Heracles, whom the Romans called Hercules, is the most famous of the Greek heroes. Son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, gifted with prodigious strength, persecuted from the cradle by Hera's hostility, he is best known for his twelve labours. Read on the surface, they are a series of spectacular feats against monsters and impossible creatures. Read in depth, they are the portrait of a human being who, starting from a terrible guilt, passes through a long sequence of trials towards a radical transformation.
The origin: guilt
The labours do not arise from a desire for glory. According to tradition, Hera strikes Heracles with a fit of madness during which the hero kills his own children. When he comes to his senses, devastated, he goes to Delphi to ask how to atone. The oracle orders him to put himself in the service of Eurystheus, king of Tiryns, and to carry out whatever tasks the king imposes.
This starting point is essential. Heracles's path is a path of atonement: the strength that had destroyed must learn to serve. It is perhaps the myth's first teaching: power alone is not enough; it must be given direction.
The twelve feats
The most widespread list, followed for example by the Library attributed to Apollodorus, is as follows:
| No. | Labour | Possible symbolic reading |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Nemean lion | facing brute force that cannot be wounded from outside |
| 2 | The Lernaean hydra | problems that multiply when fought the wrong way |
| 3 | The Ceryneian hind | patience in pursuing what eludes us |
| 4 | The Erymanthian boar | capturing without killing, mastering impulse |
| 5 | The Augean stables | clearing away what has piled up for years |
| 6 | The Stymphalian birds | driving off what infests and confuses |
| 7 | The Cretan bull | taming an instinctive power |
| 8 | The mares of Diomedes | stopping what devours |
| 9 | The belt of Hippolyta | meeting the feminine, warrior principle |
| 10 | The cattle of Geryon | the journey to the western edge of the world |
| 11 | The apples of the Hesperides | the quest for a divine fruit |
| 12 | Cerberus | the descent to the underworld and the return |
According to tradition there were meant to be ten labours, but Eurystheus refused to count two: the hydra, because Heracles had been helped by his nephew Iolaus, and the stables, because the hero had asked for payment.
A closer look at some labours
The Nemean lion
The lion's hide was invulnerable to weapons. Heracles strangles it with his bare hands and then skins it using the beast's own claws. From then on he wears the hide as a cloak. What was the danger becomes protection: the first triumph transforms the hero.
The Lernaean hydra
For every head cut off, the hydra grew two more. Heracles manages to defeat it only when Iolaus sears the stumps to stop them growing back. The lesson is ancient and still current: some problems get worse if met with force alone. A method is needed, and sometimes someone to help us.
The Augean stables
The stables of King Augeas had not been cleaned for a very long time. Heracles diverts the course of two rivers, which wash them out in a single day. It is the image of a purification achieved not by scraping by hand but by letting a greater force flow through.
The apples of the Hesperides and Cerberus
The last two labours take Heracles beyond the bounds of the human world: to the far west, to the divine garden of the Hesperides, and then to the underworld, from which he drags out the hound Cerberus. These trials no longer concern the monsters of the earth but the relationship with the divine and with death.
The choice of Heracles
There is also a tale attributed to the sophist Prodicus and reported by Xenophon in the Memorabilia. The young Heracles, at a fork in the road, meets two women: one promises him an easy and pleasant life, the other a life of toil and virtue. Heracles chooses the second. The tale anticipates the meaning of the labours: transformation requires choosing the harder road.
The end and the apotheosis
The death of Heracles is tragic. His wife Deianira, believing she is using a love charm, has him put on a tunic soaked in the poisoned blood of the centaur Nessus. Consumed by pain, the hero has a pyre built on Mount Oeta and climbs onto it. But while his mortal part burns, his divine part rises to Olympus. Heracles becomes immortal, is reconciled with Hera and marries her daughter Hebe, goddess of youth.
The final fire is the fulfilment of the whole journey: what is mortal is consumed, what is divine is set free.
In short
- The labours of Heracles arise from guilt and are a path of atonement in the service of Eurystheus.
- Each labour can be read as a different aspect of work on oneself.
- The lion teaches how to turn danger into protection, the hydra the need for method and help.
- The final trials take the hero to the edge of the world and into the underworld.
- On the pyre on Mount Oeta the mortal part burns and the divine part ascends to Olympus.
