Hercules
mythological figure · 22 works · 29 mentions · 46 anchored passages
Heracles · Alcides · Herculean · Mehercule · the Herculeses
in the texts
Tusculan Disputations
Legendary Greek hero deified after death, cited as model of virtue rewarded with divinity.
he would never have departed had he not, while he was among men, paved that road for himself.
and among the Greeks, and thence passed down to us and even as far as the Ocean, Hercules is held so great and so present a god;
/ Now, now the anguished crests of my pains torment me, / Now creeps the burning.
Ad Nationes
Deified hero whose image is mocked by philosophers and used to costume condemned criminals in the arena.
But Diogenes too made some sport, I know not what, of Hercules;
14. A new report has now been suggested about our god, and not so very recently a certain most abandoned fellow in this city — himself a deserter of his own religion, a Jew only by the loss of his skin, and indeed the more so after the bites of beasts, since he goes about daily to be shaken down over his whole body by those to whom he hires himself — set up a picture against us under this title: " …
the rest which is said to have passed from men to divinity, like Hercules, Amphiaraus.
On Moral Ends
Mythological hero famed for his labors performed for the safety of nations
I should draw it out of you and compel you to answer, did I not fear that you would say that Hercules himself did the things which he wrought for the safety of the nations, with supreme labour, for the sake of pleasure.
Look into your own mind, and, going over it with all thought, ask yourself whether you would prefer, enjoying perpetual pleasures, to pass your whole life in that tranquillity which you often used to claim, without pain — adding too that thing which your school is wont to add, but which cannot be, without the fear of pain — or, while you deserved best of all nations, while you brought help and saf …
And as it has been given by nature to bulls that they contend for their calves against lions with the utmost force and onset, so those who are strong in resources and able to do it — as we have heard of Hercules and of Liber — are incited by nature to the saving of the human race.
On the Nature of the Gods
Greek/Roman hero, son of Jove and Alcmena, deified after death; multiple distinct 'Hercules' figures are catalogued by Cotta
may Alabandus be angry with me and Hercules with you.
These, then, must be held gods, though born of mortal mothers.
of that one, then, and of Lysitho, is that Hercules whom we have heard to have striven with Apollo for the tripod.
On Benefits
Mythic hero honored with Corinthian citizenship, praised as a selfless world-benefactor and foe of the wicked
1 To Alexander of Macedon, when as conqueror of the East he was lifting his thoughts above the human, the Corinthians sent envoys to offer their congratulations and presented him with the citizenship of their city.
1 Nor was this the vice of Alexander only, whom a fortunate rashness drove along the footsteps of Liber and Hercules, but of all whom fortune has goaded by filling them.
Clouds
The mythological hero cited in the debate as the bravest son of Jupiter, used by both Causes to argue about the merits of warm versus cold bathing.
Just Cause.
Unjust Cause.
Unjust Cause.
On the Commonwealth
Mythological hero granted apotheosis, invoked as precedent for heavenly ascent.
for to Hercules too that same gate lay open.
The Freedom of the Seas (Mare Liberum)
Mythological hero cited as having warred to defend free passage.
In defense of this principle Hercules attacked the king of Orchomenus in Boeotia;
De Rerum Natura
Mythological hero famed for his Twelve Labours, used as a foil to Epicurus in the proem.
Labours of Hercules excel the same,
Therefore that man who subjugated these,
Much farther from true reasoning thou farest.
Alcibiades 1
Mythic hero from whom the Spartan royal house (the Heracleidae) claims descent.
Do we not know that the former are descendants of Hercules and the latter of Achaemenes, and that the line of Hercules and the line of Achaemenes go back to Perseus, son of Zeus?
Euthydemus
Mythical hero invoked twice as a figure of comparison: first for Socrates's struggle against the hydra-like multiplying arguments of the sophists, then as an exclamation of triumph by Ctesippus.
You see, I am sadly inferior to Hercules, who was no match for the hydra—that she-professor who was so clever that she sent forth many heads of debate in place of each one that was cut off;
he cried, a fine argument!
Amphitruo
Son of Jupiter and Alcmena, born at the climax of the play alongside his twin Iphiclus.
In the Fifth Act, at the moment in which Alcmena is delivered of Hercules and Iphiclus, a violent.
Letters to Lucilius
Mythological hero whose legendary travels mark the limit of the known world that Alexander seeks to exceed, also invoked in an oath.
The mere meeting with the wise, by Hercules, profits, and there is something that flows from a great man even when he is silent.
yet he goes beyond the ocean and the sun, he is indignant to turn his victory aside from the footsteps of Hercules and Bacchus, he prepares force against nature herself.
On the Steadfastness of the Wise Man
Legendary hero known for labors against monsters, cited as an earlier model of wisdom surpassed by Cato.
for no wise man can suffer either injury or insult, and the immortal gods have given us in Cato a surer model of the wise man than they gave in Ulysses and Hercules to earlier ages.
Cato did not grapple with wild beasts, which it is the part of the huntsman and the rustic to pursue, nor did he hunt down monsters with fire and sword, nor did he fall upon times in which it could be believed that the sky rested upon the shoulders of one man.
On Tranquillity of Mind
Mythic hero cited as an example of a death (burned alive) not to be mourned, since he reached immortality by dying.
Shall I weep for Hercules because he is burned alive, or for Regulus because he is pierced by so many nails, or for Cato because he reopens his own wounds?
Adversus Marcionem
Mythological figure whose fabled birth is invoked satirically against Marcion's Christology.
if of God too, you make Christ a Hercules out of the fable;
Apologeticum
Divinized hero repeatedly cited as an object of mockery, stinginess, and degrading impersonation.
and a man who was burning alive had taken the part of Hercules.
But Diogenes too makes some sport with Hercules, and the Roman Cynic Varro brings in three hundred Joves — or Jupiters, as they should be called — without heads.
is it mimes or your gods that you laugh at in the jests and tricks — the adulterer Anubis, and the masculine Moon, and Diana flogged, and the reading of dead Jupiter's will, and the three famished Herculeses mocked?
De Corona
Mythological hero associated with several different crown plants (poplar, olive, parsley) and with the Nemean games.
Hercules now bears poplar on his head, now wild olive, now parsley.
that Olympian Jupiter and Nemean Hercules and the poor little Archemorus and the unhappy Antinous should be crowned in a Christian, that he himself should become the spectacle which it is wearisome to behold.
De idolatria
Roman/Greek hero-god invoked in the common oath 'Mehercule.'
For the rest, it is a vice of custom to say Mehercule, Medius Fidius—with the ignorance of certain persons coming in, who are ignorant that it is an oath by Hercules.
De Pallio
Mythological hero, cited both as ancestor of the Peloponnesian settlers and, at length, as the paradigm of degrading transformation through Omphale's dress.
So too the posterity of Hercules, by occupying the Peloponnese together with Temenus, produce it.
though now a stripling, though now having played the man secretly for someone, he yet endures to let down the woman's robe, to dress his hair, to fashion his skin, to consult the mirror, to soothe his neck, his ear too effeminately pierced;
De Spectaculis
Hero-god honored by the Nemean games and patron of gymnastic training.
But the gymnastic arts too the disciplines of the Castors and the Herculeses and the Mercurys put forth.
History of the Peloponnesian War
Deified hero to whom the Syracusans are sacrificing on the day of their victory, explaining the people's festive distraction.
But though the magistrates also agreed with him in thinking this, no less than himself, and were of opinion that it ought to be done, yet they thought that the people, in their recent joy and relaxation after the labours of a great sea-fight, especially, too, as it was a time of feasting, (for they happened to celebrate on this day a sacrifice to Hercules,) would not easily be induced to listen to them;