When Hercules' followers could find no remains in the ashes, they realized that he had undergone an apotheosis, and they began to revere him as a god. As Diodorus , a first-century Greek historian, explained:.
Although the queen of the gods, Hera —Hercules' stepmother—had been the bane of his earthly existence, once he was made a god, she was reconciled to her stepson and even gave him her daughter Hebe for his divine wife.
Hercules' deification was complete: He would thenceforth be seen as a superhuman mortal who ascended to the apotheosis, a demigod who would forevermore take his place among the other Greek gods as they ruled from their mountain perch. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile.
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Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. For most people, even heroes, death would have meant the soul was sent to the realm of Hades.
At best, one could hope for an afterlife in the Isles of the Blessed instead of the gloomy eternity of the underworld.
Hercules, however, had been given a different fate. By dying and destroying his human body, Hercules was able to take the place he had been promised. When his mortal body had burned away, all that was left was the immortal part of his being. Hercules was not the only mortal to be given godhood, but he was probably the most famous.
While the gods had many children with mortals, few of them were made immortal themselves. The Greeks built altars to some of their most famous cultural heroes, but made a distinction between them and true gods.
Hercules blurred this distinction by occupying both positions. In the Odyssey , Homer named Hercules among the spirits of the dead Odysseus encountered in the underworld. This implies that either the concept of Hercules as a god had not yet developed when Homer was alive, or that there was no consensus over whether he was truly divine. In fact, there are records that describe Hercules being revered as both a deceased mortal hero and a god at the same place. Even after his death and apotheosis Hercules existed on the line between hero and god.
There are some historians who believe that Hercules may have been based on an actual person who lived in the pre-literate past. If this is the case, the surviving texts of ancient Greece may show part of the evolution from exceptional human to god. If Hercules was once conceived of as fully human, the uncertainty about his godhood in the time of Homer could be a snapshot of a transitional period in the development of the character. By the later Greek era and into the time of the Roman Empire, it was more widely believed that Hercules was a god.
Further mythology developed about his immortal life on Olympus, including a happy marriage to the goddess Hebe. The existence of stories that preserve both a heroic legacy and that of a god may be a rare example of written record on the way in which some religious beliefs developed. Hercules as a semi-divine hero could provide a clue as to how gods arose from ancient stories of human lives.
The death of Hercules was caused by the venom of the Lernean Hydra, but brought about many years after he killed the monster as one of his twelve labors. Many years later, he killed a centaur named Nessus with one of those arrows for attempting to abduct his wife, Deianira. As he was dying, Nessus convinced Deianira that his bloody tunic was imbued with a love potion. If Hercules ever lost interest in her, the tunic would restore his love.
When Hercules was rumored to be leaving Deianira for another woman she gave him the tunic. Hercules was badly burned and his skin was eaten away. Desperate to end his suffering, he built his own funeral pyre and threw himself onto it. What happened after the death of Hercules, however, seems to have been open to debate. However, the troublemaking Hera disguised herself as an Amazon warrior and spread a rumor that Hercules intended to kidnap the queen.
The Cattle of Geryon For his 10th labor, Hercules was dispatched nearly to Africa to steal the cattle of the three-headed, six-legged monster Geryon. Once again, Hera did all she could to prevent the hero from succeeding, but eventually he returned to Mycenae with the cows. This task was difficult—Hercules needed the help of the mortal Prometheus and the god Atlas to pull it off—but the hero eventually managed to run away with the apples. Cerberus For his final challenge, Hercules traveled to Hades to kidnap Cerberus, the vicious three-headed dog that guarded its gates.
Hercules managed to capture Cerberus by using his superhuman strength to wrestle the monster to the ground. Afterward, the dog returned unharmed to his post at the entrance to the Underworld. Later in his life, Hercules had a number of other adventures—rescuing the princess of Troy, battling for control of Mount Olympus—but none were as taxing, or as significant, as the labors had been.
When he died, Athena carried him to Olympus on her chariot. According to legend, he spent the rest of eternity with the gods. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The warrior Achilles is one of the great heroes of Greek mythology. Viewed by many as the founding figure of Western philosophy, Socrates B. The Greek philosopher Aristotle B.
Though overshadowed in classical times by the work of his teacher Plato, from late antiquity The Athenian philosopher Plato c. In his written dialogues he conveyed and expanded on the ideas and techniques of his teacher Socrates. The Academy he The so-called golden age of Athenian culture flourished under the leadership of Pericles B.
Pericles transformed his Herodotus was a Greek writer and geographer credited with being the first historian. Sometime around the year B.
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