Sons of Heracles · Atlas

in the texts

On the CrownClassical · Greek

Mythic descendants invoked as a precedent for Athenian aid to Thebans.

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;

on the crown ¶

ArchidamusClassical · Greek

The Heraclids whose return and agreements are used to justify Spartan possession of Peloponnesian lands.

For we inhabit Lacedaemon because the sons of Heracles gave it to us, because Apollo directed us to do so, and because we fought and conquered those who held it;

book 1 ¶

further, that we drove out those who had grievously sinned against the children of Heracles—men who by right should have been banished from the sight of all mankind;

archidamus ¶

When Heracles had put off this life and from being mortal became a god, his sons at first went on divers wanderings and faced many perils because of the power of their enemies;

archidamus ¶

PanathenaicusClassical · Greek

The children of Heracles whom Athens protects from Eurystheus.

again, by the Peloponnesians, led by Eurystheus, who not only refused to make amends to Heracles for his ill-treatment of him but brought an army against our ancestors with the object of seizing by force the sons of Heracles, who had taken refuge with us.

panathenaicus ¶

HellenicaClassical · Greek

The Heraclids, treated as founders and as beneficiaries of an earlier Athenian rescue.

And while that other deed was also noble, when you checked the insolence of Eurystheus and preserved the sons of Heracles, would it not surely be an even nobler one if you saved from perishing, not merely the founders, but the whole state as well?

chapter 6 ¶