Also called the Gigantomachy. After the Titanomachy (war against the Titans) Gaia was not exactly happy with the Olympians for slaughtering\locking up all the Titan in Tartarus. Her displeasure would send ripples throughout mythology, often resulting in different monsters and such that had to be defeated. Unsurprisingly, the biggest attack against the Olympians came from the Giants.

A bit of background. There were twenty-four giants were born in full armor carrying weapons, spears specifically, and had “serpent like lower limbs.” They were rather large, and easily made angry. They could only be defeated by gods and heroes working together. Hence the premise for the Percy Jackson series. (House of Hades can come out any day now).

The giants, led by Alcyoneus attacked the Olympians. Otus and Ephialtes attempted to storm Olympus by piling Mount Ossa upon Mount Pelion. The fates teamed up with the Olympians to drive them back but were not successful, though they did manage to club the giants Thoon and Agrios. Hecate burned the giant Clytius to death with her torches. Athena killed the giant Enceladus, who had the scales of a dragon for feet, and buried him under Mount Etna, where he sometimes breathes and causes lava to flood the land. She also killed the giant Pallas.

Artemis killed a giant with her arrows, and either Hephaestus or Ares depending on the myth killed the giant Mimas by throwing fire balls at him. Dionysus even got a kill in when he slew Eurytus with his pine-cone wand (not joking, google it, it’s called a Thrysus). Ares also killed the giant Pellorus.

Hermes killed the giant Hyppolytus by using his flying shoes and invisibility hat. The last giant the Olympians killed on their own was Polybote. Poseidon crushed him with an island.

Why did I just list off every giant killed by the gods alone? For one very important reason. The giants could only be killed by a god and a hero working together. Many versions of the myths featuring the death of these giants were solo missions. In other words, some gods, not many, but some were also heroes.

Athena, Poseidon, the Moirae, Ares, Hepheastus, Hecate, Hermes, Artemis, and Dionysus have earned an honorable mention for being able to do what Zeus, Hera, Hades, Demeter, and EVERY other god of the time could not.

It wasn’t enough. The giants were still coming. At that point, Hera had a prophecy that the Olympians would never win without the help of the demigods. Specifically the demigod she’d spent the last several decades torturing with endless quests, and madness, and bad luck.

Talk about an “oh crap” moment.

How Hera managed to get Hercules on board is beyond me, because I seriously would have told her to go f–

This is a young adult blog, isn’t it?

Ahem, I would have been less than polite in my refusal.

But Herc was a hero, and by this point probably was legitimately crazy, so he helped the gods best the giants in a series of uber-epic battles. Now remember, Hercules was also dramatic, so rather than saying “Sure, I’ll help,” he loaded up one of his hydra poisoned arrows, shot Alyoneus, picked him up, and dragged him from the magical borders of Pallene where he could not die, and beat him to death with a club.

Interesting side note: Alyoneus had seven daughters known as the Alkyonides. Upon their father’s death they threw themselves into the sea and became fish. There are a group of islands named for the sisters. The word Alkyonides also refers to a beautiful weather pattern that repeats in Greece every year after Christmas until the middle of January there is a non-interrupted period of days with clear blue skies and warm temperatures. I would really love to move there.

Aphrodite assisted Hercules in the slaughter of several giants by forcing the giants into a cave and locking them in with the hero. Hercules teamed up with Apollo to kill Ephialtes and Otus with Apollo’s arrows, though some versions of the myth feature the two giants accidentally killing each other.

In a lovely father-son moment of bonding, Hercules and Zeus worked together to defeat the giant Porphyrion, who was trying to rape Hera thanks to a misfire from one of Eros’ bows.

Hercules defeated the giants Leon and Peloreus on his own because as a demigod, he was also a god and a hero. Go figure.

Because Hercules helped the gods so much, after his death he was turned into a god and brought to Mount Olympus.

I’m sure Hera was thrilled.

Bet you thought we were done with old Herc, huh?

Nope. Hercules has a textbook full of myths associated with him. His mythology intertwines with so many other myths that for the purposes of my research I have to know about him even though I killed him off before book 1 AND had him drink from the Lethe (i.e I have no plans for Herculean adventures in my series, though he may pop up in short stories or prequels.) That research should count for something, so settle in for a few more weeks worth of the most famous of all the demigods. I promise, I will eventually move on.

Okay, so I mentioned in young Hercules that Hercules was driven mad by Hera and killed his wife Megaera and his children. It took him many years and many labors, but he eventually moved on to Princess Iole. Her father promised her as a prize for an archery contest. Hercules won, but when her father (who’d actually taught Hercules archery as a child) realized who Hercules was, and recalled the fate of Hercules’ first wife, he refused to allow Hercules to marry his daughter.

Iole’s brother Iphitus thought his father was over reacting, so in an effort to bond/help Herc prove himself, he asked for help tracking down some of his father’s missing horses. Herc agreed, but Hera randomly drove him nuts again, so Hercules ended up murdering Iphitus.

Hercules felt bad about the murder, so he consulted/and or depending on the version of the myth was commanded by The Oracle of Delphi to atone for the blood on his hands. The Oracle sent him to serve Queen Omphale for one to three years depending on the source. Omphale, daughter of a river god, made Hercules dress as a woman and do women’s work for the time he was in servitude. He must have been into that kind of thing, because when he was freed, he married her.

The marriage didn’t last. Hercules later met the beautiful, and by far one of the more interesting women in Greek mythology, Deianira. Her father had arranged her marriage to a river god, but she wasn’t having it. She drove a chariot, studied war, and made her own choices, and she set her sights on Hercules.

She eventually caused the death of Hercules with her jealousy…

Hmm… interesting interpretation most of my research comes to that. Lets rephrase that to get a better representation of what actually happened.

Hercules the womanizing, cheating, scumbag got what was coming to him.

Herc and Deianira had to cross a river, a centaur named Nessus offered to help but ended up trying to kidnap and rape Deianira. Herc got pissed and shot him with one of his poisonous arrows. As Nessus bled out, he offered her a spell to keep Hercules faithful. Mix his (Nessus’) blood with olive oil.

Fast forward a bit, and Hercules has fathered children all across Greece with other women (fifty of them the daughter of one man given to him as a reward for one night, who all bore children, long and kind of gross story). He also slept with Echidna, and had monster-children, more on them later, and he may or may not, depending on which version of the myth you read, have slept with every man mentioned by name in all of the Hercules Mythology Mondays.

Hercules randomly remembered that Iole’s father never did give him his prize. So he attacked her city. Iole threw herself off a wall, attempting suicide rather than living with Herc. However her fluffy dress saved her, and she landed unharmed, whereupon Hercules took her as his concubine.

Understandably miffed, Deianira slathers the bloody mixture on to Hercs clothes. He puts it on, and the poison in the blood from his hydra tipped arrows burned through his skin, causing so much pain that Hercules ended up leaping onto a funeral pyre to end it all.

Deianira stabbed herself with a knife.

Greek myths are so cheerful 🙂

Hercules went on to have a ton more adventures before dying/becoming a god. Two I’m not going to cover in this series of Mythology Mondays are his adventures with Jason and the Argonauts (that’s a whole new series by itself) and the battle against the giants. I’ll tell them eventually, but through a broader lens than just Herc’s place in it.

Hercules had a few divine friends, one of whom was Dionysus, the god of wine. Dionysus wanted Hercules to tell him how to get to the Underworld. Hercules told him a few unique ways to commit suicide, but eventually relented. But not before challenging the god to a drinking contest. He lost, and had to join Dionysus’ cult for a while.

He fought death, and won. Not in a metaphorical sense either. There was a man who was dying of an illness, his wife offered to take his place. Thanatos took an appointment and when he was supposed to collect the wife, Herc strangled him until he agreed to let them both live.

He took bad kings off of thrones and restored the rightful heirs so often that the myths got a bit repetitive. He killed abusive bosses or annoying people. There was one man who would force travelers to work in his vineyard if they wanted to pass through without getting clubbed to death. Herc killed him and put an end to that. He won contests. He studied with scholars and killed thieves. He was the original super hero. I think of him as an ancient version of Chuck Norris.

He also saved Troy (long before the Trojan war). Poseidon had sent a sea monster to attack Troy, and the King of Troy was going to sacrifice his daughter to appease the beast. Hercules intervened and killed the monster in exchange for horses Zeus had gifted the city as an apology for kidnapping the beautiful young man Ganymede. The King went back on his word to give up the horses, so Hercules pillaged Troy and killed all his sons.

Next week, we’ll explore Hercules’ love life and his death.

The tenth labor of Hercules was to get cattle from the monster Geryon. Geryon was a giant and a grandson to Medusa who lived on the island Erytheia. He either had one body and three heads or three conjoined bodies depending on the myth you read. Sometimes he even had wings. He had a watch dog with two heads that was a brother to Cerberus that guarded the cattle.

Hercules had to cross the desert to get to Erytheia, and he didn’t like the heat. He threw a temper tantrum and shot at Helios with an arrow. Helios was shocked at Hercules’ bravery (odd reaction from such a volatile species, but whatever) and gave Hercules a magical golden cup that Helios used to cross the entire sea each night. Hercules used it to get to Erytheia quickly.

Hercules arrived and promptly killed the two headed puppy with his club :(. Geryone was furious and charged after Hercules, but Herc shot him with one of his poisonous arrows with so much force that it split the monsters head in half. Gross.

Herc herded the cattle back to Eurystheus. On the way some versions of the myth have a young man named Cacus stealing a few of the cattle by walking them backward so they left no trail. Herc tracked them down and killed the kid who stole them. Hera also intervened, sending gadflies to bite the cattle and scatter them, but Herc tracked them all down within a year. She also flooded a river so he couldn’t cross, but Herc piled some rocks and made the river shallower.

While tracking down the cattle, Hercules battled with two giants, Albion and Bergion or Dercynus, sons of Poseidon. Worried he couldn’t defeat them, Hercules prayed to his father Zeus for help. Zeus helped him win, and was so flattered by the prayer he put a constellation in the sky of Hercules kneeling to him.

Upon arriving back to Eurystheus, Herc sacrificed the cattle to Hera. He seriously could not take a hint. The woman hated him, just accept it and stop trying to appease her because everything he did just pissed her off more.

But Hercules was horrifyingly bad at taking hints, so he set off for his eleventh labor to steal apples from Hesperides, nymphs that guarded a garden in the Atlas Mountains, which of course belonged to Hera. The golden apples that grew in this garden could grant immortality. These were also guarded by a dragon with one-hundred heads named Ladon. One of these apples was later used to start the Trojan War by the goddess of discord.

Hercules first had to find the garden. To do that he caught the old man of the sea, a shapeshifting sea god. The Old Man can answer any questions if captured AND if you can hang on while he changes shape. He got directions, and on his way to the garden bumped into Antaeus, a monster who could not be killed so long as he was touching the earth. His parents were Poseidon and Gaia.

No problem. Hercules lifted him up and crushed him.

Upon reaching the gardens, Hercules asked for help from the father of the nymphs (in some versions), Atlas. Atlas agreed, if Hercules agreed to hold the weight of the world while he went and grabbed them. Hercules took on the weight of the world and waited patiently, but Atlas decided he didn’t want to return.

Some background on Atlas. Atlas was a Titan who sided against the Olympians in the Titanomachy.
As punishment, Zeus had him stand on the western corner of Gaia (earth) and hold Uranus (the sky) up on his shoulders so they could never make more baby Titans. The earth and the sky can never, ever touch. He did NOT hold the planet. Just the sky.

Anyway, depending on the version of the myth, Hercules either tricked Atlas into taking the weight again, or built the pillars of Hercules so that no one had to hold the sky in place. I prefer to the latter because I have a very difficult time believing Atlas would be so easily tricked (it literally went like “Sure Atlas, I’ll hold the world, but can you take it for a second so I can rearrange my cloak to be more comfortable. Atlas: Sure thing, buddy. Hercules: hhahahaha! *runs away*) into taking back the sky.

But since Atlas got the apples, not Hercules, he had to do a twelfth labor. To capture Cerberus, Hades’ three headed puppy.

Cerberus was the son of Echidna and Typhon. His three heads represented the past, present, and the future as well as youth, middle age, and old age. He stopped souls from crossing the river Styx and going back to the living realm.

Hercules was not allowed to use any weapons and had to travel to the Underworld. To learn to travel to the Underworld, he had to be inducted into the Eleusinian Mysteries, a cult that worshiped Demeter, Persephone, Hades, and Orpheus (who in my book named his CD the Eleusinian Mysteries). Passing into the Underworld somehow absolved Herc from his drunken party turned murder fest with the minotaurs from way back in his early labors. While passing through, Hercules rescued Theseus who, along with Pirithous was stuck to a chair for trying to abduct Persephone. He tried to free Pirithous too, but Hades wasn’t having it.

While he had Hades’ attention, Herc asked if he could borrow Cerberus. Hades agreed, so long as Herc promised not to use weapons on his puppy. Herc agreed, then slung Cerberus over his shoulder and found his way back to the living realm, completing his final labor.

In my universe, Cerberus was never returned to the Underworld, so Hades holds a grudge against Hercules.

We are not done with Hercules yet! He still had lots of adventures.