ABSTRACT
Relating the myth of Herakles is not as simple as it sounds, because he has a more complicated life-story, and a more extensive portfolio of exploits, than any other Greek hero. Anyone who attempts to reduce all the stories, in all their variations, to a single account must sympathize with the Renaissance writer Giraldi’s remark which heads this chapter. Nonetheless, such systematizations of the stories of Herakles were already undertaken in antiquity, first by the writers of epic poetry. No complete Herakles epic survives, but we know of a Herakleia, ‘Deeds of Herakles’, written around 600 BC by Peisandros of Rhodes. Peisandros was reputedly the first poet to give Herakles a club and lionskin (fr. 1 W), and the few fragments preserved by later authors suggest that this told the story in considerable detail, in two books, covering at least five of the twelve labours, as well as a number of minor exploits. Another Herakleia known to us only from fragments is that of the mid-fifth-century poet Panyassis of Halikarnassos, a relative of Herodotus. This ran to a substantial fourteen books, with a total of 9,000 lines, spending longer on Herakles’ more obscure exploits than on the labours.1 In the fourth century, such epics attracted criticism from Aristotle, for whom the disparate episodes of the story presented a dissatisfying lack of unity (Poetics 1451a16-22, tr. Heath):
Aristotle’s concern is with poetry, so he makes no mention of the other important genre in which Herakles’ story was being recounted by his time:
the prose work of the mythographers (‘writers of myth’) who began to appear c.500 BC. We have fragments from a substantial work by the Athenian Pherekydes, c.450 BC, covering episodes from Herakles’ childhood, several of the labours and later exploits, and some of the events leading up to his death. The Herakles work by Herodoros of Herakleia, c.400 BC, must have included even greater detail, since it ran to at least seventeen books. The only mythographical work to survive in relatively complete form is the Library of Apollodoros; the authorship of this work has been much disputed, but it was most likely written in the first or second century AD. A whole section (2.5-7) is devoted to Herakles, beginning with his parents’ marriage and his own birth, ending with his death and apotheosis, and a list of his many sons by various women; at least half of the narrative is taken up with a detailed account of the twelve labours performed at the command of Eurystheus. Herakles also features largely in Diodoros of Sicily’s Historical Library, written in the latter half of the first century BC, a ‘universal history’ of Greece from mythological times to 60 BC. The section on Herakles begins with a cautionary discussion of the difficulties faced by the teller of ancient tales in general, and myths about Herakles in particular (4.8.1):
Diodoros nevertheless attempts to do Herakles justice by recounting his life and deeds at great length, including much more detail than Apollodoros, especially on Herakles’ travels in the western Mediterranean (4.9-39).2
