Heracles

“Human misery must somewhere have a stop:

There is no wind that always blows a storm;

Great good fortune comes to failure in the end.

All is change; all yields its place and goes;

To persevere, trusting in what hopes he has,

Is courage in a man. The coward despairs.”

Amphitryon advises Megara to cling to hope that Heracles may come back to save them, referring to the vicissitudes inherent in human fortunes (a common theme in ancient Greek literature and thought). All humans must suffer, Amphitryon explains, but good fortune always eventually gives way to bad fortune, and vice versa. This flux is what characterizes human existence, and because human fortunes are always in flux, Amphitryon concludes that the chief component of “courage” is perseverance—that is, enduring the necessary suffering until one’s fortunes improve.

“Because of this,

You say, the sons of Heracles should live—

A man who, coward in everything else,

Made his reputation fighting beasts,

Who never buckled shield upon his arm,

Never came near a spear, but held a bow,

The coward’s weapon, ready to run away?

The bow is no proof of manly courage;

No, your real man stands firm in the ranks

And dares to face the gash the spear may make.”

Lycus, somewhat surprisingly, argues that Heracles—perhaps the most famous of all ancient Greek heroes—is in fact a coward, pointing out that the bow, Heracles’s weapon of choice, is a long-range weapon and therefore a coward’s weapon. Lycus’s arguments are not disinterested, since Heracles is Lycus’s rival, and are thus to some extent flawed. At the same time, the Heracles who does eventually come onstage is a somewhat surprising iteration of the familiar hero: Usually represented as a bold and even reckless strongman, the Heracles of Euripides’s play exhibits a comfort with stealth and deceit that is more commonly associated with “trickster” heroes such as Odysseus.

“No more can I praise Hellas, nor be still,

Finding her so craven toward my son:

With fire, spears, and armor she should have come

To help these boys in gratitude to him,

For all his labors clearing land and sea.”

Amphitryon rebukes all of Hellas (Greece) along with Thebes for their ingratitude to Heracles, whose labors have civilized the world by clearing it of ferocious monsters such as the Nemean Lion and the Hydra. His rebuke develops the interrelated motifs of friendship and strength: Those who have the strength to help Heracles’s family—that is, the combined cities of Hellas, who have all benefited from Heracles’s deeds—have failed to do so, showing that they are not true friends.

“I love my children. How [could I] not love these boys

Born of my labors? And I think that death

Is terrible. And yet how base a thing it is

When a man will struggle with necessity!

We have to die.”

Megara recognizes that their situation is hopeless, in contrast with Amphitryon, who holds on to the hope that Heracles will come to rescue them. For Amphitryon, to despair of hope is cowardice, but in these lines Megara puts forward a different view: to fight against necessity is “base,” and if one must die, it is best to at least die with dignity.

“For nothing, then, O Zeus, you shared my wife!

In vain we called you partner in my son!

Your love then was much less than we had thought;

And I, mere man, am nobler than you, great god—

I did not betray the sons of Heracles.

As Heracles’s family prepare themselves for death, Amphitryon scathingly attacks Zeus for abandoning him even though he had “shared” his wife with him to beget Heracles. Unlike Zeus, who has abandoned Heracles’s children even though he has the power to help them, Amphitryon has stayed with them even though he is weak and powerless. The contrast leads Amphitryon to the conclusion that he, a “mere man,” is more just than Zeus, who is a god—a meditation on the relationship between human beings and gods, one of the play’s key themes.

“And so I sing of him

Who went in darkness underground—

Be he the son of Zeus,

Be he Amphitryon’s—

Of him I sing, a dirge of praise,

A crown of song upon his labors.

For of noble deeds the praises are

The glory of the dead.”

The Chorus, believing Heracles to be dead, lavishly introduce a song celebrating his deeds, which, like Amphitryon (and unlike Lycus), they present as the deeds of a hero. Heracles’s labors, as presented by the Chorus, have civilized the world. The Chorus, also like Amphitryon, emphasize Heracles’s double paternity as son of both the god Zeus and the mortal Amphitryon. This double paternity contributes to the duality of Heracles’s nature, and culminates with Heracles’s rejection of his divine paternity at the end of the play.

“Our lives, old friends, are but a little thing,

So let them run as sweetly as you can,

And give no thought to grief from day to night.

For time is not concerned to save our hopes,

But hurries on its business, and is gone.

You see in me a man who once had fame,

Who did great deeds; but fortune in one day

Has snatched it from me as though it were a feather.

Great wealth, great reputation! I know no man

With whom they stay.”

As he says goodbye to the Chorus and prepares to be executed, Amphitryon reflects on the brevity of human life—a popular theme in ancient Greek literature. Just as life is short and fleeting, so are human qualities and attributes such as wealth and fame, which, as Amphitryon highlights, are transient. Human beings, in short, are helpless victims of fate, a lesson that will be exemplified above all in the fate of Heracles, who will be driven by his fate to kill his family in the second part of the play.

“Or is this bravery,

To do Eurystheus’ orders and contend

With lions and Hydras, and not to struggle

For my children’s lives? If so, from this time forth,

Call me no more ‘Heracles the victor.’”

These lines, in which Heracles expresses his resolve to save his family from Lycus, reveal a great deal about Heracles’s values. For Heracles, the fantastical labors he performed for Eurystheus (contending “with lions and Hydras”) are less important and less brave than the universal responsibility every parent has to protect their children. By declaring that he has no claim to the title of “victor” if he fails to rescue his family, Heracles demonstrates that he prioritizes familial and parental duty over personal fame.

“Here all mankind is equal:

Rich and poor alike, they love their children.

With wealth distinctions come: some possess it,

Some do not. But all mankind loves its children.

Heracles proclaims love of one’s children as a universal quality shared by all human beings; Clearly he himself loves his own children and views their protection as his foremost duty. For Heracles, this love of one’s children is more important than superficial societal distinctions such as wealth, and it seemingly follows from this—at least for Heracles—that one’s children are more important than qualities such as wealth. There is a grim irony in these lines too, however, for—as an ancient audience would have known—Heracles is soon going to be driven by madness to kill the very children whom he loves so much.

“Youth I long for always.

But old age lies on my head,

A weight more heavy than Aetna’s rocks;

Darkness hides

The light from my eyes.

Had I the wealth of an Asian king,

Or a palace crammed with gold,

Both would I give for youth,

Loveliest in wealth,

In poverty, loveliest.

But old age I loathe: ugly,

Murderous. Let the waves take it

So it comes no more to the homes

And cities of men! Let the wind

Whirl it away forever!”

The Chorus preface their praise of Heracles’s courage and strength with a lengthy deprecation of old age. Their juxtaposition of hateful old age and “loveliest” youth is a motif explored throughout the play, with the characters and Chorus consistently valuing youth over other transient things such as wealth and fame. The process of aging is, for the Chorus, one example of the cruelty of fate and the gods, in large part because of the weakness that comes with age. However, there is a touch of irony here, as the play will soon reveal that youth and strength can be an evil too, for it is precisely Heracles’s strength that ultimately destroys him.

“O marriage-bed two bridegrooms shared!

One was man; the other, Zeus,

Who entered in the bridal bed

And with Alcmene lay.

How true, O Zeus, that marriage

Proves to be! Your part therein,

Against all doubt, is proven true!

For time at last has clearly shown the strength

Of Heracles the hero.”

The Chorus views Heracles’s heroic deeds as proof of his divine birth: Only the son of Zeus, the Chorus reasons, can accomplish what Heracles has accomplished. The overt joyfulness of these lines belies the sinister consequences that Heracles will suffer as a result of his parentage, for Hera, jealous of her husband Zeus’s affair with the mortal Alcmene, is soon going to cause Heracles to kill his family—an act that, albeit in a different way, supplies further proof of Heracles’s divine parentage.

“Let him learn what Hera’s anger is,

And what is mine. For the gods are nothing,

And men prevail, if this one man escape.”

As she gives Madness her cruel orders—to drive Heracles mad so that he kills his family—Iris represents the vicious, merciless, and arbitrary aspect of the Greek gods. Iris alludes to “Hera’s anger,” and even identifies with this anger herself. Iris also construes the opposition between gods and men as a hostile one, a kind of contest reflected in the war between Hera and Heracles, thus encouraging Euripides’s audience to compare and contrast the behavior of human beings and of gods as they are represented in the play.

“O city, mourn! Your flower

Is cut down, the son of Zeus.

O Hellas, mourn! You have lost

Your savior! He dances now

To the fatal pipes of madness!”

The Chorus, seeing what is to happen to Heracles and his family, sing a dirge for him, referring to him as the “savior” not only of their city but of all of Greece. After all, Heracles’s achievements have benefited and civilized the entire Greek world. As seen through the eyes of the Chorus, this Heracles the savior is entirely undeserving of the fate that is to befall him.

“Suddenly he changed:

His eyes rolled and bulged from their sockets,

And the veins stood out, gorged with blood, and froth

Began to trickle down his bearded chin.”

The Messenger gives a gruesome description of the physical symptoms of Heracles’s madness, highlighting even more strongly the sharp transformation in Heracles’s character: Heracles’s internal transformation from sane to mad is accompanied by a parallel physical transformation. The Messenger, notably, says nothing about the personification Madness who has just left the stage, suggesting that the intervention of this divinity, while very real, is not itself necessarily visible to all mortals. The absence of the divinity from the scene, in turn, makes Heracles’s change and subsequent actions seem inexplicable to the Messenger.

“I do not know

One man alive more miserable than this.”

The Messenger concludes his speech by acknowledging the misery of Heracles, whom he has just witnessed killing his wife and children. The pathos of Heracles’s new state of misery is heightened by the fact that just moments before he could be regarded as fortunate, having rescued his family from his enemy Lycus. Heracles’s misery thus demonstrates the vicissitudes of fortune, an important theme in the play.

“O Zeus, why have you hated him so much,

Your own son? Why launched him on this sea of grief?”

The Chorus takes up again the criticism of Zeus—and the rest of the gods—that has run through much of the play. Zeus has not only abandoned his son Heracles to the mercy of mortal enemies such as Lycus, he has also turned a blind eye as Hera caused him to suffer terrible grief and heartbreak. Such meditations on the callousness of the gods set the stage for the theological debate that will soon ensue between Heracles and Theseus in the Exodus.

“AMPHITRYON. You were mad. Your questions ask for grief.

HERACLES. And am I too the murderer of my wife?

AMPHITRYON. All this was the work of your hand alone.

HERACLES. O black night of grief which covers me!

AMPHITRYON. It is because of this you see me weep.

HERACLES. Did I ruin all my house in my madness?

AMPHITRYON. I know but this: everything you have is grief.”

After Heracles’s madness has subsided, Amphitryon and Heracles both mourn Heracles’s misfortune, which is both self-inflicted (as it was Heracles’s “hand” that did the deed) and god-sent (since it was Hera who caused Heracles’s madness). The sharp vicissitudes of fortune are put on display in this exchange: Having just rescued his family and saved his home from Lycus, Heracles has been driven by the gods to murder the wife and children he just saved, thus becoming the “ruin” of his house. Neither Heracles nor Amphitryon are able to glimpse an end to Heracles’s grief, which they portray as a kind of all-encompassing blackness. Amphitryon, so hopeful in the first part of the play, is now defeated, and it will be left for Heracles’s friend Theseus to comfort and encourage the fallen hero.

“This is courage in a man:

To bear unflinchingly what heaven sends.”

The theme of courage and perseverance, first introduced by Amphitryon in the Prologue, is taken up again in the Exodus, this time by the character of Theseus. As Theseus reminds the devastated Heracles, courage means enduring even the most terrible of suffering, and for this reason Heracles should choose to live on rather than kill himself.

“THESEUS. What will you do? Where does your anger run?

HERACLES. To death: to go back whence I came, beneath the earth.

THESEUS. These are the words of an ordinary man.

HERACLES. Will you, who did not suffer, preach to me?

THESEUS. Is this that Heracles who endured so much?

HERACLES. Not this much. Even endurance has an end.”

This poignant line-for-line exchange (called a “stichomythia” in Greek) between Heracles and Theseus continues to explore the theme of courage and endurance. For Theseus, it is the mark of “an ordinary man” to choose to give up or die rather than to persevere—and Heracles, as a half-divine hero, is no ordinary man. Although Heracles is initially hesitant to accept such reasoning, saying that there is a limit to even what he can suffer, he is ultimately persuaded by Theseus to live on.

“When a house is built on poor foundations,

Then its descendants are the heirs of grief.

Then Zeus—whoever Zeus may be—begot me

For Hera’s hatred. Take no offense, old man,

For I count you my father now, not Zeus.”

In these lines, Heracles traces his misfortunes and his suffering to his lineage, reasoning that he has inherited grief because of his own “poor foundations.” Since he was born of Zeus’s relationship with a mortal woman, Heracles is now hated by Hera. Disgusted by this injustice, Heracles rejects his own divinity, telling Amphitryon that “I count you my father now, not Zeus.” In rejecting the divine half of his parentage, Heracles fully embraces his humanity instead.

“Fate exempts no man; all humans suffer,

And so the gods too, unless the poets lie.

Do not the gods commit adultery?

Have they not cast their fathers into chains,

In pursuit of power? Yet all the same,

Despite their crimes, they live upon Olympus.

How dare you then, mortal that you are,

To protest your fate, when the gods do not?”

Seeking to convince Heracles to endure his grief and live on, Theseus argues that human beings and gods alike have no choice but to submit to “fate.” Theseus represents the gods as highly anthropomorphic—that is, as exhibiting human qualities and behavior, even criminal or immoral behaviors such as adultery, fighting, and ambition. Theseus’s anthropomorphic view of the gods was well-supported by traditional mythology and was widely accepted by the ancient Greeks, but by Euripides’s time, many thinkers and philosophers were becoming increasingly troubled by the uncompromising anthropomorphism of these gods of myth and literature.

“But I do not believe the gods commit

Adultery, or bind each other in chains.

I never did believe it; I never shall;

Nor that one god is tyrant of the rest.

If god is truly god, he is perfect,

Lacking nothing. Those are poets’ wretched lies.”

Heracles’s rebuttal of Theseus’s argument about the anthropomorphism of the gods echoes ideas adopted by many thinkers of Euripides’s time, putting forward the idea that the gods cannot be cruel and tyrannical but must be “perfect / Lacking nothing” in order to be truly divine. This idea, however, seems less convincing when viewed solely within the context of the play itself, since the gods were actually represented onstage behaving in a way that is very far from perfect. Most important of all, Heracles himself earlier accused the goddess Hera of being the cause of his downfall. Nevertheless, Heracles’s lines represent an important philosophical argument against the traditional anthropomorphic view of the gods; his speech here also reinforces his denunciation of his own divinity in the Exodus.

“Even in my misery I asked myself,

Would it not be cowardice to die?

The man who cannot bear up under fate

Could never face the weapons of a man.

I shall prevail against death. I shall go

To your city. I accept with thanks your countless gifts.

For countless were the labors I endured;

Never yet have I refused, never yet

Have I wept, and never did I think

That I should come to this: tears in my eyes.

But now, I see, I must serve necessity.”

These lines mark the turning point at which Heracles concludes that it would be cowardice to kill himself and that, as a brave man and a hero, his only choice is to live on and endure his grief. In choosing to persevere, Heracles also undergoes a change in self-presentation and identity, denying his divinity and embracing his humanity. Heracles realizes that his earlier trials are nothing compared to the suffering, grief, and shame he must now endure, but he also realizes that as a mortal he must “bear up under fate” and “serve necessity.”