HERCULANEUM 



HERCULKH 



673 



< mistaken at first for a ba.-ilim ). two small temples, 

 ami a villa have also l.r. -n ili-roveretl ; ami from 

 these building many beautiful statues and remark 

 able paintings have been obtained. Of late years 

 .at inns have been resumed under government, 

 with important result*, particularly as to the 

 plan of Herculaneum, and in 1880 ruins of exten- 

 sive baths and of the accessory buildings were 

 brought to light. A general view of the exposed 

 city (1889) is given from a photograph. Among 

 the art-relics of Herculaneum, which far exceed 

 in value and interest those found at Pompeii, 

 are the statues of vEschines, Agrippina, the 

 Sleeping Faun, the Six Actresses, Mercury, the 

 group of the Satyr and the Goat, the busts of Plato, 

 Scipio Africanus, Augustus, Seneca, Demosthenes, 

 Ar. Those treasures, together with such vases and 

 domestic implements as have been found, are on 

 view in the National Museum at Naples. For the 

 classical student La Villa Ercolanese del Pisoni, by 

 Comparetti and De Petra (Turin, 1883), is recom- 

 mended. 



Hercules (Gr. Heracles), the beloved son of 

 Zeus by Alcmene (of Thebes), was intended by his 

 father to be king of the Argives ; but Hera, the 

 jealous spouse of Zeus, by a trick caused Eurys- 

 theus to become king of Argos. Nor was her wrath 

 satisfied with this ; she made Hercules serve 

 Eurystheus, by far the inferior man. And he en- 

 joined hard adventures on Hercules, even sending 

 Trim to Hades to fetch up the dog Cerberus. Thus 

 Hercules was doomed to* a life of trouble, and be- 

 came the type amongst the Greeks not only of 

 manly strength, but of manly endurance. Besides 

 the labours imposed on him by Eurystheus, Her- 

 cules undertook adventures on his own account, kill- 

 ing a sea-monster that ravaged Troy, and destroy- 

 ing Troy when the mares promised him as reward 

 for killing the monster were denied him. His love 

 of horses also led him to kill Iphitus, though his 

 suest. Finally, after death, he himself joined the 

 banquet of the deathless gods, with Hebe as his 

 wife ; but his phantom, armed with bow and arrow 

 and gold baldric, with wild boars and lions wrought 

 upon it, terrified the dead in Hades. Thus far 

 according to Homer. 



Hesiod adds four more labours, imposed by 

 Eurystheus the destruction of the Nemean lion, 

 of the Lerntean hydra, fetching the oxen of the 

 triple-bodied Geryones, and the golden apples of 

 the Hesperides ; and Hesiod includes amongst the 

 parerya, or voluntary exploits, freeing Prometheus 

 from the eagle which tortured him. From later 

 authors we hear of yet more labours, the number 

 of which was first fixed at twelve by Pisander (who 

 lived about 650 B.C., and wrote an epic poem 

 on the adventures of Hercules), though this 

 number was not regarded as a canon either of 

 poetry or art. They are the destruction of the 

 Erymanthian lxar, and of the Stymphalian birds ; 

 the capture of the Cretan bull, of the stag of Cery- 

 neia, and of the horses of Diomedes ; the cleansing 

 of the stables of Augeas ; and obtaining the girdle 

 of the queen of the Amazons. Many voluntary 

 exploits are added by later writers to 'the parerga 

 mentioned by Homer and Hesiod, and are as a rule 

 brought into connection with the Homeric story of 

 Hercules, the outlines of which they fill up. Thus, 

 Homer mentions Megara as the wife of Hercules ; 

 later writers recount that she was the daughter of 

 the king of Thel>es, and that her hand was bestowed 

 on the hero in reward for having freed the Thebans 

 from their tribute to the Minyiv. The story of 

 Hercules' service as a slave to the Lydian Omphale 

 is connected with the Homeric story as being the 

 atonement for the murder of Iphitus. When all 

 other resources fail, topography is made to aflord 

 the connection. Thus, the fight with the Centaurs 

 251 



U connected with the labour of destroying the 

 Erymanthian boar, l>ecauHe the scene 01 the one 

 adventure i- in the neighl>ourliood of the other. It 

 is on his way to Thrace in quest of the honeM of 

 Diomedes that Hercules rescues Ak-estis, who had 

 -i M-II her life for that of her huhand AilmetuH, the 

 gue^t friend of Hercules. It won hi* way back from 

 the west, when he w returning with the cattle of 

 Geryones by way of Italy to Greece, that he destroys 

 the monster Cacus, who stole hi- oxen. It in on hi* 

 way to Gadira in search of Geryonea* oxen that In- 

 travels in the mystic beaker given to him by the 

 sun-god. And finally, it is en passant that he 

 founds the Olympian games also. But in all cases 

 we find that Hercules has become the national hero 

 of the Greeks, and that he is regarded not only 

 as the type of manly endurance, but also as the 

 self sacrificing hero who succours the oppressed and 

 rids earth of its monsters. As to the manner of his 

 death nothing is said by Homer, but in later times 

 the story was, that, in the agonies caused by the 

 'poisoned robe of Nessus sent to him in all inno- 

 cence as a love-charm by his wife, Deianira, he 

 threw himself on to a funeral pyre on Mount (Eta, 

 and was thence carried up to heaven. 



It is maintained by some scholars that the origin 

 of Hercules as a mythical figure is not Greek, not 

 even Indo-European, but oriental. And in support 

 of this view there are traits to be found both in 

 literature and art which are undoubtedly oriental. 

 Thus in literature the mystic lieaker in which 

 Hercules travels to Gadira is undoubtedly the sym- 

 bol of the oriental sun-god. The numlter (twelve) 

 of Hercules' labours is that of the signs of the 

 zodiac. In art the lion-skin which is the charac- 

 teristic garb of Hercules is undoubtedly a loan 

 from the East ; and the resemblances between 

 ancient types of Hercules and the idols of the 

 Phoenician god Besa are undeniable. And even the 

 Greeks themselves identified Hercules with Mel- 

 earth of Tyre. In his physical strength Hercules 

 brings to mind Samson, and Samson, on the other 

 hand, has been explained by a venturesome myth- 

 ologist (Goldziher) as being, like Hercules, a solar 

 hero. But on examination the hypothesis of the 

 oriental origin of the figure of Hercules breaks 

 down. It is quite true that there are amongst the 

 many and diverse elements in the myth of Hercules 

 some of undoubtedly oriental origin ; but none of 

 these can be traced 'back further than the time of 

 Pisander. The story of Hercules as told in Homer 

 is purely Greek. Thus the number (twelve) of 

 Hercules' labours, which forms such an admirable 

 basis for the theory that Hercules is a solar hero 

 and of oriental origin, cannot be traced back fur- 

 ther than the time of Pisander, by whom it may 

 well have been borrowed from some eastern 

 story, for he lived in Rhodes, which was exposed to 

 oriental influences. The beaker of the sun -god, 

 again, is borrowed from the East, but is no part of 

 the equipment of the original Homeric Hercules. 

 The lion-skin, which subsequently became the char- 

 acteristic garb of Hercules, was imported from the 

 Orient. This is indicated by the fact that Pisander 

 first introduced it into literature, and is confirmed 

 by the circumstance that it appears in art for 

 the first time in images from Cyprus, which were 

 plainly produced (as might be expected in Cyprus) 

 under oriental intlnrnn-. But the lion-skin is not 

 found in literature older than Pisander, and it is 

 uniformly alwent from older works of art. Finally, 

 the resemblances letween the ancient types of 

 Hercules and the idols of the Phoenician Besa are 

 in part due to the fact that the latter date from the 

 time when Phoenician art was already under the 

 influence of Greek. 



That the Greeks themselves identified Hercules 

 with some strange god, whether of Egypt or of 



