I IKK A 



HERACLIUS 



/.MI-, \vlio makes reprisals by hanging her up from 

 In-. iv IMI svith golde.n fetters on her liands ami a 

 c.mple of anvils on her feet. In consequence she 

 siili>e.|iienily preferred in thwart liiiu secretly 

 rath"!' tlian defy liiin openly. 



Many interpretations of this figure in mythology 

 have been given in ancient ami in modern times : 

 Kmpedocles and Euripides regarded her ax tin- god- 

 <!-- of the earth ; Plato, and after him the Stoics, 

 AS the goddess of the clouds. In modern times she 

 has Keen regarded as the goddess of the lower air, 

 which is, like .luno in Virgil, variutn et tnutnlnli- 

 s, m IH /, in <-.nitrast to Zeus, who is the god of the 

 serene and upper ether. Roscher (Stud. z. Vergl. 

 M////I. if. (irifrln'ii n. Rnnii'r) interprets her as a 

 moon -goddess of Gnuco- Italian times. He bases 

 this view on the fact that she resembles all other 

 moon-goddesses in being the goddess of women, and 

 in presiding over menstruation and child-birth; in 

 possessing as her attributes the torch, the bow, and 

 the crown of stars ; in the fact that the new moon 

 was the time for her festivals, and finally, on the 

 resemblance between Hera and Juno. As regards 

 the resemblance between these two goddesses, they 

 Are each the spouse of the supreme god of the sky, 

 they have the same functions relatively to women, 

 their cult and attributes are similar ; and finally, 

 the ancient Epirotic name for Hera was Dione, 

 which corresponds phonetically to Juno. 



The ancient identification or Hera with the earth 

 may at once be dismissed. There is no resemblance 

 between Hera and Gaia, or any other chthonian 

 < earth ) deity. Nor can she be regarded as a goddess 

 of the lower air : goddesses of the air are unknown 

 to any related people, and no primitive tribe (or any 

 other tribe than that of mythologists) would dis- 

 tinguish between the lower air and the serene ether. 

 If it is an unalterable canon of mythology that all 

 deities must be nature-myths of some kind, then 

 Reseller's interpretation of Hera as a moon-god- 

 dess is the inost probable. Otherwise we may be 

 content to seek the origin of Hera simply in the 

 necessity under which the worshippers 01 Zeus lay 

 of providing him with a spouse. And here it be- 

 comes a point of some importance to determine at 

 what period Hera was created whether before the 

 dispersion of the Indo-Europeans, or after their 

 dispersion, and while the joint-ancestors of the 

 Greeks and Italians yet lived together in a Graeco- 

 Italian period, or in purely Greek times. Now, no 

 one claims that Hera dates from before the dis- 

 persion of the Indo-Europeans i.e. from the time 

 when Zeus, though the supreme god, was still to 

 the average Indo-European mind also and always 

 the sky. Nor can Roscher be said to have made 

 out. his case for the Gneco-Italian origin of the 

 goildess : the fact that Dione in one part of Greece 

 was once the supreme godde>s, and was dethroned 

 by Hera, is not enough to prove that Hera was 

 generally, or indeed ever, known as Dione ; and, 

 further (to say nothing of the fact that Diana 

 rather than Juno is the phonetic equivalent of 

 Dione), there is no identity between wie mytholo- 

 gical functions of Dione and Juno on the one hand, 

 or of Dione and Hera on the other. As for the 

 resemblances of Hera and Juno, they are not greater 

 than might reasonably be expected : Greeks and 

 Italians, alike inheriting the sky-god (not from a 

 Gnwco-Italian period, the very existence of which 

 is doubtful, but from primitive times), would alike 

 feel the necessity of providing him with a wife ; 

 and if in \tot\i cases tne wife of the supreme god 

 came to be regarded as the goddess of marriage, 

 and of all appertaining to it, the coincidence is not 

 astonishing when we reflect on the considerable 

 .similarity between the two peoples. If then Hera 

 does not date from before purely Greek times, the 

 necessity for interpreting her as a nature-myth is 

 250 



con.-iderahly weakened, for a* long u* Zeus wan 

 but the sky we should expect that he could only 

 ! married to home natun- power; but when the 

 personality of the god had come to be usually 

 conceived apart from the element from which he 

 originated, we should expect that his consort would 

 be in mythology what sne undoubtedly wan in art 

 merely the feminine counterpart of the supreme 

 deity. And, finally, on this view Hera's resem- 

 blance to mooa-gOOaOMM would be the result of 

 her position as the goddess of marriage, instead of 

 her position as the goddess of marriage being the 

 result of a lunar origin. 



Heracleia, an ancient city of Magna Gra-cia, 

 situated near the river Aciris, about 3 miles from 

 the Gulf of Tarentum. It was founded about 432 

 B.C., and under the Romans became a prosperous 

 and refined city, though it never acquired any his- 

 torical prominence. Near it, however, Pyrrhus 

 defeated the Romans in 280 B.C. In the neigh- 

 bourhood, besides a large number of coins, ranking 

 among the very finest relics of antiquitv, there have 

 been discovered (1753) two bronze tablets (2'abulte 

 Heracleenses), containing a copy of the Lex Julia 

 Municipalis (45 B.C.), and forming one of the prin- 

 cipal authorities for a knowledge of the municipal 

 law of ancient Italy. This inscription has been 

 published by Muratori, Savigny, and others. Two 

 other cities of this name deserve mention: (1) 

 HERACLEIA MINOA, between Agrigentum and 

 Selinus, on the south coast of Sicily, originally a 

 Phoenician town; and (2) HEKACLEIA PONTICA, 

 on the coast of the Black Sea in Bithynia, destroyed 

 by Cotta in the Mithridatic war. 



Ilcrac lian. an officer of the Emperor Hono- 

 rius (q.v.), who as governor of the province of 

 Africa rendered good service during the invasion of 

 Alaric. He became consul, but, revolting against 

 Honorius, was defeated on invading Italy (413 

 A.D.), and slain soon after in Africa. 



Heracli'dcB means, in its widest sense, all 

 ' the descendants of Heracles ' ( Hercules ), but is 

 specially applied to those adventurers who, found- 

 ing their claims on their supposed descent from the 

 great hero ( to whom Zeus had promised a portion 

 of the land ), were said to have joined the Dorians 

 in the conquest of the Peloponnesus. Several ex- 

 peditions were undertaken for this purpose, the last 

 and greatest occurring eighty years after the Trojan 

 war. The chiefs of the invaders defeated Tisa- 

 menus, son of Orestes, and grandson of Agamem- 

 non, and took possession of the Peloponnesus. See 

 GREECE. 



Heracli'tllS (Gr. Herakleitos), a Greek philo- 

 sopher, was born at Ephesus, in Asia Minor, and 

 flourished about 500 B.C. He is said to have 

 resigned the hereditary office of 'king' of his 

 native city in favour of his younger brother, and 

 to have given himself up to a life of solitary con- 

 templation. In the old traditions he was called, 

 from his gloomy way of looking at things, ' the 

 weeping philosopher,' in contrast to Democritus, 

 'the laugning pnilosopher. ' He died at the age 

 of sixty. Tlie result of Heraclitus' meditations 

 was a work On Nature, of which only a few oliscure 

 fragments remain. The fundamental tenets in his 

 philosophy are that all things are in a constant 

 flux of becoming and perishing, that fire is the 

 primordial principle of all existence, and that tin- 

 supreme law of existence is the harmony that 

 results necessarily from the operations of universal 

 reason. His enigmatical fragments were published 

 li\ My water in 1877. See Die Philosophic det 

 UtraicMto* >/>* Dunklen (1858) by the famous 

 Socialist Lassalle. 



Herao'lilis, a Byzantine emperor (610-41). 

 of splendid but fitful 'genius, was born in Cappa- 



