Source Verification: Heracles

Why did Heracles have to perform the Twelve Labors?

Hera drove him into a fit of madness in which he killed his own wife Megara and their children. Once sane again, Heracles consulted the Oracle at Delphi to learn how to atone, and was told to serve his cousin King Eurystheus of Tiryns for a period of years, performing whatever tasks Eurystheus set him. Those tasks became the Labors.

Source: Apollodorus, Library 2.4.12

Why were there twelve labors instead of the original ten?

Eurystheus set ten labors at first, but refused to count two of them toward the total: the Lernaean Hydra, because Heracles had help from his nephew Iolaus in burning the stumps of its heads, and the Augean stables, because Heracles had arranged to be paid for clearing them. Two replacement labors were added, bringing the count to twelve.

Source: Apollodorus, Library 2.5.11

How did Heracles die?

His wife Deianira, tricked by the dying centaur Nessus, sent him a shirt she believed was a love charm but which was in fact poisoned with Nessus's blood, tainted by the venom of the Hydra from an earlier arrow wound. The poison burned into Heracles's flesh, and in unbearable pain he had a pyre built on Mount Oeta and had himself burned alive rather than continue suffering.

Source: Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.134-272

Was Heracles ever enslaved?

Yes. As penance for murdering his friend Iphitus in another fit of rage, Heracles was sold into slavery for a year to Omphale, queen of Lydia. Later tradition made this episode into a comic reversal, dressing Heracles in women's clothes to spin wool while Omphale wore his lion skin and carried his club.

Source: Apollodorus, Library 2.6.2-2.6.3

What happened to Heracles after he died?

Hesiod records that Zeus took him up from the pyre to Olympus, where he was reconciled with Hera and married to Hebe, the goddess of youth. This made Heracles the rare figure in Greek myth who moves from a mortal life of suffering to full and permanent divinity, rather than remaining a hero honored only after death.

Source: Hesiod, Theogony 950-955

Did Heracles really found the Olympic Games?

Pindar credits him with establishing the Games at Elis, holding them to mark his victory over King Augeas, whose stables Heracles had cleared as one of the Labors and who had then refused to pay the agreed price. The claim is a later Panhellenic tradition rather than a fact any source can verify, but it was widely repeated to give the Games a heroic founder.

Source: Pindar, Olympian Ode 10

• Apollodorus, Library 2.4.12
• Apollodorus, Library 2.5.11
• Euripides, Heracles
• Pindar, Nemean Odes
• Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.134-272
• Hesiod, Theogony 950-955

• Emma Stafford, Herakles (2012)
• Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)