Heracles' Twelve Labors: The Chthonic Hero's Journey to Olympus, Summaries of Art

Download Heracles' Twelve Labors: The Chthonic Hero's Journey to Olympus and more Summaries Art in PDF only on Docsity! 74 Heracles’s twelve labors author: Pseudo-Apollodorus time Period: 999 BCE–1 BCE Country or Culture: Greek Genre: Myth OVERVIEW The great warrior Heracles (more commonly known by his roman name, Hercules) is the subject of a large range of myths and legends. Carrying a wooden club and wearing the fur of a lion, he battles his way across Greek and roman mythology, crushing poisonous snakes with his bare hands as a baby, sacking the great city of Troy, and adventuring in new lands with the legendary argo- nauts. He seems to be in a continuous process of falling in and out love, fathering fi fty sons at one moment and building a shrine to his fallen male lover in the next. representing the heights of masculinity, heroism, and strength, Heracles and his myths are dominant forces in Greek mythology. It is the story of his twelve labors, however, that is most familiar to modern audiences. The story of Heracles’s twelve labors is an impor- tant component of both the life of Heracles and the pro- gression of Greek mythology. Before the myth properly begins, Heracles is driven into a rage by the goddess Hera. Heracles is the son of Zeus and a mortal woman, and jealous Hera, the immortal wife of Zeus, makes a project out of tormenting the earthly hero. In that rage, Heracles slaughters his children. Seeking forgiveness, he visits the oracle of Delphi and is ordered to serve his cousin Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns. Hera and Eurys- theus then set Heracles to his labors, which are designed to kill the hero, testing his strength, endurance, and wit in the most extreme of circumstances. The myth is an engaging and thrilling read, as Her- acles completes seemingly impossible tasks and en- counters the greatest monsters and gods of all Greek mythology. However, the myth is most important on a symbolic level. Greek culture separated the realm of the earth and mortality (the chthonic realm) from that of the sky and immortality (the Olympian realm). The tale of Heracles’s twelve labors is the story of the chthonic and mortal hero proving his might and elevating himself to the Olympian realm. He is a champion of Greek civili- zation and of the immortal Olympians who lord above it. Because of this, as he conquers the great beasts of the wilderness and vanquishes entire armies, he is demon- strating the power and value of the chthonic and Olym- pian realms both. When he completes his fi nal task and returns from the underworld, he represents the ultimate triumph, moving beyond the confi nes of mortality and becoming a deity. The rare story of a chthonic hero over- coming his own nature, the myth of Heracles’s labors speaks to the hopes of Greek civilization and to the be- lief that within one’s earthly self might rest something heroic, legendary, and immortal. SUmmaRY The son of the god Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, Hera- cles is both blessed and cursed from the start of his life. Incredibly mighty and heroic, he accomplishes feats of great strength at a young age. However, the goddess Hera, Zeus’s wife, decides to punish Heracles in order to take revenge for her husband’s infi delities. One day she drives Heracles into a frenzy, during which he kills his children. When Heracles then goes to the oracle of Delphi to seek forgiveness, Hera infl uences the oracle, who tells Heracles that he must swear allegiance to his mortal cousin eurystheus for twelve years, after which he will be redeemed and gain immortality. Hera, who is in league with eurystheus, plans to set Heracles to such great tasks during this time that he will meet his mortal death. eurystheus immediately orders Heracles to complete ten great labors, which Heracles attempts with legend- ary heroism. First, he slays the Nemean lion, an invulner- able beast born to the monster Typhon. When he brings the body of the beast back to eurystheus, eurystheus realizes how strong Heracles truly is and commands “When Hercules [Heracles] asked Plu- to [Hades] for Cerberus, Pluto ordered him to take the animal provided he mas- tered him without the use of the weapons which he carried. Hercules found him at the gates of Acheron, and, cased in his cuirass and covered by the lion’s skin, he fl ung his arms round the head of the brute, and though the dragon in its tail bit him, he never relaxed his grip and pressure till it yielded.” Bibliotheca MYTHHERO_Book.indb 74 8/20/2013 2:14:01 PM Heracles’s Twelve Labors │ 75 sky and immortality (the Olympian realm). The tale of Heracles’s twelve labors is the story of the chthonic and mortal hero proving his might and elevating himself to the Olympian realm. He is a champion of Greek civili- zation and of the immortal Olympians who lord above it. Because of this, as he conquers the great beasts of the wilderness and vanquishes entire armies, he is demon- strating the power and value of the chthonic and Olym- pian realms both. When he completes his final task and returns from the underworld, he represents the ultimate triumph, moving beyond the confines of mortality and becoming a deity. The rare story of a chthonic hero over- coming his own nature, the myth of Heracles’s labors speaks to the hopes of Greek civilization and to the be- lief that within one’s earthly self might rest something heroic, legendary, and immortal. SUmmaRY The son of the god Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, Hera- cles is both blessed and cursed from the start of his life. Incredibly mighty and heroic, he accomplishes feats of great strength at a young age. However, the goddess Hera, Zeus’s wife, decides to punish Heracles in order to take revenge for her husband’s infidelities. One day she drives Heracles into a frenzy, during which he kills his children. When Heracles then goes to the oracle of Delphi to seek forgiveness, Hera influences the oracle, who tells Heracles that he must swear allegiance to his mortal cousin eurystheus for twelve years, after which he will be redeemed and gain immortality. Hera, who is in league with eurystheus, plans to set Heracles to such great tasks during this time that he will meet his mortal death. eurystheus immediately orders Heracles to complete ten great labors, which Heracles attempts with legend- ary heroism. First, he slays the Nemean lion, an invulner- able beast born to the monster Typhon. When he brings the body of the beast back to eurystheus, eurystheus realizes how strong Heracles truly is and commands “When Hercules [Heracles] asked Plu- to [Hades] for Cerberus, Pluto ordered him to take the animal provided he mas- tered him without the use of the weapons which he carried. Hercules found him at the gates of Acheron, and, cased in his cuirass and covered by the lion’s skin, he flung his arms round the head of the brute, and though the dragon in its tail bit him, he never relaxed his grip and pressure till it yielded.” Bibliotheca that he never enter the city again and instead bring proof that he has completed each task to the city gates. Next, Heracles slays the lernaean hydra, a nine-headed beast that had been killing cattle throughout the countryside. When he fights the monster, he realizes that for every head he cuts off, two more grow in its place, and so he instructs his nephew, Iolaus, to burn the necks to prevent new heads from growing back. eurystheus, however, denies the success of this labor, as Iolaus had assisted Heracles in the battle. For his third labor, Heracles captures the Cerynitian hind, a beast precious to the goddess artemis, after chas- ing it for an entire year. Next, he goes to capture the ery- manthian boar. While this task is simple compared to the others, Heracles stops to visit the centaur Pholus and, after being convinced to drink the wine that belongs to the other centaurs, finds himself in a bloody battle when those centaurs return. For his fifth labor, Heracles is or- dered to dispose of the dung of the cattle of King augeas in a single day. The son of a god, Augeas has seemingly endless cattle. after convincing the king to pay him for the work, Heracles redirects mighty rivers into the cattle yards, washing the dung away. However, eurystheus re- jects this labor on the grounds that Heracles received payment for completing it. For his sixth labor, Heracles chases away the birds of Stymphalus by clanging together castanets given to him by the goddess athena. Next, he captures the Cretan bull, showing it to eurystheus before letting it go free again. For his eighth labor, he captures the man-eating mares of King Diomedes, the son of the god ares. In ad- dition to slaying Diomedes and taking the mares, Hera- cles founds a new city on the grave of abderus, who had been the mares’ caretaker before dying during the battle. For his ninth labor, Heracles goes to fetch the belt of Hippolyte, who is the queen of the amazons, a commu- nity of fierce warrior women. On the way to Hippolyte, he slays a massive army that attacks his ships. Hippolyte at first offers the belt freely, but Hera, disguised as an amazon, convinces the female army to attack Heracles, and so he is forced to kill them all. Next, Heracles trav- els a great distance and kills many people in order to fetch the cattle of Geryon, a monster with the body of three men. eight years and one month after the start of the la- bors, Heracles finishes the tenth task. However, because he received help with the second labor and payment for the fifth, Eurystheus requires two more tasks of him. For his eleventh labor, Heracles must fetch the apples of the Hesperides from the ends of the earth, where they are guarded by the Hesperides themselves as well as an immortal dragon. rather than steal the apples himself, however, he convinces the Titan Atlas to do so for him. Because atlas has been punished by Zeus and tasked with holding up the sky, Heracles takes his position tem- porarily and tricks atlas into holding the sky when he returns. Finally, Heracles enters the underworld itself to capture Cerberus, a three-headed hellhound with the tail of a dragon. after successfully wrestling the beast without using weapons, Heracles is allowed to bring it to the gates of eurystheus, though he returns it shortly after. With this final labor complete, Heracles concludes his obligation to eurystheus, having done exactly as the oracle of Delphi asked of him years before. aNaLYSIS The lyric poet Pindar, one of the most influential po- ets of ancient Greece, describes Heracles with the term hereos theos, meaning that he is both a hero and a god. This epithet captures the core of the myth that surrounds Heracles. Born to a mortal mother from her union with an immortal god, living as the greatest earthly hero be- fore ascending to the heights of mount Olympus, and at once cursed and blessed by the most powerful deities in the Greek pantheon, Heracles is the rare figure that transcends the divide between the realm of the mortals and that of the gods. MYTHHERO_Book.indb 75 8/20/2013 2:14:01 PM 78 │ Trial and Quest MytH into art Widely considered the greatest artist of the Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo frequently drew inspira- tion from the myths of Greek antiquity. His drawing “Three Labors of Hercules” depicts the hero fighting with the Nemean lion, with Antaeus, and finally with the hydra. The drawing does not include the intense attention to detail that characterizes Michelangelo’s more famous works, such as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. However, it conveys the typically Renais- sance sense of grandeur that defines the time period. Like many of his contemporaries, Michelangelo was interested in large, expressive, ornate art that inspired awe in its audience. He was drawn to sprawl- ing narratives and dramatic details, such as the bit- ing heads of the hydra and the torn mouth of the lion depicted in his drawing. In this sense, classical antiq- uity was a fertile source of inspiration for the artist. Stories such as the myth of Heracles’s twelve labors are packed with action and grand themes, such as the struggle for immortality. In “Three Labors of Hercules,” Michelangelo draws not only from the narrative details of the Heracles myth but also from styles and poses from mythology. It was common in ancient times to carve sequences of drawings (often even of Heracles) onto sarcoph- agi or other objects or structures. The progression of poses Michelangelo selects here mimics many of those sequences as well as similar drawings of Heracles by other Renaissance painters and artists. While not rendered at the grand scale of some of his other works, Michelangelo’s drawing shows that the legendary hero was thrilling enough to capture the eye of one of the most gifted and dramatic artists of all time. comes into continual conflict with humans fathered and monsters formed by Poseidon, the god of the sea. Posei- don is associated with terrible floods and earthquakes, natural disasters that seemed to rise spontaneously from the earth to destroy civilization. When Poseidon sends sea monsters toward coastal cities during the labors, however, Heracles quickly destroys those monsters in battle. In a similar move, exhausted by the heat of the sun, Heracles turns his bow and arrow toward the sky. While he certainly cannot defeat the sun and the sky in battle, the god of the sun is pleased by Heracles’s cour- age and rewards him with a golden goblet in which to sail safely. With the original ten labors complete, Heracles has demonstrated his mastery over all aspects of the ch- thonic realm. He has killed the monsters of unknown lands, has domesticated the wildest beasts of Greece, has overcome the elements, and has vanquished entire armies. This mastery more than fulfills the qualifications for becoming a legendary hero and inspiring a chthonic cult. However, as the oracle has promised, Heracles is destined for an even greater place in mythology, and consequently, he must complete two more tasks that ex- tend beyond the realm of the earthly hero. For the eleventh task, Heracles must fetch the apples from the garden of the Hesperides. This garden, located in the distant west, far away from Greece, is the prop- erty of Hera herself. In it, she planted an apple tree giv- en to her by Gaia on the day of her wedding to Zeus. The fruit of this tree gives immortality to anyone who fetches it, but it is also guarded by an immortal dragon and by the Hesperides nymphs themselves. By claim- ing these apples, Heracles is essentially entering the realm of the gods, both trespassing into Hera’s sacred space and gaining for himself one route to immortality. However, as he is still a mortal hero, he cannot enter the garden himself. He seeks the assistance of Atlas, a Titan who has been condemned to spend eternity holding up the sky. Heracles momentarily takes the place of atlas and symbolically becomes at once of the earth and of the sky, his body dividing the realms yet in contact with them both. It is by taking this position and acknowledg- ing these dual roles that Heracles is able to obtain the apples. When atlas returns, Heracles tricks him into re- suming his position and is able to deliver the fruit to eurystheus. While Heracles has completed this task, he has not actually gained immortality, and the apples are returned to the garden out of respect. Instead, it is through his final labor that he truly conquers death. In this labor, he must go into Hades (the underworld or the realm of death) and retrieve Cerberus, a monstrous hellhound MYTHHERO_Book.indb 78 8/20/2013 2:14:02 PM Heracles’s Twelve Labors │ 79 with the tail of a dragon that guards the gates. many figures in Greek mythology attempt to enter the realm of the dead, but very few successfully return to the world of the living. In entering this realm, Heracles confronts the greatest power in the chthonic realm and proves that he, like the Olympian gods, is unaffected by this dan- ger. This is the true divide between the chthonic and the Olympian: it is not that the Olympian gods are reborn af- ter death but rather that they do not die. likewise, even if a hero is memorialized in temples and worshipped at festivals, he still faces a mortal death and is still sent to the underworld. Heracles overcomes this threat, travel- ing with the secrets of the eleusinian cult and wrestling Cerberus. Heracles’s triumph over Cerberus suggests that even were he to find himself in Hades with the other mortal heroes, he would not be contained there, as his might is such that he could win his freedom at any time. To heighten this contrast, he comes across Theseus, the legendary chthonic hero and founder of athens, who, unlike Heracles, is unable to escape the underworld. His labors complete, Heracles is free to go on to other adventures with the promise from the oracle that he will one day become immortal. Indeed, in later legends, his earthly body is destroyed in a funeral pyre he built him- self, while his godly form rises to the immortal realm of the Olympians. However, the labors of Heracles themselves end long before he meets this destiny. The labors, then, are not about the existence Heracles will share on mount Olympus, nor are they about immortal- ity and godliness, even as those rewards drive the story from the start. Instead, the myth of the labors is about the triumph of Greek civilization over the untamed and often frightening natural world. Heracles is the great- est hero to come out of antiquity, a legend born in the chthonic realm. His greatest feat, however, is not simply his brutish triumph over beasts and monsters. rather, his glory is the glory of all Greece, of the earth and of the gods. In directing sacrifices to Zeus and obeying the command of the oracle of Delphi, Heracles offers the devotion and respect expected from the chthonic realm. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is by becoming an ideal of chthonic life that Heracles is elevated at last to the Olympian realm, indicating that perhaps the two realms are not be as separate as they seem. CROSS-CULtURaL INFLUENCE The ancient Greek Heracles was the pinnacle of the masculine hero, capable of conquering entire armies and slaughtering ferocious beasts. He fathered children with nearly a hundred women, traveled to the ends of the earth, and defended the entirety of Greek civiliza- tion on many occasions. However, the heights of Greek masculinity do not match up neatly with modern ideas of masculinity. The ancient Heracles was also a play- ful figure, enjoying leisurely games and spending time with his children when possible. In addition to his many wives, he took on countless male lovers to whom he expressed passionate, unabashed romantic love. In the ancient context, these qualities made him even more he- roic and masculine, even if they seem incongruous with contemporary ideals of masculinity and heroism. Primarily because of his role as the ultimate hero, the myths surrounding Heracles have had a significant legacy through the modern day. Countless european and American films revisit the Heracles story, including the 1997 animated Disney musical Hercules and a long series of popular Italian adventure films from the mid- twentieth century. Comic books, theatrical productions, and television series have also regularly featured Hera- cles. almost without exception, however, these portray- als focus on a version of Heracles who fits comfortably into modern ideas of masculinity. He is presented as a stern or angry figure, quick to fight and lacking the play- fulness and romanticism of the Greek myths. While he may rescue endangered strangers, as he does in the an- cient stories of the twelve labors, the modern Heracles rarely falls in love with those strangers and even more rarely has his heart broken by them. One of the few contemporary exceptions to these portrayals is found in the book Autobiography of Red (1998) by the Canadian-born poet and classicist anne Carson. a novel written in verse fragments, the work is a retelling of the tenth labor of Heracles, during which he battles the monster Geryon. Carson takes some inspi- ration from the ancient poet Stesichorus (Stesichoros), whose long poem Geryoneis tells the myth from Gery- on’s perspective. While the Geryoneis is largely lost to time, existing only in a few fragments of text, those frag- ments inspired Carson to create a modern version of the myth that likewise tells the story from Geryon’s point of view. However, while the Geryoneis focuses on the vio- lence of Heracles arriving at erythea, the island where Geryon resides, and killing the supposedly immortal monster with a poisoned arrow, Carson instead imag- ines Geryon and Herakles (in her spelling) as young lov- ers, with Herakles abandoning Geryon and breaking his heart. In presenting Herakles as causing emotional rath- er than physical violence, Carson focuses the reader’s MYTHHERO_Book.indb 79 8/20/2013 2:14:02 PM 80 │ Trial and Quest attention on a different aspect of the myths surrounding the legendary hero, highlighting the often romantic and sometimes tragic core of Greek mythology. The narrative of Autobiography of Red begins when Geryon is a young, sensitive boy, interested in art and close with his mother. While the mythologi- cal Geryon is a fiery beast with three heads and three sets of arms who is typically accompanied by his two- headed hound, the Geryon of Carson’s story is a slight boy with beautiful red wings, hardly someone to be feared. Geryon’s early life is marked by tragedy when his older brother sexually abuses him, traumatizing the young boy and forcing him further into the seclusion of his mind. However, he begins to engage with the world again when a new boy, Herakles, arrives in town. Geryon almost immediately falls in love with Herakles, and the two have a brief affair until Herakles eventu- ally abandons Geryon and leaves the town. The devas- tated Geryon retreats again into his mind. a few years later, he travels to argentina, knowing that his lost love might be there. Geryon by chance encounters Herakles, who is accompanied by his new lover. The three men form a sort of love triangle, with the infatuated Geryon reaching out for brief moments of sexual contact and affection from Herakles. at the novel’s conclusion, the three travel to a famous volcano and stand at its molten edge, uncertain what to do with the complicated love that exists among them. The Carson version of the myth might seem, outside of a few telling details, nearly unrecognizable to audi- ences familiar with the tenth labor of Heracles. There is no violent battle, no command from Hera or promise of immortality to give the story a sense of importance or legendary inspiration. However, Carson is focused less on the narrative details of swordfights and monstrous hounds and more on the emotional core at the heart of much Greek mythology. In her own appended transla- tion of the Stesichorus text, for instance, she includes a simple fragment announcing that “the red world and corresponding red breezes / Went on Geryon did not” (xv). These simple lines, presenting simply the informa- tion that Geryon has died, have an emotional and lyric intensity that makes that information into something deeply moving. Stesichorus, though engaged in a proj- ect very different from Carson’s, still saw the sense of loss and sadness present in the myth. Geryon at once belongs to the world, a place in which even the breeze is as red as he is, and is separate from that world, brought to death by Herakles. There is romantic and emotional depth to the myths of Heracles, Carson reminds the reader, even if modern versions of those myths rarely include those aspects. This moment of lyric intensity in the Geryoneis is the dominant mode in Carson’s modern version. Just as in Stesichorus’s text, Geryon is red, although this red marks him as different from, rather than part of, the world. Because of this, the young boy becomes ob- sessed with volcanoes and other fiery landscapes, seeing in them a home that he does not find in daily life. What remains the same, however, is the sense that the world itself has gone on while Geryon has not and that it is the fault of Herakles that this separation exists. after Herak- les has broken the red boy’s heart, Geryon cries into the night, his voice “upcast to that custom, the human cus- tom of wrong love” (75). Carson is deeply engaged with the sense that love itself, an experience so often ideal- ized and treated as “right,” can in actuality be wrong (just as Heracles, in his righteous quest, is actually leav- ing great destruction and sadness in his wake). more than this, however, Carson notes that the experience of wrong love is itself a “human custom,” a tradition all humans experience. Because of this, the Geryon apart from the red world in the Geryoneis and the Geryon left heartbroken by Herakles in Autobiography of Red are in many ways one and the same, linked by that sense of abandonment and betrayal. The shift from physical violence to emotional vio- lence is also appropriate in light of the history of Stesi- chorus himself. Stesichorus wrote many centuries after the myth of Heracles had become common. The story of the twelve labors was popular enough that even though most audiences could recall the details on their own, writers such as Stesichorus were able to tell their own versions, remaking a myth that had been remade many times before. In this context, Stesichorus shifted the per- spective of the myth from Heracles to Geryon while also shifting the sympathies of the audience. Geryon, a sup- posedly immortal figure, is slaughtered by the single- minded and uncompassionate Heracles. The monster, in no uncertain terms, becomes a sympathetic victim. likewise, Stesichorus breaks apart the traditional metri- cal qualities of Greek poetry, creating a new rhythmic form in order to tell the myths in an unfamiliar and surprising manner. Carson, in writing a novel in verse, maintains this tradition. The Herakles and Geryon she creates are both familiar and unfamiliar, just as the po- etic fragments of her novel are both recognizable and unusual. By basing this narrative off the Stesichorus MYTHHERO_Book.indb 80 8/20/2013 2:14:02 PM