Heracles

they call her Peace.

Beside her is Good Order, very like her and differing little in form.

the tale I once heard a woman of Elis or Arcadia tell concerning Heracles.

he was descended from Alcaeus, son of Heracles;

The Heraclidae, descendants of Heracles and a female slave of Iardanus, received the sovereignty from these and held it, because of an oracle;

Now the sovereign power that belonged to the descendants of Heracles fell to the family of Croesus, called the Mermnadae, in the following way.

Herodorus relates that Heracles, having become a seer and a natural philosopher, received the pillars of the universe from Atlas the barbarian, the Phrygian — the myth hinting that he succeeded to the knowledge of heavenly things by learning.

And Orpheus, who sailed with Heracles, was the teacher of Musaeus.

to the contest at Olympia, which Heracles established in honour of Pelops, three years;

For the kingship would be lame in very truth when it was not the descendants of Heracles who were at the head of the state.

The right course, indeed, would have been for us not to take up arms against one another in the beginning, since the tradition is that the first strangers to whom Triptolemus, our ancestor, revealed the mystic rites of Demeter and Core were Heracles, your state’s founder, and the Dioscuri, your citizens;

And the messengers reported that from the Heracleium the arms also had disappeared, indicating that Heracles had gone forth to the battle.

and a sufficient number of oxen had come to them so that they could pay their thank-offerings to Zeus for deliverance, to Heracles for guidance, and to the other gods according as they had vowed.

And they came to anchor alongside the Acherusian Chersonese, where Heracles is said to have descended to Hades after the dog Cerberus, at a spot where they now show the marks of his descent, reaching to a depth of more than two stadia.

but when he sacrificed to Heracles the Leader, consulting him as to whether it was better and more proper for him to continue the journey with such of the soldiers as had remained with him, or to be rid of them, the god indicated to him by the sacrifices that he should stay with them.

" Heracles, then, Homer himself knows for a mortal man;

yes, and Homer says that Aïdoneus was shot by Heracles, and Panyassis records that Helios was.

Some of you Thessalians have honoured the storks because of custom, and the Thebans the weasels because of the birth of Heracles.

Chorus:

Chorus:

Chorus:

Iolaus:

Heracles was son of Zeus and Alcmena;

These, sirs, are the sons of Heracles, come as suppliants to you and your city.

Chorus:

Chorus:

Chorus:

here is the son of Zeus killing with his scimitar of gold the watersnake of Lerna.

First o’er the roof-tree he threw a canopy of robes, an offering Heracles, the son of Zeus, had brought unto the god from his Amazonian spoils.

yet the strength of stout Heracles overcame him.

And again she bore a third, the evil-minded Hydra of Lerna, whom the goddess, white-armed Hera nourished, being angry beyond measure with the mighty Heracles.

Him mighty Heracles slew in sea-girt Erythea by his shambling oxen on that day when he drove the wide-browed oxen to holy Tiryns, and had crossed the ford of Ocean and killed Orthus and Eurytion the herdsman in the dim stead out beyond glorious Ocean.

the Thebans honor the founder of your race, both by processionals and by sacrifices, beyond all the other gods;

and as for our city, we are informed by those whom we credit in matters of ancient history that she aided Heracles to win his immortality (in what way you can easily learn at another time;

But if, on the other hand, one should bring this charge against one of the descendants of Heracles, who made himself the benefactor of all Hellas, he would bring upon him the greatest opprobrium.

But he himself will have allotted to him in peace, as an extraordinary reward for his great hardship, continuous peace for all time among the homes of the blessed.

For they say that he planted the seed of Aeacus, received by the mother, to be a city-ruler in my illustrious fatherland, and to be a kindly friend and brother to you, Heracles.

For he said that when the gods meet the giants in battle on the plain of Phlegra, the shining hair of the giants will be stained with dirt beneath the rushing arrows of that hero.

and Heracles established the Olympic festival, as the finest trophy of battle;

For Heracles, when he ascended to Olympus, assigned to them the ordering of the marvellous contest of men, the contest in excellence and in the driving of swift chariots.

there he had stood and marvelled at the trees, and sweet desire for them possessed him, to plant them around the boundary-line of the horse-racing ground with its twelve courses.

for many a Heracles and many a Theseus, strong men of words, have fallen in with me and belabored me mightily, but still I do not desist, such a terrible love of this kind of exercise has taken hold on me.

And when people pride themselves on a list of twenty-five ancestors and trace their pedigree back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, the pettiness of their ideas seems absurd to him;

And humble yourself before the jealous gods, so that the bow may not prove baneful for you, as it did for me and for him who owned it before me.

O my son, boy whose father was Achilles, here I am before you, the man of whom you have perhaps heard as lord of the bow of Heracles, Philoctetes the son of Poeas.

But now, after those troubles, he will attain happiness and heartiness in the end because of his meeting with this son of a noble race, who after the fullness of many months carries him aboard our sea-crossing hull to his ancestral home, the haunt of Malian nymphs, and to the banks of the Spercheius in that very land where, above Oeta’s heights, the hero of the brazen shield approached the gods, i …

Heracles!

Heracles:

Heracles:

Heracles:

and following her it was that Heracles in the end arrived.

these she displayed, and, promising still more than these, tried to draw Heracles to herself.

that when Heracles was quite young, and nearly of this very age which you now are, deliberating which of the two roads he should take—the one that leads through toils to virtue, or the easiest—two women approached him, and these were Virtue and Vice.

For health sacrifice and pray to Zeus Most High, to Heracles, and to Apollo the Protector;

They remember the services rendered by their own ancestors to the ancestors of the Thebans, for, when the sons of Heracles were dispossessed by the Peloponnesians of their paternal dominion, they restored them, overcoming in battle those who were trying to oppose the descendants of Heracles;

but when you had been led astray by these men, you brought your wives and children in from the country, and ordered the festival of Heracles to be held within the walls, in time of peace.

But afterwards, when within five or six days the Phocians were destroyed, when Aeschines’ wages stopped as such things do, when Dercylus had returned from Chalcis and had informed you, at the assembly held at Peiraeus, of the destruction of the Phocians, when that news filled you with indignation on their account and alarm on your own, when you were resolving to bring in your women and children fr …

we shall find that Aeacus and Rhadamanthys were beloved by the gods for their discretion, Heracles, Castor and Pollux for their courage, and Ganymedes, Adonis, and others like them for their beauty, so that I at any rate am not astonished at those who covet your friendship but at those who are not so disposed.

The Antiochidae were not unmindful that Antiochus was the son of Heracles.

Moreover, they were styled the saviors of the sons of Heracles, who himself was the savior of the rest of mankind, when they arrived in this land as suppliants, fleeing before Eurystheus.