Euripides and the Instruction of the Athenians

4. Heracles

4 Heracles Heracles was the most durable and beloved of the Greek heroes, as his many representations in art and literature attest. Though his origins were probably to be found in the Near East, the Spartan kings claimed him as their ancestor, and by the &fth century his legend had become the stuff of folktale, cult, literature, and art, and it had been dispersed throughout the entire Greek world. He had emerged, in fact, as "the one panhellenic hero."l Heracles may have owed his popularity in part to the fact that he was no remote, inaccessible fIgure, but one who encountered more than his share of suffering and toil in the course of his journey toward apotheosis. His life was shaped by the hostility of divinity and the bitterness of service to a man inferior to himself. From infancy Heracles had to contend with the enmity of Hera- that enmity she harbored for Zeus' mortal children as well as their mothers.2 Hera smuggled serpents into the cradle of the infant Heracles; when he grew to manhood she mounted a more sophisticated attack, visiting upon him an access of madness that provoked him to murder his children. But if Heracles' labors were undertaken in expiation of the murders inspired by Hera, and carried out at the behest of the cowardly Eurystheus, he accomplished them with such stunning success that their origins dwindled into insignifIcance.3 For it was by dint of the labors that Heracles earned his place among the gods. He achieved immortality through the uniquely mortal means of sheer hard work, and the ultimate effect of Hera's malice was to launch him on the career that would win him glory and fulfIll the promise of his name.4 Heracles was celebrated by Homer and Hesiod, Pindar and Bacchylides before he became a protagonist of tragedy, and sequences illustrating his labors fIgured on the temple of Zeus at Olympia, the Hephaestaeum at Athens, and the treasury of the Athenians at Delphi .5 Although the outlines of Heracles' story were well known, his character resisted fIxed defInition; from the outset he was a protean 121 122 Euripides and the Instruction of the Athenians figure who could serve a variety of artistic needs.6 Each epoch and artist accorded him somewhat different treatment, emphasizing now his brute strength, now his human sympathy; now his propensities to excess , now his piety and reverence; now his struggles, and now his final reward. Representations of Heracles in art suggest that he had come to be identified as the archetypal culture-bearer, the agent of civilization. The titles associated with his cult celebrated his extraordinary strength while also conveying the benevolent nature of his activities: he was the Defender against Evil, Alexikakos, and the Glorious Victor, Kallinikos. Yet some of the early literary evocations of the hero suggest a different aspect-a Heracles whose apotheosis goes unmentioned, while the emphasis falls on his mortality; a hero whose experience summarized the poignancy of the human condition. When Achilles decides to reenter the fighting after Patroclus has been killed-an action that he knows will entail his own death- it is the example of Heracles that steadies him: he reflects (Il. 18.117-19) that "not even the strength of Heracles escaped destruction." When Bacchylides' Heracles meets Meleager in the underworld and hears his sad story he weeps for the first and only time in his life, "in pity for the fate of that unhappy man" (Bacchylides 5.157-58). Euripides availed himself of this strain to construct his own version of the legend. Euripides not only omits any mention of immortality but reverses the traditional direction of Heracles' passage. Instead of a hero moving toward apotheosis he presents a Heracles who at first appears extraordinary, but who is subsequently reduced through an episode of bestial madness to mere mortality. Euripides accomplishes this change of direction by his chronological arrangement of the mythical material, while underscoring it thematically by his treatment of the motif of Heracles' two fathers. In the Heracles the episode of madness is not the prelude to the labors but their climax. As the play begins Heracles is fetching Cerberus from the underworld-the final assignment imposed on him by King Eurystheus . After he has returned to Thebes and disposed of the tyrant who had seized power and threatened to kill Heracles' family, he has reason to believe that he has at last won respite from his toils. He seems well launched toward...