This document provides an overview of Greek heroes based on a chapter from a textbook. It discusses the key traits of heroes like Achilles, including that they performed extraordinary deeds and obtained immortality through song and cult. It also examines specific heroes like Heracles, Theseus, Oedipus, and Achilles, detailing their myths and how they were portrayed. It analyzes heroes in contexts like cult, myth, and reception in poetry about war. Heroes served as models for understanding human experiences like the emotions of soldiers.

1. Chapter 10

2. HISTORY
Achilles: The Making of a Hero
Classical Mythology in Context

3. 10.1 Heroic banquet. A hero reclines on a couch and
dines while a servant stands nearby. Such reliefs were
often used as grave markers for mortals who were
worshipped as heroes. Marble relief. Unknown, Greek,
eastern Mediterranean, 150–100 BCE. The J. Paul Getty
Museum, Malibu, California. The J. Paul Getty Museum,
Villa Collection 96.AA.167: Malibu, California.
• Heroes were men who had died
• They performed extraordinary
deeds that may or may not be
moral
• They die prematurely, violently,
or mysteriously
• They were worshiped at their
gravesites
• They obtained a form of
immortality through song and
cult
Five Traits of Greek Heroes

4. Map 10.1 Achilles and Other Greek Heroes
Greek Heroes

5. 10.2 Model of a hero shrine dedicated to a local
ruler in Trysa, Lycia, Anatolia (modern-day
Turkey). The shrine’s nine-foot walls enclosed
monumental tombs and were decorated with
limestone reliefs depicting heroes such as
Odysseus, Perseus, and Bellerophon. Early fourth
century BCE. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna,
Austria. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY,
ART204768.
Heroes in Cult
• Shrines to heroes were located in a
variety of places, wherever their
bodies were believed to rest
• Sometimes their spaces of worship
were simple gravesites or tombs,
sometimes they were temples or cult
statues
• Precious objects were dedicated to
them and annual festivals sometimes
took place at hero shrines

6. 10.3 Jason is disgorged by the dragon
guarding the Golden Fleece as Athena
watches. Kylix, from Cerveteri. Douris
Painter, fifth century BCE. Museo
Gregoriano Etrusco, Vatican Museums,
Vatican. Universal Images Group / Art
Resource, NY, ART424807.
Heroes in Myth
• Stories and images ensured that heroes
would be remembered after their death
• Very few of these stories give exactly the
same account, and very few tell the whole
story of any hero
• Vertical traditions refer to incidents that are
detailed in many places
• Horizontal tradition describes the life story
of a figure gathered from multiple sources
• Horizontal traditions tend to smooth out
the contradictions inherent in vertical
traditions

7. 10.4 Heracles, wearing the skin of the Nemean lion,
leashes Cerberus. Detail from a red-figure amphora.
Andokides Painter, 530–510 BCE. Louvre Museum, Paris,
France. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY,
ART497632.
• Epics about heroes emphasize their
exploits-they are rarely showed in
domestic spaces
• Lyric poetry celebrates athletes as
heroes in similar terms
• In the Classical period, epic heroes
became the protagonists of
tragedies
• Their exploits become secondary to
their relationships, which were
easier to depict onstage
• Heracles had the most adventures, therefore his story is the most complex to
Heroes in Myth

8. 10.5 Sketches of metopes depicting Heracles’s labors
on Zeus’s temple in Olympia. Using the surviving pieces
of these metopes and a description by Pausanias (5.10.9),
the order of the metopes has been reconstructed as follows.
(1) Heracles sits, weary from his struggle with the Nemean lion,
while Athena watches. Heracles skins the Nemean lion with its own
claws, and he is often depicted wearing the lion’s skin, which makes
his body invulnerable. (2) Heracles kills the Lernaean hydra with the
help of Iolaus, who cauterizes its necks to prevent them from
growing back. (3) Heracles kills the Stymphalian birds by using
castanets manufactured for him by Athena to rouse the birds from
their nests. (4) Heracles captures the Cretan bull, bringing it to
Marathon, in mainland Greece. (5) Heracles devotes a year to
chasing the swift, golden-horned Cerynaean hind that is dear to
Artemis. (6) Heracles defeats an Amazon, named Hippolyte, in an
attempt to gain possession of her belt. The Amazons were a warlike
race of women who dwelled in Scythia, shunned men, and fought
on horses using a bow. (7) Heracles displays the Erymanthian boar
to Eurystheus, who hides in a pot from fright. (8) Heracles defeats
the man-eating, fire-breathing mares of Diomedes. (9) Heracles
captures the cattle of Geryon, a three-headed, three-bodied
monster who guards them. (10) Heracles obtains golden apples,
which are guarded by three females called Hesperides along with a
snake. To gain help from Atlas in accomplishing this task, Heracles
carries the world that had been resting on Atlas’s shoulders. (11)
Heracles leads Cerberus, a three-headed dog in the Underworld, to
the light of day. (12) Heracles cleans the Augean stables, by
rerouting a river through them with Athena’s assistance.
The Labors of Heracles

9. • Heracles was persecuted by Hera because he was the son of Zeus and a
mortal, Alcmene
• He became famous for his twelve labors in penance for killing his wife and
sons
• By surviving Hera’s trials, Heracles earned the right to enter Olympus and
marry the goddess Hebe
• This made him unusual among heroes, and he had more cult shrines than
any other
• In the Alcestis Euripides depicts Heracles as a drunken buffoon, but also a
loyal friend
• In Heracles Maenomenus he is shown as a broken man after the death of
his wife and sons
• Sophocles’s Trachiniae shows Heracles, at the end of his life, as both
suffering and causing his family to suffer through his actions
Heracles

10. 10.6 Adventures of Theseus from Troezen to
Athens. Red-figured cup, Athens. Codrus
Painter, c. 440–430 bce. British Museum,
London.
From the top center and reading to the right,
Theseus defeats (1) Cercyon, a wrestler in the
Eleusis, who would kill all those he defeated;
(2) Procrustes, who would place travelers on a
bed and would stretch them, if they were
short, or cut off their feet, if they were tall, to
make them fit his bed; (3) Sciron, a highway
robber renowned for kicking travelers off a
cliff and into the sea, where they would be
devoured by a large sea turtle; (4) the
Marathonian bull, formerly called the Cretan
bull because Heracles captured it in Crete and
deposited it Marathon; (5) Sinis, a bandit who
tied travelers to two pine trees that, when
sprung loose, tore them apart; and (6) an
enormous sow in Crommyon. In the center of
the vase, Theseus kills the Minotaur on Crete.
The Trustees of the British Museum / Art Resource,
NY, ART177596.
The Adventures of Theseus

11. 10.7 Theseus and Ariadne on Naxos.
Detail from a red-figure lekythos (oil flask).
Circa , 460 BCE. Museo Nazionale Taranto,
Taranto, Italy. Gianni Dagli Orti / The Art
Archive at Art Resource, NY, AA389189.
Theseus
• As a hero, Theseus resembled Heracles, with a
canonical list of adventures
• The Athenians shaped him into a civic hero
who embodied the greatness of Athens
• After killing the Minotaur, Theseus becomes
king of Athens and is credited with
accomplishments that help develop
democracy in Athens, including expanding the
worship of Athena
• Euripides’s Hippolytus shows Theseus making
amends for his mistaken punishment of his
son Hippolytus, in opposition to Heracles’s
behavior in Trachiniae

12. 10.8 Oedipus and the Sphinx. Detail from a red-
figure krater. Attributed to the Painter of the Birth
of Dionysus. Fifth century BCE. Museo Nazionale
Taranto, Taranto, Italy. Gianni Dagli Orti / The Art
Archive at Art Resource, NY, AA389194.
Oedipus
• Oedipus is famous thanks to Sophocles’s
trilogy of plays depicting his tragic life
• Oedipus is depicted as being heroic and
worthy of veneration, despite his tragic
fate
• He, like Heracles, was indifferent to his
sons, and both represent that the
Greeks saw heroes as being capable of
both great help and great harm to
ordinary mortals

13. 10.9 Achilles and his mother, Thetis, in a chariot are
approached by worshippers. Fragmentary marble relief.
Unknown. 350 BCE. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 78.AA.264,
Malibu, California. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s
Open Content Program.
Achilles
• Achilles is known primarily
though the Iliad of Homer
• Achilles’s part in the Iliad is
defined by his anger at
Agamemnon
• Achilles refuses to fight with
the Greeks, then relents when
his friend Patroclus is killed
• Even though he knows he will
die, Achilles helps the Greeks to
victory by killing the Trojan
warrior Hector

14. THEORY
Achilles: The Making of a Hero
Classical Mythology in Context

15. 10.10 Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin, illustration for the fairy tale “Ivan
Tsarevich, the Firebird, and the Gray Wolf” (1902). In this tale, one of the
many studied by Vladimir Propp, Ivan, the hero, succeeds in catching the
Firebird, winning a princess, and securing a kingdom. In his many journeys into
the woods, he meets a talking wolf and several kings, dies and is rejuvenated,
and finally outsmarts his two evil older brothers. The story of Ivan has the
trappings of many fairy tales (talking animals, deep forests, and three brothers)
that most Greek myths about heroes lack. Found in the collection of the
Museum of the Goznak, Moscow, Russia. HIP / Art Resource, NY, AR930934.
The Plot of the Hero’s Story
• Vladimir Propp and FitzRoy Raglan created lists
of heroes’ adventures which classical scholars
have used to study Greek heroes
• Propp studied Russian fairy tales, hoping to
show what elements and characters they have
in common
• He formulated a list of seven types of
characters that appear in fairy tales, and thirty-
one categories of actions
• These can be combined
into three sections that
align with van Gennep’s
three part division of
initiation rites

16. COMPARISON
Achilles: The Making of a Hero
Classical Mythology in Context

17. Map 10.2 Epic Heroes from Sumer to Rome
Epic Heroes in the Mediterranean World

18. 10.11 Ajax carries the dead Achilles. Black-figure
amphora. Antimenes Painter, c. 520–510 BCE. The
Walters Art Museum. Baltimore. Walters 48.17.
Gilgamesh and Aeneas
• The same qualities that define Achilles’
life-his anger, the tension between
anger and sorrow at the brevity of life-
also define the story of Gilgamesh
• The story of the Roman hero Aeneas
also alternates between sorrow and
anger
• The stories of all three are defined by
the epic genre
• Their settings are grand, they center on wars or quests, and their characters i
• Epics are long poems with timelines that span years or decades

19. 10.12 A hero (possibly
Gilgamesh) overpowering a
lion. Relief from the Palace of
Sargon II at Khorsabada.
Assyrian, c. 725 BCE. Louvre
Museum, Paris, France. ©
RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NY, ART156553.
Gilgamesh and the Burden of Mortality
• The Epic of Gilgamesh tells the story of a Sumerian king
who ruled around 2800 BCE
• Gilgamesh is presented as a great king, but cruel, so the
gods create a rival for him, Enkidu
• He and Enkidu become companions, and when Enkidu is
killed, Gilgamesh grieves, but also begins to fear mortality
• He sets out to find a way to become immortal, and has
adventures in the process
• At the end, Gilgamesh finds his immortality in the
splendor of his city of Uruk
• The tales of Gilgamesh and Achilles have many
similarities, despite the fact that they are seeking
opposite goals

20. 10.13 Aeneas carries his father,
Anchises, from Troy. Etruscan
terracotta statuette. Fifth century BCE.
Museo Nazionale di Villa Giulia,
Rome, Italy. Scala / Ministero per i
Beni e le Attività culturali / Art
Resource, NY, ART300543.
Aeneas and the Founding of Rome
• The Roman poet Vergil modeled his Aeneid on Homer’s
Iliad and Odyssey
• Aeneas is a hero of Troy who escapes the destruction of
the city with his family
• Their journey is defined by the anger of Juno against
Trojans
• The poem follows Aeneas’s journey to Italy and his
establishment of a kingdom
• It reflects Vergil’s thoughts on the values of the Roman
Empire and the government under the rule of Augustus
• The question it finally asks is, can men restrain their
appetite for revenge in order to govern wisely?

21. RECEPTION
Achilles: The Making of a Hero
Classical Mythology in Context

22. 10.14 Dying Achilles. Ernst
Gustav Herter, 1884. Achilleion,
Corfu, Greece. Brian
Hoffman/Alamy, A1BJ70.
Achilles and War Poetry
• Dying Achilles was commissioned by a 19th
century empress of Austria to commemorate her
dead son
• The estate where it is located, the Achilleion, was
used by the military in both WWI and WWII
• The upper and middle class soldiers of WWI were
familiar with the stories of Achilles
• Many used his experiences as a touchstone to
make sense of their experiences of war
• Patrick Shaw-Stewart wrote Stand in the Trench,
Achilles, a poem which questions the purpose of
war rather than looking forward to its glory

23. 10.15 Achilles Triumphant.
Johannes Götz, 1909.
Achilleion, Corfu, Greece.
Brenda Kean/Alamy,
CBW920.
• Achilles Triumphant was commissioned by Kaiser
Wilhelm II of Germany to replace the earlier statue
with a more martial Achilles
• The American poet Randall Jarrell imagines the
differences between modern warfare and the
emotions it generates and the emotions that the
Greeks felt at the death of Achilles
• Northern Irish poet Michael Longley used Achilles to
reflect on the Irish “Troubles” and the way that war
shapes identity
• Achilles remains useful as a method of understanding
the experience of soldiers even in modern wars
Achilles and War Poetry