Why Would The Greeks Have A Hero Such As Heracles Essay

Section A Question 3: Why would the Greeks have a hero such as Heracles, in your opinion?

I think that the Greeks would have a hero like Heracles for a few different reason. The first reason would be to encourage young men going off to war. I feel like Heracles really embodied the ideas of what it means to be a hero. When Heracles is off adventuring and doing the labors that he is burdened with, his personally and his morals grow with each task completed. I feel like this tells young men that they can grow into their own hero when they are off in battle. At the end of his labors he is taken to mtn. Olympia to become a god alongside his father. This also tells men that are going off to battle that when they are done, they will be welcomed home or if they die they will be welcomed into their version of heaven/ afterlife. Another reason I think the Greeks would have heroes such as Heracles is to explain things they quite don’t understand. I feel like Heracles in my opinion is not a Hero but a ancient version of a zoologist. When you look at the labors that he had to complete, each one of them were some type of animal or being. This to be shows that Heracles could very well be a form of zoologist that is adventuring out in the ancient world and examining animal that no one understands. For example, the Hydra, Heracles had to cut off each head of the …show more content…
The most premediate time which self-control was shown in the book was when Odysseus made the crew men put wax in their ears so they couldn’t hear the sirens calling them but Odysseus tied himself to the boat’s so he could hear the song of the sirens himself. This taught the value of self-control by showing that everyone has the ability in one way or another to keep themselves from being tempted by people or materialistic things in life. If Odysseus can avoid the temptation of the siren song, then the children can avoid temptations as