Heracles
Channel: 宇宙のすべての知識 プリンシピア
Date: 2019-02-16

Heracles, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13815 / CC BY SA 3.0

#Argonauts
#Greek_culture_heroes
#Greek_mythological_heroes
#Heroes_who_ventured_to_Hades
#LGBT_themes_in_mythology
#Mythology_of_Argos
#Mythology_of_Heracles
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#Oracular_gods
#Pederastic_heroes_and_deities
Heracles

Heracles ( ; , "Hēraklês", Glory/Pride of "Hēra", "Hera"), born Alcaeus (, "Alkaios") () or Alcides (, "Alkeidēs") () was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon. He was a great-grandson and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus) of Perseus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, a paragon of masculinity, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae (), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, but added anecdotal detail of their own, some of it linking the hero with the geography of the Central Mediterranean. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well.

Many popular stories were told of his life, the most famous being The Twelve Labours of Heracles; Alexandrian poets of the Hellenistic age drew his mythology into a high poetic and tragic atmosphere. His figure, which initially drew on Near Eastern motifs such as the lion-fight, was widely known.

Heracles was the greatest of Hellenic chthonic heroes, but unlike other Greek heroes, no tomb was identified as his. Heracles was both hero and god, as Pindar says "heroes theos"; at the same festival sacrifice was made to him, first as a hero, with a chthonic libation, and then as a god, upon an altar: thus he embodies the closest Greek approach to a "demi-god". 

The core of the story of Heracles has been identified by Walter Burkert as originating in Neolithic hunter cultur...