Heracles in Greek Mythology: The Labors and the Legend

Heracles was the greatest hero of Greek mythology: a son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene, famous for his strength and for the Twelve Labors he performed for King Eurystheus. Hera hounded him from the cradle to the grave. He died in agony on a pyre on Mount Oeta, and he is one of the very few mortals the Greeks believed had become a god. The Romans worshipped him as Hercules.

Heracles quick facts

How was Heracles born?

In Apollodorus' Library, Zeus visited Alcmene in the shape of her absent husband Amphitryon, who came home the same night. She bore twins: Heracles, son of Zeus, and Iphicles, son of Amphitryon.

Hera's hostility began before his birth. In Homer's Iliad (Book 19), Zeus swears that a descendant of his born that day will rule his neighbors; Hera then delays Alcmene's labor and hurries the birth of Eurystheus instead. Heracles would spend years serving a lesser man because of that oath.

In Pindar's first Nemean ode and in Apollodorus, two serpents slid into the nursery; Iphicles screamed, and the baby Heracles strangled one in each hand. Apollodorus says Hera sent the snakes, but he also reports a version in which Amphitryon released them to find out which twin was his.

After he helped Thebes defeat the Minyans of Orchomenus, King Creon gave him his daughter Megara as his wife.

Why did Heracles kill his children?

Hera drove him mad, and in his madness he killed his own sons by Megara. The sources agree on that, but not on when it happened.

• In Apollodorus, the madness comes first. Heracles throws his children into a fire, then goes to Delphi for purification. The Pythia sends him to serve Eurystheus at Tiryns and promises immortality when his labors are done. The labors are his atonement.
• In Euripides' play Heracles, the madness comes after. The hero returns from the underworld to save his family from a tyrant, and then Hera sends Madness to make him shoot his wife and sons. The friend who leads him away from suicide is Theseus, whom he had just rescued from Hades.

In Apollodorus the labors pay for the crime; in Euripides the crime strikes at the peak of his success.

What were the Twelve Labors of Heracles?

Apollodorus gives the standard order. Eurystheus was so afraid of Heracles that he hid in a bronze jar and gave his orders through a herald.

On the way to the eleventh labor, Apollodorus says, Heracles shot the eagle that tore at Prometheus's liver and set the Titan free. For the twelfth, Hades let him take the dog if he could do it without weapons.

If you prefer to watch, the Twelve Labors are told one by one as Shorts on Gods Explained on YouTube.

Why twelve labors and not ten?

Apollodorus says the Pythia's original command was ten labors. Eurystheus then refused to count two of them. The Hydra did not count because Iolaus had helped. The Augean stables did not count because Heracles had asked Augeas for payment, a tenth of his herd. So two more were added, and the cycle grew to twelve.

By the fifth century BC the set of twelve was fixed in art: the metopes of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, which Pausanias describes, show twelve labors.

Why did Heracles serve Queen Omphale?

After the labors, Heracles killed Iphitus, son of King Eurytus of Oechalia, in another fit of madness, and was sold as a slave to Omphale, queen of Lydia. Apollodorus says the sentence was three years; in Sophocles' Women of Trachis, the herald Lichas speaks of a year. In Ovid's Fasti, Hercules and Omphale even swap clothes.

How did Heracles die?

His death came through his second wife, Deianira. When the centaur Nessus tried to rape her at the river Evenus, Heracles shot him with an arrow tipped with Hydra poison, and the dying centaur told Deianira his blood would work as a love charm.

Years later Heracles sacked Oechalia and took the princess Iole as his captive. In Sophocles' Women of Trachis, Deianira fears she is being replaced. She smears a robe with the centaur's blood and sends it to her husband. When he puts it on, the poison eats into his flesh. Deianira kills herself when she learns what she has done.

Heracles had himself carried to Mount Oeta and placed on a pyre. In Apollodorus, a passerby named Poeas lights it and is given Heracles's bow; in Sophocles' Philoctetes the bow belongs to Poeas's son Philoctetes, who later takes it to Troy.

Did Heracles become a god?

Yes. Apollodorus says a cloud lifted him from the burning pyre to heaven, where he became immortal, made peace with Hera and married her daughter Hebe, goddess of youth. Hesiod's Theogony and Pindar's first Nemean ode already know this happy ending.

Homer leaves an odd trace of an older idea: in Odyssey Book 11, Odysseus meets the phantom of Heracles in the underworld, while the passage adds that the hero himself lives among the gods with Hebe.

How did the Romans see Hercules?

Rome worshipped Hercules at the Ara Maxima in the Forum Boarium, the cattle market. Livy and Virgil's Aeneid (Book 8) tell how Hercules, driving Geryon's cattle home, killed the fire-breathing Cacus, who had stolen some of them. For more pairs like this, see Greek vs Roman gods.

In the sources

• Homer, Iliad — Hera's trick at his birth, his sack of Troy; Odyssey — his phantom in the underworld.
• Hesiod, Theogony — the Hydra, Geryon, the freeing of Prometheus, marriage to Hebe; the Shield of Heracles — his fight with Cycnus, son of Ares.
• Pindar, Nemean 1 — the snakes in the cradle and the prophecy of his reward.
• Euripides, Heracles — the madness and the killing of his family.
• Sophocles, Women of Trachis — Deianira, the robe and his death; Philoctetes — the bow.
• Apollodorus, Library — the fullest life, including the labors in order.
• Diodorus Siculus, Pausanias, Ovid, Fasti, Virgil, Aeneid.

Where the sources disagree:

• When he went mad. Before the labors in Apollodorus; after them in Euripides.
• Who sent the snakes. Hera in Pindar and Apollodorus; Amphitryon in a variant Apollodorus reports.
• How long he served Omphale. Three years in Apollodorus; a year in Sophocles.
• Who lit the pyre. Poeas in Apollodorus; his son Philoctetes in the tradition Sophocles follows.
• How Deianira died. By hanging in Apollodorus; by a sword in Sophocles.

In popular culture

• Hercules (Disney, 1997). Here Hercules is the son of Zeus and Hera, and Hades is the villain. In the myths, Hera is his persecutor, and Hades is the god who lent him Cerberus. Megara, his first wife and the mother of the children he killed, becomes a wisecracking love interest, and his trainer Phil is a satyr named after Philoctetes.
• Hercules (2014). Dwayne Johnson plays a mercenary who encourages the legends about himself.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians. In The Titan's Curse, Rick Riordan makes Heracles an arrogant hero who abandoned Zoë Nightshade, the Hesperid who helped him. That backstory is Riordan's invention.

For more on screen, see our guide to Greek mythology movies.

Keep exploring

Heracles was the great-grandson of another son of Zeus, so read Perseus in Greek mythology next, then compare him with Achilles and Jason, whose Argonauts he sailed with for a while. Trace his family on the Greek gods family tree, or test yourself with the Greek mythology quiz.