Greece's greatest hero was named for the goddess who hated him
Heracles means glory of Hera, yet Hera spent his whole life trying to ruin him. She even delayed his birth so a cousin would become king in his place. The Greeks could never decide whether he was a hero or a god, so at some festivals they sacrificed to him twice, once as each.
The son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, Heracles was born as living proof of his father's infidelity. According to myth, Zeus stretched one night into three to be with Alcmene, disguised as her husband Amphitryon, and she bore twins by the two fathers: Heracles and the mortal Iphicles. Hera tricked Zeus into swearing that a descendant of Perseus born that night would rule, then held back the goddess of childbirth so that another descendant, Eurystheus, arrived first. A servant's lie broke the spell and let Heracles be born, but the crown was lost.
Hera's hostility shaped the whole cycle. She drove him to a fit of madness in which he killed his own wife and children, and in atonement he served Eurystheus through the labours, conventionally twelve, including slaying the Nemean lion and the Hydra, stealing the golden apples of the Hesperides and dragging Cerberus from the underworld. He also sailed with the Argonauts and freed Prometheus. Brawn was not always enough: he tricked Atlas into taking the sky back onto his shoulders. His end came when his wife Deianira, deceived by a dying centaur, gave him a poisoned robe; he burned himself on Mount Oeta, rose to Olympus as a god and married Hebe.
That dual status made him unique. Unlike other heroes, he had no known tomb, and several cities kept separate sanctuaries for Heracles the hero and Heracles the god. The poet Pindar called him hero-god, the nearest Greek equivalent of a demigod. The scholar Walter Burkert traced the core of his story to Neolithic hunting culture and shamanic journeys into the underworld. His admission to Olympus created an awkward moment in the Odyssey, where Odysseus meets him in Hades, and some critics think a line explaining that it was only his ghost was added later.
He was worshipped as patron of young men, soldiers in training and gymnasia, and local cults gave him odd titles, such as locust-banisher. The Macedonian royal house claimed him as ancestor, Roman emperors like Commodus identified with him as Hercules, and his lion skin and club remain instantly recognisable.
Source: Heracles
