874 



HERCULES 



HERDER 



Tyre, is natural enough, but proves nothing. They, 

 like the Romans, were ever on the alert to identify 

 the gods they knew of old with the new deities of 

 foreign nations. Indeed, it is in this tendency that 

 we have to look for the explanation of the growth 

 of the story of Hercules. It is because the Greeks 

 recognised, or thought they recognised, their 

 national hero in the oriental sun-god, that traits 

 and stories belonging to the latter became attached 

 to the former. In this way the hero of the Lydian 

 story was identified with Hercules, and the story of 

 his service to Omphale transferred to Hercules. 

 On the same principle we may probably detach the 

 Italian story of the monster Cacus as an accretion. 

 The Italians recognised in Hercules their own 

 native Genius Jovis, of whom the Cacus-story was 

 originally told. Not only was the story absorbed 

 into the Hercules-cycle of myths, but Hercules 

 eclipsed the Genius Jovis in Italy itself. It has, 

 indeed, been supposed that the story of Hercules 

 was known to the Graeco-Italians, the common 

 ancestors of Greeks and Italians ; but, apart from 

 the doubt which now attaches to the very existence 

 of Grreco-Italians, the Latin name Hercules is un- 

 doubtedly ( like that which it stands for) borrowed 

 from the Greek. Hercules, as a matter of phil- 

 ology, is a loan-word from the Greek Heracles. 



Not only, however, is it possible to strip the 

 original Homeric story of Italian and oriental 

 accretions ; it is also possible to trace its growth 

 within the limits of Hellas itself. For as the 

 Greeks identified their national hero with foreign 

 deities and heroes, so Hercules came to be the 

 national Greek hero, because the various Greek 

 states identified him with various local heroes. 

 Thus the ^Etolian myth of Deianira and the robe 

 of Nessus came to tie attached in the time after 

 Homer to Hercules. And even in the Hercules of 

 Homer and Hesiod we can detect at least two local 

 heroes. The son of Alcmene of Thebes was prob- 

 ably not' originally the same hero as the Hercules 

 whose exploits in destroying the Lerna i an hydra, 

 Nemean lion, and the Erymanthian boar are 

 localised in the Peloponnese. And this view is 

 confirmed by the fact that, whereas the Pelopon- 

 nesian hero is named Heracles, the Theban hero 

 was known as Alca3us ('the strong man'), or 

 Alcides ( ' son of strength ' ), and compilers of 

 myths had to allege that the change of name from 

 Alcides, the less known name, to Hercules, the 

 better known, was ordained by the Delphian oracle. 

 Further back than this 

 it seems impossible to 

 trace Hercules. There 

 is no reason to ima- 

 gine that Hercules was 

 known to the Indo- 

 Europeans before their 

 dispersion ; and even if 

 some of his adventures 

 (e.g. the oldest labour 

 that of fetching up Cer- 

 berus from the nether 

 world) are really solar 

 in character, we need 

 not close our eyes to the 

 fact that the strong man 

 is a natural subject for 

 myths. 



In art, Hercules is re- 

 presented as the type of 

 manly strength, with 

 muscular limbs, curly 

 hair, and somewhat 

 small head ; a club and 

 lion's skin are often 

 added. The most not- 

 able statue is the so-called Farnese Hercules, found 



Farnese Hercules. 



in the baths of Caracalla in 1509, and now in the 

 museum at Naples. It is the work of the Athenian 

 Glycon, but probably a copy of a work by Lysippus. 



Hercules, PILLAES OF, the name given by 

 the ancients to two rocks flanking the entrance 

 to the Mediterranean at the Strait of Gibraltar. 

 According to one version of the legend, they had 

 once been united, but Hercules tore them asunder 

 to admit the ocean into the Mediterranean ; another 

 version represents him as causing them to unite 

 temporarily in order to form a bridge. They seem 

 to have been first visited by the Pho3nicians about 

 1100 B.C. Calpe, one of them, is now identified 

 with Gibraltar, and Abyla, the other, with Ceuta. 



Hercules Beetle (Dynastes hercules], a 

 gigantic lamellicorn beetle from tropical America, 

 sometimes 6 inches in length. The male bears on 

 the thorax an enormous horn, which is met by a 

 shorter upturned horn from the head, the whole 

 resembling a pair of large but somewhat unequal 

 pincers, of which the body of the insect is the 



Hercules Beetle (Dynastes hercules). 



handle. The female is without horns, and decidedly 

 smaller. Another species, D. titigus, about 2 inches 

 in length, occurs in the United States. The genus 

 Megasoma is nearly allied to Dynastes. See also 

 GOLIATH BEETLE. 



Hercules' Club is the trivial name of a West 

 Indian tree (Xantlioxylum dava-Herculis), for a 

 kind of gourd, and for a species of Aralia. 



Hercynian Forest (Lat. Hercynia silva), 

 the general designation of the entire wooded moun- 

 tain-ranges of middle Germany, from the Rhine 

 to the Carpathian Mountains. Different ancient 

 writers apply the name sometimes to one of the 

 constituent ranges, sometimes to another. Modern 

 geographers, and more particularly geologists, 

 apply the term Hercynian system to all the moun- 

 tain-chains between Westphalia and Moravia. 

 These have for the most part a north-west to 

 south-east strike, and are all older than the close 

 of the Cretaceous period. 



Herd, DAVID (1732-1810), born a Kincardine- 

 shire farmer's son, spent his life as an Edinburgh 

 clerk and in literary work, being remembered for 

 his collection of Ancient Scottish Songs, Heroic 

 Ballads, &c. (2 vols. 1776; reprinted 1869). 



Herder, JOHANN GOTTFRIED, one of the most 

 thoughtful and suggestive of German writers, 

 called by De Quincey the Coleridge of Germany, 

 equally important as a philosopher, a theologian, 

 and a literary critic, was born at Mohrungen, in 

 East Prussia, on 25th August 1744. He studied 

 at Konigsberg, and there became acquainted with 

 Kant and Hamann, the ' Magus of the North. ' 

 The latter inspired young Herder with love for 

 the poetry of primitive peoples and the study of 

 the obscure beginnings of civilisation, and for 

 the literature and lore of the Orient, especially 

 of the Bible. But perhaps the greatest thing 

 that Hamann did for Herder was to awaken him 

 to intellectual freedom, to emancipate his mind 

 from traditional habits of thinking and stimulate 

 him to prosecute lines of independent search. 



