Heracles Greek Hero

Heracles was one of the greatest and most divine and celebrated heroes in Greek mythology; he was the son of the god Zeus and the mortal Alcmene. Unlike the movie Hercules by Disney he was not born Mount Olympus with the other gods, Heracles was a demi-god at birth, half god half mortal. He had incredible strength, courage, and all the self-confidence in the world. The one thing that really made him the hero we know of today is because of his courage. Heracles wasn’t really afraid to do anything that was asked of him, which is shown by the twelve labors he had to preform for his cousin Eurystheus after Hera had tricked him into going crazy and killing his children. These labors were tasks that no ordinary mortal could complete, and that’s the …show more content…
After he asked a centaur to guide his wife, Deianara, a crossed the Evenus River, the centaur tried to rape her. When Heracles saw this he killed the centaur with an arrow that had the poison of the Hydra on the tip of it. The centaur told her to take some of his blood in order to make a love potion if she ever had doubts about Heracles. When she became suspicious of Heracles, she put the love potion on a tunic of his, in the hopes of him falling in love with her once again. But the centaur had lied to her. When Heracles shot him, the poison from the arrow traveled through his blood stream and created a powerful toxin. When Heracles put the tunic on it started to burn his skin. If this was a normal mortal it would’ve killed him right away, but this isn’t the case. Heracles felt so much pain that he did want to end it all and die. Before he made the decision he apparently had enough time and could tolerate the pain long enough to consult with the oracle before making his decision. The oracle and Heracles both decided to build funeral pyre for himself, from there he would become a god and join the other gods on Mount Olympus. This shows how self-confident he really was, he thought when I die I will just join all the other gods. Almost like when Hermes set out twelve offerings instead of eleven. Hermes technically said that he was a god, and Heracles had the same thought process. Even though Heracles had many achievements and overcome some of the most impossible tasks, it was still unheard of a mortal to become a