The Heroes

The Story

Heracles (known to the Romans as Hercules) is the most famous hero of ancient Greece. Driven mad by the goddess Hera, he killed his own wife and children. As penance, the Oracle at Delphi ordered him to serve King Eurystheus and complete twelve seemingly impossible labours. These included slaying the Nemean Lion, killing the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra, capturing the Erymanthian Boar, cleaning the Augean Stables in a single day, and fetching the three-headed dog Cerberus from the Underworld. After completing the labours, Heracles went on many more adventures before dying from a poisoned robe. He was then taken to Olympus and made immortal.

The Story

Achilles was the greatest warrior among the Greeks at Troy. His mother Thetis, knowing he was fated to die young, dipped him in the River Styx as an infant to make him invulnerable — but the heel by which she held him remained mortal. The Iliad tells the story of his rage: when the Greek commander Agamemnon dishonoured him by taking his war prize, Achilles withdrew from battle. His beloved companion Patroclus was killed by the Trojan hero Hector, and Achilles returned to battle in grief and fury, slaying Hector and dragging his body around the walls of Troy. Achilles himself was later killed by an arrow to his heel, shot by the Trojan prince Paris and guided by Apollo.

The Story

Odysseus was the cleverest of the Greek heroes — a man of many devices, as Homer calls him. It was his idea to build the Trojan Horse, the stratagem that finally ended the ten-year Trojan War. His return home to Ithaca took another ten years and is the subject of Homer's Odyssey. Along the way he encountered the Cyclops Polyphemus (whose father Poseidon then cursed him), the enchantress Circe, the Sirens, the monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, and the land of the dead. He returned home in disguise to find his palace overrun by suitors competing for his wife Penelope, whom he slaughtered before revealing himself.

The Story

Perseus was tasked by the wicked king Polydectes with bringing back the head of Medusa — the Gorgon whose gaze turned men to stone. With help from Athena and Hermes, Perseus received winged sandals, a mirrored shield, and a magical sickle. He found the Gorgons while they slept, used the shield as a mirror to avoid Medusa's gaze, and beheaded her. On his way home he rescued the princess Andromeda, who had been chained to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster, by using Medusa's severed head to turn the creature to stone. He married Andromeda and eventually became king of Tiryns.

The Story

Theseus was the great hero of Athens. His most famous exploit was slaying the Minotaur — the half-man, half-bull monster kept in the Labyrinth on Crete, to whom Athens was forced to send seven young men and seven young women as tribute every nine years. With the help of the Cretan princess Ariadne, who gave him a ball of thread to find his way out of the Labyrinth, Theseus killed the Minotaur and led the Athenian youths to safety. He later became king of Athens and is credited with unifying the villages of Attica into a single city-state — a founding act that made him the Athenian equivalent of Romulus for Rome.

The Story

Jason was sent on an impossible quest by his uncle Pelias, who had usurped his father's throne: to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the distant land of Colchis (modern Georgia). Jason assembled a crew of the greatest heroes in Greece — the Argonauts, named after their ship the Argo — including Heracles, Orpheus, and the Dioscuri. After many adventures, they reached Colchis, where the king Aeëtes set Jason a series of deadly tasks. The king's daughter Medea, a powerful sorceress, fell in love with Jason and helped him complete the tasks and steal the Fleece. Their return journey was equally perilous. Jason's later betrayal of Medea — abandoning her to marry a Corinthian princess — led to one of the most tragic endings in Greek mythology.