Heracles and Dionysus

1. Chapter 29 Heracles and Dionysus

2. Heracles or Hercules? Heracles is the Greek version of his name. The Romans called him Hercules, and this form of the name is more common in English. “Heracles,” meaning “Glory of Hera,” seems to have been intended to ward off the anger of Hera, Zeus’ wife, at the result of her husband’s adulterous union with Alcmene, Heracles’ mother.

3. Syncretism Syncretism means that the names and attributes of various gods are mingled, and the rituals and beliefs of different regions become intertwined. A variety of local cults over time became transformed into the worship of Heracles. At Thasos, he was considered a protector of the city, and his worship was blended with that of the Phoenician god Melqart of Tyre. Worshippers at Melqart’s shrine in Tyre referred to the god they were honoring as both “Heracles” and “Melqart,” as if these were names for the same being. The god Melqart actually had characteristics quite different from Heracles: he was a god of navigation, fertility, and prosperity; the founder of the city of Tyre; and the guardian of its orderly ongoing functioning.

4. Rituals Associated with Heracles As a guardian of community life, Heracles was worshipped at a variety of shrines and altars throughout Greece. Typically, his shrine would include a temple, dining facilities, and athletic facilities. Heracles also served Greek youth as a role model. At Athens, Heracles served as a patron and military ideal to the 18-year-old ephebes, who made him a special offering at the ceremony where they cut their hair as a preparation for military service. Heracles was also honored at some important ceremonies that involved people from more than one city, including some of the ceremonies at Eleusis, which drew worshippers from across Greece. After being purified at Eleusis through special ceremonies that came to be called the Lesser Mysteries, Heracles was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. According to a story told by the Greek poet Pindar, Heracles founded the Olympic Games using the payment he received from King Augeas for cleaning his stables in his Fifth Labor.

5. Geography of the Twelve Labors The first six were performed within the peninsula in the lower part of Greece called the Peloponnese. In his second group of labors, Heracles went to Crete to bring back the Cretan bull. Thrace in northeastern Greece for the mares of Diomedes. the land of the Amazons, which was thought to be in Asia, for the belt of Hippolyte. Erythia, an island off the coast of southern Spain, for the cattle of Geryon. Italy, Libya, Egypt, Asia, Arabia, and Gibraltar via a complicated path for the apples of the Hesperides. Laconia, in the Peloponnese once again, for the descent to Hades to bring back Cerberus.

6. Heracles’ Many-Sided Personality Heracles was a benefactor of human beings. He was a culture hero. Heracles had a reputation for medical power and healing. He was a powerful and savage warrior.

7. Heracles’ Many-Sided Personality, 2 He was, by some accounts, a short man, and excessively hairy. He was a burlesque figure devoted to excessive eating and drinking, and other kinds of excesses. Despite his role as a drunken buffoon, Heracles was not stupid. In some of his adventures; he was very canny and functioned as a trickster. Heracles was given to violence. Many of his violent deeds were directed at villains and miscreants. He killed his music teacher Linus. He was driven insane by Hera and killed his wife Megara and their children.

8. Heracles’ Many-Sided Personality, 3 Several stories connect Heracles to the Centaurs, half-civilized creatures who were half-man and half-horse. The Centaur Pholus himself ate his meat raw, but he served roasted meat to Heracles when he was on his way to capture the Erymanthian boar. Pholus, who knew how to welcome and entertain guests, embodied the virtues most valued by the Greeks. He represented the civilized aspect of the centaurs. Old Cheiron, the Centaur, educated Jason and Achilles, as well as teaching natural medicine to Asclepius, the god of medicine. Most of the other Centaurs were wild and savage creatures with unbridled passions and an uncontrollable longing for alcohol. Heracles persuaded Pholus to open a jar of wine, and a fight between all the Centaurs and Heracles ensued. In this fight, Cheiron was shot by one of Heracles’ arrows, and Pholus died accidentally from touching another. The Centaur Nessus was the ferryman at the River Evenus. In carrying Deianeira, Heracles’ wife, across the river, Nessus tried to rape her, and Heracles killed him for it. The dying Nessus gave Deianeira a love potion that later caused the hero a horribly painful death.

9. Heracles’ Many-Sided Personality, 4 One of Heracles’ functions seems to have been to battle death. Stories about Heracles suggest a complex sexuality.

10. What Does It Mean to Say that Hera Drove Heracles Mad? From some Greek myths like the story of Hera’s vengeance against Heracles, it is easy to believe that the gods are all-powerful beings who have humans at their mercy. The Greeks, however, did not view the gods as taking away their freedom or responsibility. In the stories about Heracles killing his guest Iphitos, there is no suggestion that Heracles was not responsible because Hera “made him do it.” Heracles alone had to pay the penalty for his actions.

11. The Birth and Early Life of Heracles Zeus falls in love with Amphitryon’s wife Alcmene. She gives birth to two sons, Heracles and Iphicles. Hera sends two huge serpents to his bed. Thespios arranges that his fifty daughters should go to bed with him.

12. Heracles’ First Marriage and Madness As a prize of valor, Heracles receives from Creon his eldest daughter, Megara, who bears him three sons. After his battle with the Minyans, it comes about that Heracles is struck by madness through the jealousy of Hera, and throws his own children, borne to him by Megara, into the fire, together with two of Iphicles’ children. The Delphic Oracle tells him to settle in Tiryns and serve Eurystheus for twelve years, and to accomplish [ten] labors; and then after the labors were accomplished, he would come to be immortal.

13. Labors Kill the Nemean Lion, a beast fathered by Typhon that was invulnerable to arrows. He walls up its cave and strangles it. Kill the Lernaean hydra, a water serpent. A huge crab came to its assistance; he kills the crab, and gets help from Iolaos. Using brands obtained through Iolaos’ help, he burns out the roots of the hydra’s heads. Eurystheus does not count this labor among the ten because Heracles had the help of Iolaos.

14. Labors, 2 Bring back the Cerynitian hind, which was sacred to Artemis, to Mycenae. He persuades Artemis to let him bring it to Mycenae, after he catches and wounds it. Capture the Erymanthian boar. On the way to perform this labor, Heracles causes the death of his host, the Centaur Pholus, by insisting on drinking wine, as well as the death of the Centaur Cheiron after Prometheus replaces him in suffering.

15. Labors, 3 Clean the stables of the cattle of Augeias in one day. He diverts the courses of the Alpheios and the Peneios Rivers into the yard. Eurystheus does not accept this labor because it was accomplished for pay. Drive away the Stymphalian birds. Athene gives him some bronze castanets that she received from Hephaistos.

16. Labors, 4 Fetch the Cretan bull. Minos replies to his request for assistance by telling him to fight and capture it on his own; he captures it and takes it to Eurystheus. Bring the man-eating mares of Diomedes to Mycenae. They belong to the Bistones, a highly belligerent people in Thrace. Abderos, a beloved of Heracles, is torn apart by the horses and killed. Heracles kills Diomedes and defeats the Bistones. After founding the city of Abdera by the grave of Abderos, Heracles brings the mares back. Eurystheus releases them, and they go to the mountain called Olympus, where they are killed by the wild beasts.

17. Labors, 5 Fetch the belt of Hippolyte. She wants to give it to him, but Hera assumes the likeness of an Amazon and stirs up a fight. He kills Hippolyte and robs her of the belt. Fetch the cattle of Geryon, who is associated with Hades, the god of the dead. Traveling through Europe to fetch the cattle, Heracles kills many savage beasts. At Tartessos, he erects two pillars standing opposite one another at the boundaries of Europe and Libya. The sun offers him a golden cup, which he uses to cross the Ocean. Hera sends a gadfly against the cattle, and they disperse among the foothills of the Thracian mountains. Heracles recovers some of them, drives them toward the Hellespont, but those left behind are wild from that time forth. He blames the River Strymon for his trouble in collecting them and makes it unnavigable by filling it with rocks.

18. Labors, 6 Bring back the Apples of the Hesperides. On the Caucasos he shoots the eagle feeding on the liver of Prometheus. He then sets Prometheus free, and presents Cheiron to Zeus as an immortal being who is willing to die in Prometheus’ place. When Atlas does not want to take the world back on his shoulders, Heracles is ready with a ruse suggested by Prometheus. Capture Cerberos. Pluto tells him to take the beast if he can overpower it without using any of the weapons that he is carrying. Heracles grasps its head in a stranglehold until he has broken its will.

19. Dionysus Like Heracles, Dionysus was the illegitimate son of Zeus and a mortal woman. His mother Semele is destroyed through the wiles of Hera. The stories we have about Dionysus portray him as a newcomer and an outsider who had trouble being accepted into Greek worship. But archeologists have discovered evidence that the worship of Dionysus in Greece goes back to the days of Mycenaean civilization, about 1200 B.C.E. This means that the difficulty of accepting Dionysus must have been psychological and not cultural.

20. The Birth of Dionysus Semele dies of fright, but Zeus snatches her aborted sixth-month child from the fire and sews it into his thigh. When the appropriate time arrives, Zeus brings Dionysus to birth by untying the stitches and hands him over to Hermes, who takes him to Ino and Athamas and persuades them to bring him up as a girl. But Hera in her fury drives them mad. Zeus rescues Dionysus by turning him into a kid, and Hermes gathers him up and takes him to some nymphs who lived at Nysa in Asia.

21. The Nature of Dionysus E. R. Dodds describes Dionysus as follows: “To the Greeks of the classical age, Dionysus was not solely, or even mainly, the god of wine, ... but [of] all the mysterious and uncontrollable tides that ebb and flow in the life of nature.” The Greeks experienced Dionysus not as drunkenness, but as a kind of fervent inspiration, a religious experience in which the worshippers’ instincts were liberated from the bondage of reason and social custom and they “became conscious of a strange new vitality [attributable] to the god’s presence [within].” The ceremonies associated with the god were designed to induce or celebrate this fervent inspiration, as the participants performed ritual dances and experienced day-long sessions of dramatic performances that moved them to bouts of what Aristotle called “pity and fear.”

22. Euripides’ The Bacchae The plot of the play: Dionysus comes to Thebes, a new god demanding worship. The rituals of Dionysus are performed by women called maenads or Bacchants[1] who leave their homes and roam the countryside, drinking wine, dancing, and hunting wild animals and tearing them to pieces as sacrifices to the god. When Dionysus himself appears in Thebes, Pentheus imprisons him. However, Dionysus casts a spell over the worshippers, and they believe that the king is a wild animal, and led by Pentheus’ mother Agave, they tear him to pieces. The ritual of Dionysus, as described in Euripides’ Bacchae, would have seemed scandalous to the Greeks, as Greek women led very sheltered lives. Having them, on their own initiative, leave their homes to establish new rituals in the countryside would seem outrageous. Giving women such power would seem to subvert the order of society. Thus, the mythical account does not accurately reflect what was done in classical Greece to worship Dionysus. However, involvement of women in the god’s rituals was “strikingly frequent,” a characteristic that placed these ceremonies at variance with the rest of Greek society.

23. Rituals Associated with Dionysus The Lenaia Took place in late January or early February and included religious rituals, as well as a procession and dramatic contests. The main ceremony was a torch-light ritual. It involved awakening the young god Dionysus, who was imagined to have slept through the winter. The procession involved wild and boisterous behavior: marchers wore masks representing drunken men and sang obscene songs.

24. Rituals Associated with Dionysus, 2 The Anthestheria This was a festival of the new wine celebrated in late February. The first day of this three-day celebration was called Pithoigia (“opening the wine jars”), and on it the new wine was opened, offered to the god, and sampled. The next day was called Choes, after the Greek name for a nine-pint measure, and was devoted to drinking parties. As at the Lenaia, a procession included hecklers in wagons mocking and reviling passers-by. On the final day, called Chytroi (“pots”), pots of seed and vegetable bran were offered to the dead. In the ceremony, the wife of one of the city officials was offered as a bride to Dionysus in a ceremony that involved acting out the physical consummation of the union.

25. Rituals Associated with Dionysus, 3 The city Dionysia This was celebrated at the end of March and included processions, animal sacrifices, and dramatic performances. By contrast with the other festivals of Dionysus, it was a more dignified and formal event, although like the other festivals, the processions included phalloi. The festival commemorated the arrival in Athens of a particular statue of Dionysus from the Boeotian town of Eleutherai. The arrival of the statue is thought to have represented a political alliance between the two regions. Spectators were awed by elaborate and lavishly presented offerings of loaves, bowls, and animals and entertained by elaborate performances both during the processions and at dramatic competitions that went on for five days. Poets and actors rehearsed throughout the year in preparation for the dramatic competitions at the city Dionysia, which included the presentation of tragedies, comedies, and the dithyramb, a kind of elaborate song performed with accompanying dancing.

26. Rituals Associated with Dionysus, 4 The rural Dionysia These were celebrated in December, on different days in different districts, and tended to be local versions of some of the elements found in the city Dionysia. These festivals were far less formal than the city Dionysia. The Oschophoria This was an autumn festival involving a procession from the temple of Dionysus at Athens to the temple of Athena Skiras at Phaleron. It may have been an older festival of Athena that was refocused to include Dionysus. The procession was led by two men dressed as women and carrying bunches of grapes on the branch (“oschoi”). There followed races between ephebes (young men performing military service), also carrying bunches of grapes, and a banquet. At the banquet, female servers told stories from the life of Theseus, the legendary Athenian hero who killed the Minotaur. The festivities were punctuated by wild cries that combined grief and joy; we are not sure why.

27. Struggles for Recognition After his discovery of the vine, Dionysos is driven mad by Hera and roams around Egypt and Syria. He is initiated into what Apollodorus describes as the rites of Rhea. The worship of the Phrygian mother goddess Cybele became identified with the Greek goddess Rhea. It was with Cybele that Dionysus was usually linked. She was a fertility or vegetation goddess whose worshipers also wandered through the mountains and participated in wild revels. Apollodorus also summarizes the story of Euripides’ The Bacchae for his readers. Dionysus charters a pirate ship with a crew of Tyrrhenians who try in the course of the voyage to sell him. But he changes the mast and oars into snakes and fills the craft with ivy and the sound of flutes; and the pirates go mad and jump into the sea, where they turn into dolphins.