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Heracles

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Heracles

Syllabus

Important Information

Readings and links for Sept. 7

Readings:

Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad (a search list with a bunch of separate references) Homeric Hymns; Hesiod’s Theogony and Shield of Heracles (you have to keep hitting the right arrow to continue through this document; it is about 800 lines long, which is to say, long, probably too long to download (which you’d have to do page by page); Pindar

Pindar was a real historical person. He was a poet from Heracles’ home town of Thebes, who was famous for his victory odes, poems he was commissioned to write for victors in the big athletic games that brought together athletes from all over the Greek world. He often used the strategy of using myths from the heroic past to comment on the athlete’s achievements. With Pindar, you will be in a world of mythic cross-references, as he ties events together to make a statement about the nature of human achievement.

The Ancient Sources:

The earliest Greek literature we have preserved is Homer’s Iliad, with the Odyssey a close second. There may never have been a single author named Homer; these poems were shaped by the oral tradition in the pre-literate world of Greece in the 9^th-7^th centuries BCE. Hesiod’s works also developed through the oral tradition and Hesiod, like Homer, may be a traditional name for works that are actually the products of a widespread tradition.

With Homer and Hesiod’s work, you will be back to the “one line of information per reference” school of Classical research. The exception is Hesiod’s Shield of Heracles, which contains a lot of information, but unfortunately the translation is a little archaic. Plug away; skip a little if you must.

With all of these sources, consider the following:

q What actual fact do we learn about Heracles from any given reference (choose a few to milk for information).

q What impression of the nature of Heracles is being shown here – is it his strength, his heroic nature, his temper, his divine connections, his human frailties, his arrogance, his wisdom, his comic side?

q Do these sources have different uses for the character of Heracles?