today, I
have to tell you that I found out a little
detail about his childhood that I didn't see in time
to put into last week's episode, but it simply must
be shared. See, it seems there's an alternate version to
(39:51):
the whole baby Heracles strangling snakes sent by Hara story.
Apparently Farrakides said that it was actually Emphytrion, Heracles's adoptive Dan,
who put the snakes into his crib, rather than Hara,
and it wasn't in any kind of show of like
jealousy or anger or like intent to harm. Instead, it
was cie Alchemeni had given birth to the two kids,
(40:12):
and then Fitchrion knew that one was his and the
other was Zeus, And apparently this moment with the snakes
was actually just an attempt at figuring out which baby
had which father, so he like dropped some snakes in
on the children. And when Heracles's brother Ificcalles ran away
in fear, and Heracles stood his ground, and Vitrion was
(40:33):
able to know once and for all which son was
his biologically and on which was Zeus's. And if that
isn't the funniest case of awful fucking parenting in the
ancient world, I don't know what is, man. I can
talk a lot. I swear every script these days is
at least a thousand words longer than the ones that
I did, even like a year or two ago. I
(40:54):
can't help myself, but as always, let's end with a
five star review from one of you wonderful listeners. Thank
you to everyone who reviews on Apple, it really honestly
means the world. And thank you to those of you
on Spotify who are playing around with this new Q
and A feature and poles and whatever. They're really fun,
so I'm thrilled that you're enjoying them too. This review
comes from Lauren M eight in Great Britain, best podcast,
(41:19):
great show and a wonderful host. This is both convinced
and helped me study Latin and the ancient world. I
hope this show goes on for very long time so
I can continue listening. My favorites are the plays. Thank you, Lauren,
though I'm a little offended that you took up Latin
and not Greek. It's fine. I fucking love the plays too,
so thank you and God we still have so many
(41:42):
of those to cover. Let's talk about Miss Baby as
written and produced by me Live. Albert MICHAELA. Smith is
the Hermes to my Olympians, better known as the assistant producer.
The podcast is hosted and monetized by iHeartMedia. Listen on
Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Help me continue
bringing you the world of Greek mythology and the Ancient
Mediterranean byb I'm a patron. Will you get bonus episodes
and mower visit patron Accomplishments Baby, or click the link
(42:05):
in this episode's description. Thank you all, you're so nerdy
and cool. We do have fun. I am live and
I love this shit. The
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