Labors of Hēraklēs

By Gregory Nagy

Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology XVIII, a post-Mycenaean view of Hēraklēs as founder of the Olympics

2019.11.27 | By Gregory Nagy §0. For my brief essay here, TC XVIII in Classical Inquiries, I return to a point I made in an earlier essay, TC V §§4–10, where I highlighted a remarkable sequence of events narrated in the Library of “Apollodorus,” dated to the second century CE, in the course of an overall narrative about the life and times of the hero Hēraklēs. According to this narrative… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology X, A Homeric lens for viewing Hēraklēs

2019.09.27 | By Gregory Nagy §0. This essay, for which I give the abbreviated title TC X, connects in a special way with nine previous essays posted in Classical Inquiries, TC I through IX, which are all interconnected in their focusing on myths about the Labors and sub-Labors of the ancient Greek hero Hēraklēs. Also connected are two previous essays, published earlier in Classical Inquiries 2019.07.12 and 2019.07.19, about the… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology VII, Greek mythological models for prototyping Hēraklēs

2019.09.06 | By Gregory Nagy §0. While analyzing the myths about the Labors and sub-Labors of Hēraklēs in essays TC I–VI, I have up to now focused on those heroic feats where our Strong Man has clearly been acting alone. Here in TC VII, I will analyze two myths where the feats of Hēraklēs seem to be different. In the first myth, as we will see, the hero is acting… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology VI, A Mycenaean phase in the reception of myths about Hēraklēs

2019.08.30 | By Gregory Nagy §0. I have already commented on a set of myths known as the twelve Labors of Hēraklēs, and also on a multitude of further myths that I describe as the sub-Labors of the hero. In my posting for 2019.08.15, abbreviated here simply as TC IV, I listed all twelve of the Labors and most of the numerous sub-Labors as narrated by Diodorus of Sicily, who… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology V, Reconstructing Hēraklēs forward in time

2019.08.22 | By Gregory Nagy §0. Previously, in “Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology IV,” hereafter abbreviated as TC IV, I was reconstructing the mythological persona of the Greek hero Hēraklēs by tracing him backward in time, back to the earliest reconstructable phases of myths that told his story. Here in TC V, I will trace such myths forward in time, and I will start my procedure of “reconstructing forward” by… Read more

By Gregory Nagy

Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology IV, Reconstructing Hēraklēs backward in time

2019.08.15 | By Gregory Nagy §0. As I have argued in the posting for 2019.07.26, “Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology I” (hereafter TC I), the myths about the Greek hero Hēraklēs and the Scandinavian hero Starkaðr are cognate, verbalized in cognate languages belonging to a language-family known to linguists as "Indo-European." Viewed in this light, the term “Indo-European” can be applied not only with reference to cognate language-groupings like Greek… Read more