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101-508: Alcide is the French and Italian version of "Alcides", another name for Heracles . Alcide may also refer to: Heracles Heracles ( / ˈ h ɛr ə k l iː z / HERR -ə-kleez ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Ἡρακλῆς , lit.  "glory/fame of Hera "), born Alcaeus ( Ἀλκαῖος , Alkaios ) or Alcides ( Ἀλκείδης , Alkeidēs ), was a divine hero in Greek mythology ,

202-466: A funeral pyre on Mount Oeta , which Poeas , father of Philoctetes , lights. As his body burns, only his immortal side is left. Through Zeus's apotheosis , Heracles rises to Olympus as he dies. No one but Heracles's friend Philoctetes ( Poeas in some versions) would light his funeral pyre (in an alternative version, it is Iolaus who lights the pyre). For this action, Philoctetes or Poeas received Heracles's bow and arrows, which were later needed by

303-524: A "hundred oxen" held on the final night of the Panathenaia. More often than not, the festival providing the month name is minor or obsolete. For instance, the second month, Metageitnion, is named after a cult title of the god Apollo, but there is no trace of a festival bearing the name. The same goes for months 5 and 6, Maimakterion and Poseideon. The calendars of the Ionian cities of Asia Minor (along

404-464: A cave. When he asked whether she knew anything about his horses, she answered, that they were in her own possession, but that she would not give them up, unless he would consent to stay with her for a time. Heracles accepted the request, and became by her the father of Agathyrsus , Gelonus , and Scythes . The last of them became king of the Scythians, according to his father's arrangement, because he

505-543: A century divided into decades. A four-year cycle was important, which must have helped structure a sense of the passing years: at Athens, the festival of the Panathenaia was celebrated on a grander scale every fourth year as the Great Panathenaia, but that was not used as the basis of a dating system. As both narrowly local and cyclical in focus then, the calendar did not provide a means for dating events in

606-433: A consequence of Heracles's refusal to live a simple life, as offered by Amphitryon . It was indicated that he preferred the extravagant violence of the heroic life and that its ghosts eventually manifested in his madness and that the hallucinatory visions defined Heracles's character. A major factor in the well-known tragedies surrounding Heracles is the hatred that the goddess Hera , wife of Zeus , had for him. Heracles

707-580: A fit of madness, induced by Hera, Heracles killed his children and Megara. After his madness had been cured with hellebore by Antikyreus, the founder of Antikyra , he realized what he had done and fled to the Oracle of Delphi . Unbeknownst to him, the Oracle was guided by Hera. He was directed to serve King Eurystheus for ten years and perform any task Eurystheus required of him. Eurystheus decided to give Heracles ten labours, but after completing them, Heracles

808-546: A god, and having finally reconciled with Hera, he got her daughter Hebe as his fourth and final wife. They had two sons together, Alexiares and Anicetus . When Typhon attacked Olympus, all gods transformed into animals and ran terrified to Egypt; Heracles became a fawn. In the Dialogues of the Gods , a satirical work by Lucian of Samosata , Heracles and another recently deified mortal, Asclepius , fight over which gets

909-411: A golden veil Hesione had made. Telamon took Hesione as a war prize and they had a son, Teucer . After Heracles had performed his Labours, gods told him that before he passed into the company of the gods, he should create a colony at Sardinia and make his sons, whom he had with the daughters of Thespius , the leaders of the settlement. When his sons became adults, he sent them together with Iolaus to

1010-468: A long time but Hylas had fallen in love with the nymphs and never showed up again. In other versions, he simply drowned. Either way, the Argo set sail without them. Hesiod 's Theogony and Aeschylus ' Prometheus Unbound both tell that Heracles shot and killed the eagle that tortured Prometheus (which was his punishment by Zeus for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to mortals). Heracles freed

1111-446: A patron deity, contributing to the spread of his cult. There was the case of the royal house of Macedonia, which claimed lineal descent from the hero, primarily for purposes of divine protection and legitimator of actions. The earliest evidence that shows the worship of Heracles in popular cult was in 6th century BCE (121–122 and 160–165) via an ancient inscription from Phaleron. After the 4th century BCE, Heracles became identified with

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1212-638: A sea monster (Greek: kētŏs, Latin: cetus ) to attack Troy . The story is related in several digressions in the Iliad (7.451–53; 20.145–48; 21.442–57) and is found in pseudo-Apollodorus's Bibliotheke (2.5.9). This expedition became the theme of the Eastern pediment of the Temple of Aphaea . Laomedon planned on sacrificing his daughter Hesione to Poseidon in the hope of appeasing him. Heracles happened to arrive (along with Telamon and Oicles ) and agreed to kill

1313-412: A sequence of astronomical events, each with a peg hole beside it. Lines of bare peg holes were used to count the "empty days" between what were taken as the significant celestial events. Often set up in town squares ( agoras ), the tablets put the progression of the year on public display. This system would have been fundamental to an individual's sense of the advancing year, but it barely intersected with

1414-399: A set scheme (such as the popular rhyme "Thirty days hath September..."), the duration of each month was declared just before month's end in an attempt to latch the first of the following month onto the upcoming new moon . The short months of 29 days were known as "hollow" and the ones with 30 days as "full". Each month was divided into three phases of ten days associated with the waxing moon,

1515-474: A snake in each hand and strangled them. He was found by his nurse playing with them on his cot as if they were toys. Astonished, Amphitryon sent for the seer Tiresias , who prophesied an unusual future for the boy, saying he would vanquish numerous monsters. After killing his music tutor Linus with a lyre , he was sent to tend cattle on a mountain by his foster father Amphitryon. Here, according to an allegorical parable , " The Choice of Heracles ", invented by

1616-423: A year: Monthly and annual festivals were not usually allowed to fall on the same days so every festival month had an opening phase with exactly recurrent practices and celebrations while in the body of each month was a unique schedule of festival days. A parallel function of this calendar was the positioning of the perhaps 15 or so forbidden days on which business should not be transacted. Rather than considering

1717-521: Is known to have applied in the 2nd century BC, when the festival calendar was so out of sync with the actual cycles of the moon that the lunisolar date was sometimes given under two headings, one "according to the god", apparently the Moon, and the other "according to the archon ", the festival calendar itself. A third calendar regulating Athenian lives was solar or seasonal. As such, it was fundamental for seasonal activities like farming and sailing. Within

1818-528: Is no sign that they tried to keep the days of the month exactly aligned, as they would have seen no reason to do so. The divide between these neighbouring calendars perhaps reflected the traditional hostility between the two communities. Had the Boeotians been speakers of an Ionic dialect , the one spoken in Athens, there would have been overlap in the names of months. An example is the island of Delos , where

1919-473: Is not clear. However, in 407 BC the two calendars were synchronized to start and end on the same days. Hereafter as described in the 4th century Constitution of the Athenians the civic year was arranged as follows: In years with an extra month intercalated into the festival calendar, the political months were probably lengthened to 39 and 38 days, a method that would have maintained the balance between

2020-468: Is still in the water. Angry, Heracles shoots him with his arrows dipped in the poisonous blood of the Lernaean Hydra . Thinking of revenge, Nessus gives Deianira his blood-soaked tunic before he dies, telling her it will "excite the love of her husband". Several years later, rumor tells Deianira that she has a rival for the love of Heracles. Deianira, remembering Nessus's words, gives Heracles

2121-652: The Anthesteria . While the month-naming festivals of Pyanepsia, Thargelia and Skira were relatively important, some of the grandest celebrations in the life of the city are not recognised in the name of the month. Examples are the Great Dionysia held in Elaphebolion (month 9) and the Panathenaia are only indirectly recognised in Hekatombaion (month 1), named after the hekatombe , the sacrifice of

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2222-495: The Bahariya Oasis dates to 21 BCE. A reassessment of Ptolemy 's descriptions of the island of Malta attempted to link the site at Ras ir-Raħeb with a temple to Heracles, but the arguments are not conclusive. Several ancient cities were named Heraclea in his honor. A very small island close to the island of Lemnos was called Neai (Νέαι), from νέω, which means "I dive/swim", because Heracles swam there. According to

2323-533: The Metonic cycle , was developed in Athens by the astronomers Meton and Euctemon (known to be active in 432 BC), could have been used to pattern the insertion of leap years to keep the lunar and solar years aligned with some accuracy. There is, however, no sign that any such system was in fact used in Athens, whose calendar seems to have been administered on an ad hoc basis. The first function of this calendar

2424-511: The Pleiades rises (an event which elsewhere is set to mark the end of spring). Such a system was part of general Greek tradition, but fitted to local geography and conditions. Hesiod also uses the rising of Arcturus to mark the ending of winter and marks the start of Spring with the coming of the sparrows. The seasons were not viewed by Greeks as dividing the year into four even blocks but rather spring and autumn were shorter tail sections of

2525-586: The Titan from his chains and his torments. Prometheus then made predictions regarding further deeds of Heracles. On his way back to Mycenae from Iberia , having obtained the Cattle of Geryon as his tenth labour , Heracles came to Liguria in North-Western Italy where he engaged in battle with two giants, Albion and Bergion or Dercynus, sons of Poseidon . The opponents were strong; Heracles

2626-551: The club . These qualities did not prevent him from being regarded as a playful figure who used games to relax from his labors and played a great deal with children. By conquering dangerous archaic forces he is said to have "made the world safe for mankind" and to be its benefactor. Heracles was an extremely passionate and emotional individual, capable of doing both great deeds for his friends (such as wrestling with Thanatos on behalf of Prince Admetus , who had regaled Heracles with his hospitality, or restoring his friend Tyndareus to

2727-479: The deification of Heracles himself and of Asclepius there are comprised thirty-eight years, according to Apollodorus the chronicler: and from that point to the deification of Castor and Pollux fifty-three years: and somewhere about this time was the capture of Troy ." Readers with a literalist bent, following Clement's reasoning, have asserted from this remark that, since Heracles ruled over Tiryns in Argos at

2828-458: The 10 sets of public arbitrators, the 10 treasurers of the Delian league and so on.) This decimal ordering extended to the creation of a supplementary calendar with ten months. Each year, each tribe contributed 50 members to the council of 500 ( boule ), which played an important role in the administration of the city. For one tenth of the year, each tribal fifty was on duty, with a third of them in

2929-527: The Athenian month names refer to a festival schedule some hundreds of years out of date. The correlation suggested here between the Athenian months and those of the modern ( Gregorian ) calendar is loose, and, in some years, it might have been off by over a month. The months were 29 or 30 days in length, loosely in alternation, since the Moon orbits the Earth in roughly 29.5 days. However, rather than following

3030-512: The Dryopes "because they gave no heed to justice in their lives". After the death of their king, the Dryopes gave in and offered him Prince Hylas . He took the youth on as his weapons bearer. Years later, Heracles and Hylas joined the crew of the Argo . As Argonauts, they only participated in part of the journey. In Mysia , Hylas was kidnapped by the nymphs of a local spring. Heracles, searched for

3131-635: The Greek legends, the Herculaneum in Italy was founded by him. Several poleis provided two separate sanctuaries for Heracles, one recognizing him as a god, the other only as a hero. Sacrifice was made to him as a hero and as a god within the same festival. This ambiguity helped create the Heracles cult especially when historians (e.g. Herodotus) and artists encouraged worship such as the painters during

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3232-589: The Greeks to defeat Troy in the Trojan War. Philoctetes confronted Paris and shot a poisoned arrow at him. The Hydra poison subsequently led to the death of Paris. The Trojan War, however, continued until the Trojan Horse was used to defeat Troy . According to Herodotus , Heracles lived 900 years before Herodotus's own time (c. 1300 BCE). After his death in the pyre, Heracles ascended to Olympus as

3333-560: The Phoenician God Melqart Oitaeans worshiped Heracles and called him Cornopion (Κορνοπίων) because he helped them get rid of locusts (which they called cornopes ), while the citizens of Erythrae at Mima called him Ipoctonus (ἰποκτόνος) because he destroyed the vine-eating ips (ἀμπελοφάγων ἰπῶν), a kind of cynips wasp, there. Near the town of Bura in Achaea , there was a statue of Heracles on

3434-546: The River Buraicus and an oracle in a cave. People who consulted this oracle first prayed before the statue, then threw four dice from a mound that was always kept ready onto a table. These dice were marked with certain characters, the significance of which was elucidated by an artwork shown in the cave. Because of this town Heracles had the epithet Buraicus (Βουραϊκός). Extraordinary strength, courage , ingenuity, and sexual prowess with both males and females were among

3535-402: The arrangement in the 4th century explained below. From several synchronized datings that survive, it is evident that the political and the festival years did not have to begin or end on the same days. The political new year is attested 15 days either way from the start of the festival year. The system is known from the 420s; whether it had been in place from the beginning of the ten-month system

3636-515: The bloodstained shirt. Lichas, the herald, delivers the shirt to Heracles. However, it is still covered in the Hydra's blood from Heracles's arrows, and this poisons him, tearing his skin and exposing his bones. Before he dies, Heracles throws Lichas into the sea, thinking he was the one who poisoned him (according to several versions, Lichas turns to stone, becoming a rock standing in the sea, named for him). Heracles then uproots several trees and builds

3737-466: The border in Boeotia , the months had different names, and the year even began in midwinter. In Athens, the year began six months later, just after midsummer. Furthermore, while Greek months were supposed to begin with the first sighting of the new moon , it was determined locally and with a degree of variability. In many years, the months in the two communities would have more or less coincided, but there

3838-468: The broad divisions of the seasons, it relied on star risings and settings to mark more precise points in time. Star risings are the days when particular stars or constellations that have been below the horizon during hours of darkness first appear after sunset. Different star risings were keyed to various farm tasks, such as when to harvest: Hesiod in the Works and Days urges the farmer to harvest when

3939-493: The calendar shared four out of twelve month-names with Athens, but not in the same places in the year. There, even though the island was under some degree of Athenian control from around 479 to 314 BC, the year started, as with the Boeotians, at midwinter . Athenians lived under a number of simultaneous calendars that were used to fix days for different purposes. How much each calendar meant to individuals probably depended on how they lived. They may be set out as follows: The year

4040-417: The characteristics commonly attributed to him. Heracles used his wits on several occasions when his strength did not suffice, such as when laboring for the king Augeas of Elis , wrestling the giant Antaeus , or tricking Atlas into taking the sky back onto his shoulders. Together with Hermes he was the patron and protector of gymnasia and palaestrae . His iconographic attributes are the lion skin and

4141-400: The conciliar year was made up of three prytanies of 28 days followed by ten prytanies of 27 days, but there is strong evidence that the first prytany had usually 27 days. (Meritt, 1961: Ch.VII) The political months had no name but were numbered and given in conjunction with the name of the presiding tribe (which, as determined by lot at the expiry of their predecessors' term, gave no clue as to

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4242-439: The council chamber at all times as an executive committee for the state. Their period of office was known as a ' prytany ' or state month. In the 5th century, the calendar was solar-based by using a year of 365 or 366 days and paying no attention at all to the phases of the moon. One likely arrangement is that the ten prytanies were divided between six months of 37 days followed by four months of 36 days. That would be parallel to

4343-550: The day as bridging the two moons or months. Elsewhere in Greece this day was usually called the 30th. Athenian festivals were divided between the 80 or so annually recurring celebrations and a set of monthly holy days clustered around the beginning of each month. They were often the birthdays of gods, the Greeks thinking of birthdays as a monthly rather than a yearly recurrence. Every month, days 1–4 and 6–8 were all sacred to particular gods or divine entities, amounting to some 60 days

4444-566: The dead rang out like cries of birds scattering left and right in horror as on he came like night ... Ancient critics were aware of the problem of the aside that interrupts the vivid and complete description, in which Heracles recognizes Odysseus and hails him, and some modern critics deny that the verse's beginning, in Fagles's translation His ghost I mean ... , was part of the original composition: "once people knew of Heracles' admission to Olympus, they would not tolerate his presence in

4545-410: The festival or state calendars. They were more civic in character and required managing to maintain their coherence with the year of the seasons. The seasonal and sidereal calendar, on the other hand, was immune to interference so Thucydides could date by the rising of Arcturus without having to wade into the confusion of disconnected city-state calendars. The modern calendar, as well as regulating

4646-483: The full moon and the waning moon. The naming of the days was complex. The first day of the month was simply noumenia or new moon, a name used in virtually every Greek calendar. From there the days were numbered up to the 20th day. For the final third of the month the numbering turned around to do a countdown from ten to the last day. Only the middle phase had numbers for the days running higher than 10 and even these were often phrased as "the third over ten" and so forth. In

4747-418: The god Poseidon . More commonly, the god appears in the form of a cult title. (A cult title is the name or aspect under which a god was worshipped at a particular festival.) Examples are Maimakterion, named after Zeus ("the rager") and Metageitnion, after Apollo as helper of colonists . Of all of the months, only the eighth, Anthesterion, was named directly after the major festival celebrated in its month,

4848-424: The ground, month by month and year by year, in the light of immediate concerns, political or military. It was in the control of magistrates , who were not astronomers . How heavyhanded the interference was is controversial. Some scholars believe that if a festival date fell on a day needed for an assembly meeting, an extra day could be inserted by simply repeating the same day name. There is clear evidence that it

4949-491: The immediate year, is part of a system of chronology that allows events to be dated far into the future and the past so a given date includes day, month and year. By contrast, the Attic calendar had little interest in ordering the sequence of years. As in other Greek cities, the name of one of the yearly magistrates, at Athens known as the eponymous archon , was used to identify the year in relation to others. The sequence of years

5050-465: The infant Heracles, but he was taken up and brought to Hera by his half-sister Athena , who played an important role as protectress of heroes. Hera did not recognize Heracles and nursed him out of pity . Heracles suckled so strongly that he caused Hera pain, and she pushed him away. Her milk sprayed across the heavens and there formed the Milky Way. Athena brought the infant back to his mother, and he

5151-617: The island. This is described in Sophocles 's Trachiniae and in Ovid 's Metamorphoses Book IX. Having wrestled and defeated Achelous , god of the Acheloos river, Heracles takes Deianira as his wife. Travelling to Tiryns , a centaur , Nessus , offers to help Deianira across a fast flowing river while Heracles swims it. However, Nessus is true to the archetype of the mischievous centaur and tries to steal Deianira away while Heracles

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5252-513: The joy in the mysteries in the sequence of cult rituals. Also, like the case of Apollo, the cult of Heracles had been sustained through the years by absorbing local cult figures such as those who share the same nature. He was also constantly invoked as a patron for men, especially the young ones. For example, he was considered the ideal in warfare so he presided over gymnasiums and the ephebes or those men undergoing military training. There were ancient towns and cities that also adopted Heracles as

5353-400: The king and his sons, except for one: Iole's brother Iphitus . Heracles killed the king and his sons—excluding Iphitus—and abducted Iole. Iphitus became Heracles's best friend. However, once again, Hera drove Heracles mad and he threw Iphitus over the city wall to his death. Once again, Heracles purified himself through three years of servitude—this time to Queen Omphale of Lydia . Omphale

5454-476: The kings of Sparta and Macedon . Yet another episode of his female affairs that stands out was when he carried away the oxen of Geryon , he also visited the country of the Scythians . Once there, while asleep, his horses suddenly disappeared. When he woke and wandered about in search of them, he came into the country of Hylaea . He then found the dracaena of Scythia (sometimes identified as Echidna ) in

5555-595: The labours: the cleansing of the Augean stables, because Heracles was going to accept pay for the labour; and the killing of the Lernaean Hydra, as Heracles's nephew, Iolaus , had helped him burn the stumps of the multiplying heads. Eurystheus set two more tasks, fetching the Golden Apples of Hesperides and capturing Cerberus . In the end, with ease, the hero successfully performed each added task, bringing

5656-481: The later Roman emperors , in particular Commodus and Maximian , often identified themselves. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well. Many popular stories were told of his life, the most famous being The Twelve Labours of Heracles ; Alexandrian poets of the Hellenistic age drew his mythology into a high poetic and tragic atmosphere. His figure, which initially drew on Near Eastern motifs such as

5757-423: The lion-fight, was widely known. Heracles was the greatest of Hellenic chthonic heroes, but unlike other Greek heroes, no tomb was identified as his. Heracles was both hero and god, as Pindar says heros theos ; at the same festival sacrifice was made to him, first as a hero, with a chthonic libation , and then as a god, upon an altar: thus he embodies the closest Greek approach to a " demi-god ". The core of

5858-416: The meetings were bunched slightly toward the end of the month and made to dodge especially the larger festivals. A date under this calendar might run "the 33rd day in the 3rd prytany, that of the tribe Erechtheis", the style used in Athenian state documents (surviving only as inscriptions ). Sometimes, however, a dating in terms of the festival calendar is added as well. The Attic calendar was determined on

5959-423: The monster if Laomedon would give him the horses received from Zeus as compensation for Zeus's kidnapping Ganymede . Laomedon agreed. Heracles killed the monster, but Laomedon went back on his word. Accordingly, in a later expedition, Heracles and his followers attacked Troy and sacked it. Then they slew all Laomedon's sons present there save Podarces , who was renamed Priam, who saved his own life by giving Heracles

6060-426: The month as a simple duration of thirty days, the three-part numbering scheme focuses on the Moon itself. In particular the waning days 10–2 and the waxing days 2–10 frame the crucial moment where the moon vanishes and then reappears. A date under this scheme might be "the third (day) of Thargelion waning", meaning the 28th day of Thargelion. To summarise the days with special names. This strange juxtapositioning of

6161-461: The months were named after the main agricultural activity practised in that month. Many Athenian festivals had links with different stages of the agricultural cycle, such as festivals of planting or harvest. It perhaps added to the need to keep lunar and solar calendars roughly aligned, though this was not always achieved. The farming year, however, was not the primary focus of the calendar. At Athens month 6, Poseideon, took its name directly from

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6262-416: The most prestigious seat on the table of the gods, each arguing that they are the one who deserve it. Zeus intervenes, and rules in favour of Asclepius, reasoning that the best seat should go to the one who became a god first. Heracles also appears to Philoctetes , stranded and abandoned by the other Greeks on Lemnos island, and through his deus ex machina intervention, Philoctetes is convinced to join

6363-465: The new year (in relation to a Gregorian date) could move by up to a month. This linking of solar and lunar years defines the calendar as lunisolar . Because 12 lunar months are approximately 11 days shorter than a solar year, using a purely lunar calendar (such as the Islamic one) removes any relation between the months and the seasons, causing the months to creep backwards over the seasons. By tying

6464-599: The night Heracles and Iphicles were to be born, Hera, knowing of her husband Zeus's adultery, persuaded Zeus to swear an oath that the child born that night to a member of the House of Perseus would become High King. Hera did this knowing that while Heracles was to be born a descendant of Perseus, so too was Eurystheus . Once the oath was sworn, Hera hurried to Alcmene's dwelling and slowed the birth of Heracles and Iphicles by forcing Ilithyia , goddess of childbirth, to sit cross-legged with her clothing tied in knots, thereby causing

6565-582: The other Greeks at Troy , where he kills Paris with Heracles's arrows. In Christian circles, a Euhemerist reading of the widespread Heracles cult was attributed to a historical figure who had been offered cult status after his death. Thus Eusebius , Preparation of the Gospel (10.12), reported that Clement could offer historical dates for Heracles as a king in Argos: "from the reign of Heracles in Argos to

6666-515: The overarching seasons, summer and winter. The divisions could be formalised by using star risings or settings in relation to the equinoxes : for instance, winter is defined in one medical text as the period between the setting of the Pleiades and the spring. The older tradition as seen in Hesiod's Works and Days was extended by astronomical research to the creation of star calendars known as parapegmas . They were stone or wooden tablets listing

6767-494: The same roof; one of them was his wife Deianeira . In the works of Euripides involving Heracles, his actions were partly driven by forces outside rational human control. By highlighting the divine causation of his madness, Euripides problematized Heracles's character and status within the civilized context. This aspect is also highlighted in Hercules Furens where Seneca linked the hero's madness to an illusion and

6868-465: The same time that Eurystheus ruled over Mycenae , and since at about this time Linus was Heracles's teacher, one can conclude, based on Jerome 's date—in his universal history , his Chronicon —given to Linus's notoriety in teaching Heracles in 1264 BCE, that Heracles's death and deification occurred 38 years later, in approximately 1226 BCE. During the course of his life, Heracles married four times. An episode of his female affairs that stands out

6969-408: The same time, a case of heteropaternal superfecundation , where a woman carries twins sired by different fathers). Thus, Heracles's very existence proved at least one of Zeus's many illicit affairs, and Hera often conspired against Zeus's mortal offspring as revenge for her husband's infidelities. His twin mortal brother, son of Amphitryon, was Iphicles , father of Heracles's charioteer Iolaus . On

7070-477: The son of Zeus and Alcmene , and the foster son of Amphitryon . He was a descendant and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus ) of Perseus . He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae ( Ἡρακλεῖδαι ), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West , he is known as Hercules , with whom

7171-524: The sophist Prodicus (c. 400 BCE) and reported in Xenophon 's Memorabilia 2.1.21–34, he was visited by two allegorical figures—Vice and Virtue—who offered him a choice between a pleasant and easy life or a severe but glorious life: he chose the latter. This was part of a pattern of "ethicizing" Heracles over the 5th century BCE. Later, in Thebes , Heracles married King Creon 's daughter, Megara . In

7272-411: The start of their year to the summer solstice Athenians forced the months to relate, with some elasticity, to the seasons. In order to deal with the 11-day difference between 12 lunar months and 1 solar cycle, when it was judged that the months had slid back enough (roughly every three years), an extra month was inserted (" intercalated "), leading to a leap year with about 384 days in it. The extra month

7373-487: The story of Heracles has been identified by Walter Burkert as originating in Neolithic hunter culture and traditions of shamanistic crossings into the netherworld. It is possible that the myths surrounding Heracles were based on the life of a real person or several people whose accomplishments became exaggerated with time. Heracles's role as a culture hero, whose death could be a subject of mythic telling (see below),

7474-400: The system as a whole. Further, even during the well-sourced 5th and 4th centuries BC, the calendar underwent changes, not all perfectly understood. As such, any account given of it must be a tentative reconstruction. The Attic calendar was an exclusively local phenomenon, used to regulate the internal affairs of the Athenians, with little relevance to the outside world. For example, just across

7575-463: The throne of Sparta after he was overthrown) and being a terrible enemy who would wreak horrible vengeance on those who crossed him, as Augeas, Neleus , and Laomedon all found out to their cost. There was also a coldness to his character, which was demonstrated by Sophocles's depiction of the hero in The Trachiniae . Heracles threatened his marriage with his desire to bring two women under

7676-494: The time of the Peisistratos , who often presented Heracles entering Olympus in their works. Some sources explained that the cult of Heracles persisted because of the hero's ascent to heaven and his suffering, which became the basis for festivals, ritual, rites, and the organization of mysteries. There is the observation, for example, that sufferings ( pathea ) gave rise to the rituals of grief and mourning, which came before

7777-401: The time of year). The days were numbered with a straightforward sequence, running from 1 to the total number of days for that month. One of the main roles of the civic calendar was to position the four assembly meetings to be held each prytany . If possible, assembly meetings were not held on festival days, including the monthly festival days clustered at the start of each month. As a result,

7878-456: The total number of labours up to twelve. Not all versions and writers give the labours in the same order. The Bibliotheca (2.5.1–2.5.12) gives the following order: After completing these tasks, Heracles fell in love with Princess Iole of Oechalia . King Eurytus of Oechalia promised his daughter, Iole , to whoever could beat his sons in an archery contest. Heracles won but Eurytus abandoned his promise. Heracles's advances were spurned by

7979-411: The tribes were never abolished, one of the key reforms at the creation of democracy after 506 BC was to distribute citizens under a new system of ten tribes to try to ensure even participation across the whole community. From then on, ten became a kind of hallmark number for the democracy, as so much citizen activity was done through the ten tribes. (For instance, the 10 generals leading the 10 regiments,

8080-696: The tribes. Evidence, however, is lacking. In the Macedonian period (307/306 – 224/223 BC), with twelve tribes (and the prytanies), evidence shows that the month and the prytany were not coterminous and that, in general, the six first prytanies had 30 days and the last six had 29 days and that in an intercalary year, the 384 days are equally subdivided. (Meritt, 1961: Ch.VI) In the Thirteen Phylai period (224/223 – 201/200 BC), it would be expected that in an intercalary year prytanies and months must have been fairly evenly matched and that in an ordinary year,

8181-508: The twins to be trapped in the womb. Meanwhile, Hera caused Eurystheus to be born prematurely, making him High King in place of Heracles. She would have permanently delayed Heracles's birth had she not been fooled by Galanthis , Alcmene's servant, who lied to Ilithyia, saying that Alcmene had already delivered the baby. Upon hearing this, she jumped in surprise, loosing the knots and inadvertently allowing Alcmene to give birth to Heracles and Iphicles. Fear of Hera's revenge led Alcmene to expose

8282-452: The two days called the tenth, the earlier and the later, further highlighted the shift into the moon's waning phase. When a month was to last 29 instead of 30 days (a "hollow" month), the last day of the month ("the old and new") was pulled back by one day. That is to say, the "second day of the waning month" (the 29th in straight sequence) was renamed as month's end. As Ionians, the Athenians had always been divided into four tribes. Although

8383-475: The underworld", remarks Friedrich Solmsen , noting that the interpolated verses represent a compromise between conflicting representations of Heracles. The ancient Greeks celebrated the festival of the Heracleia , which commemorated the death of Heracles, on the second day of the month of Metageitnion (which would fall in late July or early August). What is believed to be an Egyptian Temple of Heracles in

8484-418: The victim of Hera's jealousy, made her promise that, if Heracles executed twelve great works in the service of Eurystheus, he should become immortal. In the play Herakles by Euripides , Heracles is driven to madness by Hera and kills his children after his twelve labours. Despite the difficulty, Heracles accomplished these tasks, but Eurystheus in the end did not accept the success the hero had with two of

8585-413: The western coastline of modern Turkey) often share month names with Athens. For instance, at Miletos four of the same month names were in use, namely Thargelion, Metageitnion, Boedromion and Pyanepsion, and the last of these even occupied the same position as month four in both communities. Traditionally, these Ionian cities were founded by colonists from Attica (perhaps around 1050 BC). It may be then that

8686-447: The wings of the month, the numbered days ran 2–10 and then 10–2. Days in these sections were distinguished from each other by adding the participle "waxing" and "waning" to the month name. In the centre of the month with its unambiguous numbering there was no need for this, though later the term "of the middling month" was used. The final day of the month was called henē kai nea , "the old and the new". Peculiar to Athens, this name presents

8787-540: Was a queen or princess of Lydia . As penalty for a murder, imposed by Xenoclea , the Delphic Oracle , Heracles was to serve as her slave for a year. He was forced to do women's work and to wear women's clothes, while she wore the skin of the Nemean Lion and carried his olive-wood club. After some time, Omphale freed Heracles and married him. Some sources mention a son born to them who is variously named. It

8888-578: Was accepted into the Olympian Pantheon during Classical times. This created an awkwardness in the encounter with Odysseus in the episode of Odyssey XI, called the Nekuia , where Odysseus encounters Heracles in Hades : And next I caught a glimpse of powerful Heracles— His ghost I mean: the man himself delights in the grand feasts of the deathless gods on high ... Around him cries of

8989-437: Was achieved by repeating an existing month so that the same month name was used twice in a row. The sixth month, Poseideon, is most frequently mentioned as the month that was repeated; however months 1, 2, 7, and 8 (Hekatombaiōn, Metageitniōn, Gameliōn, and Anthesteriōn) are also attested as being doubled. Various cycles were in existence for working out exactly which years needed to add a thirteenth month. A nineteen-year cycle,

9090-473: Was at that time that the cercopes , mischievous wood spirits, stole Heracles's weapons. He punished them by tying them to a stick with their faces pointing downward. While walking through the wilderness, Heracles was set upon by the Dryopes . In Apollonius of Rhodes 's Argonautica , it is recalled that Heracles had mercilessly slain their king, Theiodamas , over one of the latter's bulls, and made war upon

9191-549: Was banned, decided to freeze the calendar to add some extra days of war. However, their allies rejected the rearrangement and went home. Aristophanes ' Clouds , a comedy from 423 BC, contains a speech whose complaint is brought from the Moon: the Athenians have been playing round with the months, "running them up and down" so that human activity and the divine order are completely out of kilter: "When you should be holding sacrifices, instead you are torturing and judging." A situation

9292-502: Was cheated by Eurystheus when he added two more, resulting in the Twelve Labors of Heracles. If he succeeded, he would be purified of his sin and, as myth says, he would become a god, and be granted immortality. Other traditions place Heracles's madness at a later time and relate the circumstances differently. In some traditions, there was only a divine reason for Heracles's twelve labours: Zeus, in his desire not to leave Heracles

9393-555: Was done later. In Athens in 271 BC, just before the Great Dionysia , four days were inserted between Elaphebolion 9 and 10, putting the calendar on hold. Presumably, it was to gain extra rehearsal time for the festival with its performances of tragedy and comedy . A similar story comes from the 5th century BC but at Argos : the Argives, launching a punitive expedition in the shadow of the holy month of Karneios when fighting

9494-496: Was his stay at the palace of Thespius , king of Thespiae , who wished him to kill the Lion of Cithaeron . As a reward, the king offered him the chance to perform sexual intercourse with all fifty of his daughters in one night. Heracles complied and they all became pregnant and all bore sons. This is sometimes referred to as his Thirteenth Labour. Many of the kings of ancient Greece traced their lines to one or another of these, notably

9595-614: Was in a difficult position so he prayed to his father Zeus for help. Under the aegis of Zeus, Heracles won the battle. It was this kneeling position of Heracles when he prayed to his father Zeus that gave the name Engonasin ( "Εγγόνασιν" , derived from "εν γόνασιν"), meaning "on his knees" or "the Kneeler", to the constellation known as Heracles's constellation . The story, among others, is described by Dionysius of Halicarnassus . Before Homer 's Trojan War, Heracles had made an expedition to Troy and sacked it. Previously, Poseidon had sent

9696-430: Was matched to a list of names that could be consulted. Instead of citing a numbered year, one could locate a year in time by saying that some event occurred "when X. was archon". That allowed the years to be ordered back in time for a number of generations into the past, but there was no way of dating forward beyond ordinary human reckoning (as in expressions such as "ten years from now"). There was, for instance, no use of

9797-401: Was meant to begin with the first sighting of the new moon after the summer solstice . Ideally, the solstice would occur toward the end of Skirophorion, the final month of the year. The new year would then begin on the day after the first sliver of the new moon was seen (or presumed to be seen). However, because the relation of these two events, solstice and new moon, is variable, the date of

9898-430: Was subsequently raised by his parents. The child was originally given the name Alcides by his parents; it was only later that he became known as Heracles. He was renamed Heracles in an unsuccessful attempt to mollify Hera, with Heracles meaning Hera's "pride" or "glory". He and his twin were just eight months old when Hera sent two giant snakes into the children's chamber. Iphicles cried from fear, but his brother grabbed

9999-485: Was the only one among the three brothers that was able to manage the bow which Heracles had left behind and to use his father's girdle. Dionysius of Halicarnassus writes that Heracles and Lavinia, daughter of Evander , had a son named Pallas. Metageitnion Although relatively abundant, the evidence for the Attic calendar is still patchy and often contested. As it was well known in Athens and of little use outside Attica, no contemporary source set out to describe

10100-432: Was the son of the affair Zeus had with the mortal woman Alcmene . When Zeus desired Alcmene, he decided to make one night last three by ordering Helios , the god of the sun, not to rise for three days, so he would have more time with Alcmene. Zeus made love to her after disguising himself as her husband, Amphitryon , home early from war (Amphitryon did return later the same night, and Alcmene became pregnant with his son at

10201-543: Was to set the days for the religious festivals . In a county fair role, they encompassed a much broader range of activities than the word "religious" suggests and were central to the life of the city. The Athenian months were named after gods and festivals. In this the calendar differed from the Mesopotamian models that lie behind all Greek lunar calendars. In the Sumerian and Babylonian prototypes, for instance,

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