In an age of heroes, Heracles - or Hercules, to give him his Roman name - was the greatest hero of them all. He was characterised by excess, not just in strength and courage, but in almost everything else, from his desire for sex to his appetite for food. He was also a man of stark contradictions. Despite being a son of Zeus, he was twice made a slave - first to Eurystheus, and later to Queen Omphale. Though widely depicted as muscle-bound and bearded, clad in a lion-skin and carrying a huge club - the paradigm of masculinity - in Omphale’s service he wore women’s clothing and carried out female chores. He fought for the gods against the giants, but also battled against individual gods, notably Apollo, Hades and Hera. And for a man of intelligence and ingenuity, who fought to uphold the rule of the gods against agents of chaos, he succumbed to madness on at least two occasions, with dreadful consequences.
Despite these characteristics, the ancient world viewed Heracles in an overwhelmingly positive light. Numerous cities claimed to have been founded by him, and many noble families asserted descent from one of his many children. He was revered as the greatest mortal ever to have lived, so great that he had - ultimately - to become immortal. Indeed, in religious festivals he was unique in receiving libations as a hero and sacrifices as a god.
Rather than recreate this Heracles of excess and contradiction, I’ve chosen to focus on the more human aspects of his character. Yes, he is still the son of Zeus, divinely endowed with great strength; but to attempt to portray Heracles as he was viewed in antiquity would be, I think, a mistake. He would seem like a grotesque caricature to modern eyes, and I doubt most readers could stomach such a figure.
The greatness of a hero is measured by the obstacles that he has overcome, and Heracles’s bravery is best demonstrated in the story of his labours. Antiquity has given us different versions of this tale. His madness is generally blamed on the gods, and the introduction of the mushrooms via a human agent is my own invention. The results of his madness are variously described, and in one version - with typical Heraclean excess - he kills six of his own sons and two of his nephews. I thought the deaths of his three sons were horrific enough.
Some myths have the labours in different orders, and some differ substantially in the details of how each task is carried out. I chose to follow the tasks as they were set out in the second book of Pseudo-Apollodorus’s Bibliotheca, which provides a simple and straightforward summary. Son of Zeus only covers the first three labours, and I’ve already taken the liberty of switching the second labour - the Hydra - with the third - the Ceryneian Hind. As Pseudo-Apollodorus’s descriptions of the myths are often sparse in detail - usually no more than a few lines - I’ve also borrowed from other traditions and fleshed things out, while, I hope, remaining within the spirit of the original stories.
Although Molorchus is an important figure in the account of the Nemean Lion, his daughter was not taken as bait, as she is in Son of Zeus. Unlike in my version, Heracles received no help in hunting the Ceryneian Hind, though it took him a year to capture her. As for the Hydra, its heads were numbered variously from seven to ten thousand; Pseudo-Apollodorus claims each slain head was replaced by two more; others say one or even three. For obvious reasons, I chose the smaller number.
And yes, the Hydra really was assisted by a giant crab.