Heracles — known to the Romans as Hercules — was the greatest hero of Greek myth: the strongest man who ever lived, a son of Zeus whose superhuman might was matched only by the superhuman suffering the gods heaped upon him. His life is the supreme story of strength turned to atonement, of a man who did monstrous wrong and spent the rest of his days making it right, one impossible deed at a time.
The Son of Zeus and the Hatred of Hera
Born to the mortal woman Alcmene and to Zeus, Heracles earned the undying hatred of Hera before he could even walk — she sent two serpents to his cradle, and the infant strangled them with his bare hands. His very name (“glory of Hera”) was an irony: the goddess would torment him his whole life.
The Madness and the Labours
Hera's cruellest stroke was to strike Heracles with a fit of madness in which he killed his own wife and children. Horror-stricken and seeking purification, he submitted himself to his cousin King Eurystheus, who set him the Twelve Labours — a series of seemingly impossible tasks meant to destroy him. He strangled the invulnerable Nemean Lion, burned away the Hydra's heads, captured monstrous beasts, cleaned the Augean stables in a day, fetched the golden apples of the Hesperides, and finally dragged Cerberus himself up from the dead. Each labour was both a wonder and a penance.
The Poisoned Robe
His death came, fittingly, from the poison of one of his own victims. The dying centaur Nessus tricked Heracles's wife Deianira into keeping his blood as a “love charm”; when she smeared it on a robe for her husband, the Hydra-venom in it burned his flesh beyond bearing. In agony, Heracles built his own funeral pyre and was consumed — but Zeus raised his immortal part to Olympus, where he was at last reconciled with Hera and made a god.
The Hero of Atonement
Heracles endures because he is the most human of heroes: not a flawless paragon but a man of terrible strength who did terrible things, and whose greatness lay in the endless, painful labour of setting them right. He became a god not by being perfect, but by never ceasing to atone.
The Greeks worshipped him as both hero and god — the only mortal whose suffering earned him a seat on Olympus.