Heracles and the Twelve Labours: Myth, Sources and Cult

Heracles (Roman Hercules) was the greatest of the Greek heroes, a son of Zeus by the mortal woman Alcmene, pursued all his life by the anger of Zeus's wife Hera. His most famous deeds are the Twelve Labours, tasks imposed by his cousin Eurystheus, king of Tiryns, which took him from the Nemean lion to the hound of the underworld. Unlike most heroes he did not stay among the dead: after a painful death on Mount Oeta he was received among the gods, and the Greeks worshipped him both as a hero and as a god.

The Birth and Youth of Heracles§

Heracles belonged to the line of Perseus: his mother Alcmene and her husband Amphitryon were both grandchildren of the slayer of Medusa. Exiled from Tiryns, the couple lived at Thebes, and there Zeus visited Alcmene in the likeness of her husband, who returned the same night. She bore twins, Heracles to Zeus and Iphicles to Amphitryon. The Iliad (book 19) tells how Hera tricked Zeus into swearing that a descendant of his born that day would rule his neighbours, then delayed Alcmene's labour and hastened the birth of Eurystheus, so that the weaker cousin gained the power the oath had promised.

Hera's hostility began at once. Pindar's first Nemean Ode and Theocritus' twenty-fourth Idyll describe the infant strangling two serpents she sent to his cradle. Later stories show a violent, gifted youth: he killed his music teacher Linus with a lyre, hunted a lion on Mount Cithaeron, and defeated the Minyans of Orchomenos, winning as wife Megara, daughter of the Theban king Creon. The sophist Prodicus, as retold by Xenophon in the Memorabilia, added a moral fable that became famous: the young Heracles at a crossroads choosing between Virtue, who offered hard toil and lasting glory, and Vice, who offered ease.

Madness, Delphi and the Service of Eurystheus§

The labours begin with a crime. In Apollodorus' account Hera drove Heracles mad, and he threw his own children with Megara into a fire. Seeking purification, he went to Delphi, where the Pythia (who, the story says, first called him Heracles rather than his birth name Alcides) told him to serve Eurystheus at Tiryns for twelve years and perform the labours he set; at the end he would become immortal. The role of the Oracle of Delphi here is typical of Greek myth, in which pollution from bloodshed had to be cleansed by ritual and service.

The order of events was not fixed. Euripides' tragedy Heracles (c. 416 BCE) places the madness after the labours, when the hero returns from the underworld to save his family from a usurper and then, struck by Lyssa (Madness) at Hera's command, kills them himself; Theseus leads the broken hero to Athens. Apollodorus also says that Eurystheus originally demanded ten labours and refused to count two, the Hydra (because Iolaus helped) and the Augean stables (because Heracles asked for payment), so that two more were added.

The Twelve Labours in Order§

The sequence below follows Apollodorus, the standard ancient narrative.

1. The Nemean lion. A beast whose hide no weapon could pierce. Heracles choked it and thereafter wore its skin, his chief emblem. Later astronomical lore placed it in the sky as Leo.
2. The Lernaean Hydra. A many-headed water serpent near Argos, whose heads grew back when cut. His nephew Iolaus seared the stumps with fire, and Heracles dipped his arrows in the Hydra's poison. A crab sent by Hera to help the Hydra became, in the same lore, Cancer.
3. The Ceryneian hind. A golden-horned deer sacred to Artemis, chased for a whole year and taken alive.
4. The Erymanthian boar. On the way Heracles was entertained by the centaur Pholus; a brawl with other centaurs followed, in which the wise centaur Chiron was wounded by a poisoned arrow.
5. The stables of Augeas. He cleaned the vast cattle yards of the king of Elis in a single day by diverting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus through them.
6. The Stymphalian birds. He scared the flocks of an Arcadian lake into the air with bronze clappers made by Hephaestus and given by Athena, then shot them.
7. The Cretan bull. He brought the bull of Minos to the Peloponnese; it later roamed to Marathon, where Theseus caught it.
8. The mares of Diomedes. Man-eating horses of a Thracian king, who in some versions was fed to his own animals.
9. The belt of Hippolyta. The Amazon queen was willing to give it, but Hera stirred the Amazons to fight, and Hippolyta was killed.
10. The cattle of Geryon. A three-bodied giant on the western island of Erytheia. On the way Heracles set up the Pillars of Heracles at the Strait of Gibraltar and crossed the ocean in the golden cup of the Sun.
11. The apples of the Hesperides. In one version he held up the sky while the Titan Atlas fetched the apples, then tricked Atlas into taking it back; in another he killed the serpent Ladon. On this journey he wrestled the giant Antaeus and freed Prometheus.
12. Cerberus. After initiation at Eleusis, he descended to Hades, mastered the three-headed hound without weapons, showed it to Eurystheus and returned it. On the way he freed Theseus from the chair in which Hades had trapped him.

The labours run outwards from the Peloponnese to the edges of the world and, finally, below it, a pattern often read as a conquest of death itself. The number twelve, discussed more widely in the number twelve in religion and myth, was fixed in art by the time of the Olympia metopes; earlier poets and vase painters treated the deeds individually.

Other Deeds, Companions and Wars§

Around the labours gathered a great mass of further stories, which ancient writers called parerga, "side-works". Heracles sailed for a time with the Argonauts until he left the voyage to search for his lost companion Hylas. He sacked Troy a generation before the Trojan War, when King Laomedon cheated him of a reward; he fought beside the gods against the Giants; he wrestled Death to bring back Alcestis, wife of his host Admetus, as Euripides dramatised in Alcestis (438 BCE). After killing Iphitus in a fit of rage he tried to seize the Delphic tripod and fought Apollo for it, a scene popular on Archaic vases, and was then sold as a slave for a year to Omphale, queen of Lydia, who in later tradition dressed him in women's clothes.

The Death and Apotheosis of Heracles§

Heracles' death is told most fully in Sophocles' Women of Trachis. Years earlier, the centaur Nessus had tried to assault Heracles' wife Deianira and been shot with a Hydra-poisoned arrow; dying, he told her to keep his blood as a love charm. When Heracles brought home the captive princess Iole, Deianira smeared a robe with the blood and sent it to him. The poison burned into his flesh. In agony he had himself carried to the summit of Mount Oeta and placed on a pyre, which was lit by Philoctetes (or his father Poeas), who received the hero's bow in return. Deianira killed herself.

From the pyre Heracles rose to Olympus. He was reconciled with Hera and married her daughter Hebe, goddess of youth. The Odyssey (book 11) shows the tension in the tradition: Odysseus sees the "image" of Heracles among the dead while the hero himself feasts with the immortal gods, lines many scholars regard as a later addition made to reconcile two ideas of his fate.

Heracles in Cult, Philosophy and Later Culture§

Herodotus (book 2) noted that the Greeks worshipped two Heracleses, sacrificing to one as an immortal Olympian and offering to the other as a hero, and scholars have found traces of such a double cult on the island of Thasos. Heracles was invoked as alexikakos, "averter of evil", and his name was written over doorways to keep harm out. His sanctuaries were found across the Greek world, and the Phoenician god Melqart of Tyre was identified with him. In Rome, Hercules had the Ara Maxima in the Forum Boarium, and Virgil's Aeneid (book 8) tells how he killed the monster Cacus on that spot. On hero cult and Greek religion in general, see Greek Religion and the Mysteries.

Cynic and Stoic philosophers made Heracles a model of self-sufficiency and endurance; Roman emperors such as Commodus portrayed themselves as Hercules; and Renaissance humanists revived the Choice of Heracles as an image of moral decision. Some late-antique and modern writers read the twelve labours as the sun's journey through the twelve signs of the zodiac. That is an allegorical interpretation layered onto the myth, not part of the early stories, which never fixed the number at twelve.

Frequently asked questions§

What are the Twelve Labours of Heracles in order?§

In Apollodorus' order: the Nemean lion, the Lernaean Hydra, the Ceryneian hind, the Erymanthian boar, the Augean stables, the Stymphalian birds, the Cretan bull, the mares of Diomedes, the belt of Hippolyta, the cattle of Geryon, the apples of the Hesperides and Cerberus. Other ancient sources vary the order of the middle labours.

Why did Heracles have to perform the labours?§

In most versions Hera drove him mad and he killed his children, and the Delphic oracle ordered him to serve Eurystheus as atonement, promising immortality at the end. Euripides reverses the order, placing the killing after the labours.

Is Heracles the same as Hercules?§

Yes. Hercules is the Latin form of the Greek name, and the Romans adopted the hero together with much of his mythology, adding local stories such as the killing of Cacus at the site of Rome.

How did Heracles die?§

His wife Deianira, believing she was using a love charm, sent him a robe smeared with the poisoned blood of the centaur Nessus. In agony he burned himself on a pyre on Mount Oeta and was taken up to Olympus as a god.

Sources and further reading§

• The Library — Apollodorus, 1st–2nd century CE
• Women of Trachis — Sophocles, c. 430 BCE
• Heracles — Euripides, c. 416 BCE
• The Histories — Herodotus, c. 430 BCE
• Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources — Timothy Gantz, 1993
• Herakles — Emma Stafford, 2012
• The Herakles Theme — G. Karl Galinsky, 1972
• The Heroes of the Greeks — Karl Kerényi, 1959
• Greek Religion — Walter Burkert, 1985