What makes heracles uncivilized or old fashioned

They allowed him to eat at their table, to taste the nectar and ambrosia which except for him alone none but the immortals could partake of. They did more; they came to a banquet in his palace; they condescended to dine with him. In return for their favor he acted so atrociously that no poet ever tried to explain his conduct. He had his only son Pelops killed, boiled in a great cauldron, and served to the gods.

Apparently he was driven by a passion of hatred against them which made him willing to sacrifice his son in order to bring upon them the horror of being cannibals. It may be, too, that he wanted to show in the most startling and shocking way possible how easy it was to deceive the awful, venerated, humbly adored divinities. In his scorn of the gods and his measureless self-confidence he never dreamed that his guests would realize what manner of food he had set before them.

He was a fool. The Olympians knew. They drew back from the horrible banquet and they turned upon the criminal who had contrived it. He should be so punished, they declared, that no man to come, hearing what this man had suffered, would dare ever again to insult them. They set the arch-sinner in a pool in Hades, but whenever in his tormenting thirst he stooped to drink he could not reach the water.

It disappeared, drained into the ground as he bent down. When he stood up it was there again. Over the pool fruit trees hung heavy laden with pears, pomegranates, rosy apples, sweet figs. Each time he stretched out his hand to grasp them the wind tossed them high away out of reach.

Thus he stood forever, his undying throat always athirst, his hunger in the midst of plenty never satisfied. His son Pelops was restored to life by the gods, but they had to fashion a shoulder for him out of ivory.

This ugly story seems to have come down in its early brutal form quite unsoftened. The latter Greeks did not like it and protested against it. The poet Pindar called it. He was happy in his marriage, although he wooed a dangerous lady who had been the cause of many deaths, the Princess Hippodamia.

This King had a wonderful pair of horses A. He did not want his daughter to marry, and whenever a suitor came for her hand the youth was told he could race with her father for her.

In this way a number of rash young men met their death. Even so, Pelops dared. He had horses he could trust, a present from Poseidon. Either she fell in love with Pelops or she felt the time had come to put a stop to that sort of racing.

Later, Myrtilus was killed by Pelops, cursing him as he died, and some said that this was the cause of the misfortunes that afterward followed the family. But most writers said, and certainly with better reason, that it was the wickedness of Tantalus which doomed his descendants. None of them suffered a worse doom than his daughter Niobe.

And yet it seemed at first that the gods had chosen her out for good fortune as they had her brother Pelops. She was happy in her marriage. Her husband was Amphion, a son of Zeus and an incomparable musician. He and his twin brother Zethus undertook once to fortify Thebes, building a lofty wall around it. Yet when it came to the heavy task of getting enough rocks for the wall, the gentle musician outdid the strong athlete: he drew such entrancing sounds from his lyre that the very stones were moved and followed him to Thebes.

There he and Niobe ruled in entire content until she showed that the mad arrogance of Tantalus lived on in her. She held herself raised by her great prosperity above all that ordinary mortals fear and reverence.

She was rich and nobly born and powerful. Seven sons had been born to her, brave and beautiful young men, and seven daughters, the fairest of the fair. She thought herself strong enough not only to deceive the gods as her father had tried to do, but to defy them openly.

She called upon the people of Thebes to worship her. She had but two children, Apollo and Artemis. I have seven times as many. I am queen. She was a homeless wanderer until tiny Delos alone of all places on earth consented to receive her. I am happy, strong, great—too great for any, men or gods, to do me harm.

Insolent words uttered in the arrogant consciousness of power were always heard in heaven and always punished. She saw them die with anguish too great for expression.

Beside those bodies so lately young and strong, she sank down motionless in stony grief, dumb as a stone and her heart like a stone within her.

Only her tears flowed and could not stop. She was changed into a stone which forever, night and day, was wet with tears. To Pelops two sons were born, Atreus and Thyestes.

The inheritance of evil descended to them in full force. Atreus found out and swore that Thyestes should pay as no man ever had. When he had eaten—. Atreus was King. Thyestes had no power. On Olympus the gods were met in full assembly. The father of Gods and Men began first to speak. Zeus was sorely vexed at the mean way men perpetually acted toward the gods, blaming the divine powers for what their own wickedness brought about, and that too even when the Olympians had tried to hold them back.

Certainly no blame attaches to us from that. We warned him by the mouth of Hermes. This passage in the Illiad is the first mention of the House of Atreus.

In the Odyssey when Odysseus reached the land of the Phaeacians and was telling them about his descent to Hades and the ghosts he encountered, he said that, of them all, the spirit of Agamemnon had most moved him to pity. He had begged him to say how he died and the chief told him that he was killed ingloriously as he sat at table, struck down as one butchers an ox.

He invited me to his house and as I feasted he killed me. My men too. You have seen many die in single combat or in battle, but never one who died as we did, by the wine bowl and the loaded tables in a hall where the floor flowed with blood. Clytemnestra slew her over my body. I tried to lift up my hands for her, but they fell back. I was dying then. It was a sordid tale. How long it held the stage we do not know, but the next account we have, centuries later, written by Aeschylus about B.

It is a great story now of implacable vengeance and tragic passions and inevitable doom. Aegisthus fades; he is hardly in the picture.

The wife of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, has all the foreground to herself. The two sons of Atreus, Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek forces at Troy, and Menelaus, the husband of Helen, ended their lives very differently. Menelaus, at first the less successful, was notably prosperous in his later years.

He lost his wife for a time, but after the fall of Troy he got her back. His ship was driven all the way to Egypt by the storm Athena sent to the Greek Fleet, but finally he reached home safely and lived happily with Helen ever after. It was far otherwise with his brother. When Troy fell, Agamemnon was the most fortunate of the victorious chieftains. His ship came safely through the storm which wrecked or drove to distant countries so many others.

He entered his city not only safe after peril by land and sea, but triumphant, the proud conqueror of Troy. His home was expecting him.

Word had been sent that he had landed, and the townspeople joined in a great welcome to him. It seemed that he was of all men the most gloriously successful, after a brilliant victory back with his own again, peace and prosperity before him.

But in the crowd that greeted him with thanksgiving for his return there were anxious faces, and words of dark foreboding passed from one man to another. That house could tell a tale if it could speak. Before the palace the elders of the city were gathered to do their king honor, but they too were in distress, with a still heavier anxiety, a darker foreboding, than that which weighed upon the doubtful crowd. As they waited they talked in low tones of the past. They were old and it was almost more real to them than the present.

They recalled the sacrifice of Iphigenia, lovely, innocent young thing, trusting her father utterly, and then confronted with the altar, the cruel knives, and only pitiless faces around her. As the old men spoke, it was like a vivid memory to them, as if they themselves had been there, as if they had heard with her the father she loved telling men to lif.

He had killed her, not willingly, but driven by the Army impatient for good winds to sail to Troy. And yet the matter was not as simple as that. He yielded to the Army because the old wickedness in generation after generation of his race was bound to work out in evil for him too. The elders knew the curse that hung over the house. Ten years had passed since Iphigenia died, but the results of her death reached through to the present.

The elders were wise. They had learned that every sin causes fresh sin; every wrong brings another in its train. A menace from the dead girl hung over her father in this hour of triumph. And yet perhaps, they said to each other, perhaps it would not take actual shape for a time. So they tried to find some bit of hope, but at the bottom of their hearts they knew and dared not say aloud that vengeance was already there in the palace waiting for Agamemnon.

It had waited ever since the Queen, Clytemnestra, had come back from Aulis, where she had seen her daughter die. She did not keep faith with her husband who had killed her child and his; she took a lover and all the people knew it. He was still there with her. What was being planned behind the palace doors? As they wondered and feared, a tumult of noise reached them, chariots rolling, voices shouting. Into the courtyard swept the royal car with the King and beside him a girl, very beautiful, but very strange-looking.

Attendants and townspeople were following them and as they came to a halt the doors of the great house swung open and the Queen appeared. Her face was radiant, her head high. She knew that every man there except Agamemnon was aware of her infidelity, but she faced them all and told them with smiling lips that even in their presence she must at such a moment speak out the great love she bore her husband and the agonizing grief she had suffered in his absence.

Then in words of exultant joy she bade him welcome. The sight of you is dear as land after storm to the sailor, as a gushing stream to a thirsty wayfarer. He answered her, but with reserve, and he turned to go into the palace. First he pointed to the girl in the chariot. Let Clytemnestra see to her and treat her well.

With that he entered the house and the doors closed behind the husband and the wife. They would never open again for both of them.

The crowd had gone. Only the old men still waited uneasily before the silent building and the blank doors. The captive princess caught their attention and they looked curiously at her. They had heard of her strange fame as a prophetess whom no one ever believed and yet whose prophecies were always proved true by the event. She turned a terrified face to them. Where had she been brought, she asked them wildly—What house was this?

They answered soothingly that it was where the son of Atreus lived. It is a house God hates, where men are killed and the floor is red with blood. Blood, men killed, that was what they too were thinking of, the dark past with its promise of more darkness. How could she, a stranger and a foreigner, know that past?

Thyestes and his sons… Where had she heard of that? More wild words poured from her lips. It seemed as if she had seen what had happened in that house through the years, as if she had stood by while death followed death, each a crime and all working together to produce more crime. Then from the past she turned to the future.

She cried out that on that very day two more deaths would be added to the list, one her own. They tried to hold her back from that ominous house, but she would not have it; she entered and the doors closed forever on her, too. The silence that followed when she had gone was suddenly and terribly broken. I am struck! The old men, terrified, bewildered, huddled together. What should they do? The doors opened and on the threshold stood the Queen. Dark red stains were on her dress, her hands, her face, yet she herself looked unshaken, strongly sure of herself.

Of all the Greek heroes, the greatest is no doubt Heracles. He was the son of Zeus by Alcmene, a mortal woman. He was originally given the name Alcaeus or Alcides. Alcmene herself was a descendant of the hero Perseus , who was also a child of Zeus and a mortal woman.

She drove him mad and caused him to murder his wife, Megara, and their two children. When he regained his wits, he was distraught by what he had done and sought out the Oracle at Delphi for advice.

There, Apollo told him to serve Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns, for twelve years, as a penance Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2. During his time at Tiryns, Alcaeus was tasked to perform the Twelve Labours for which he became understandably famous.

After completing these tasks, he was renamed Heracles. The name is ironic: Heracles literally means the glory kleos of Hera. In trying to break Heracles, the goddess had only ensured his eventual apotheosis. Heracles was venerated as both a hero and a god. Most of his feats were accomplished using his tremendous physical strength, from fighing serpents as an infant to defeating Cycnus and slaying monsters like the Hydra.

In art, therefore, he is usually depicted as a tall, muscular man. A great example is the Farnese Hercules , a Roman copy of a statue by the Greek sculptor Lysippos or someone from his circle that is currently in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.

But muscles alone might not be enough to distinguish Heracles in art from other heroes or even mortals. Heroes, as well as divinities, are occasionally indicated using labels; for example, on Greek pottery, the names of heroes and deities are sometimes inscribed. Several city-states emerged as major powers, including Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Thebes. These poleis were often warring with each other, and formed coalitions to gain power and allies. The Persian invasion of Greece, first led by Darius I and then by his son Xerxes, united Greece against a common enemy.

These wars continued on and off until BCE. However, peace and stability in Greece was not achieved until it was conquered and united by Macedonia under the leadership of Philip II and Alexander the Great in the mid-third century BCE. Greece poleis spent this time under the hegemony of foreign rulers, first the Macedons and then the Romans, starting in BCE. New centers of Hellenic culture flourished through Greece and on foreign soil, including the cities of Pergamon, Antioch, and Alexandria—the capitals of the Attalids, Seleucids, and Ptolemies.

Greek religion played a central and daily role in the life of ancient Greeks, and group worship was centered on the temple and cult sites. Greek religious traditions encompassed a large pantheon of gods, complex mythologies, rituals, and cult practices. Greece was a polytheistic society, and looked to its gods and mythology to explain natural mysteries as well as current events. Religious festivals and ceremonies were held throughout the year, and animal sacrifice and votive offerings were popular ways to appease and worship the gods.

Religious life, rituals, and practices were one of the unifying aspects of Greece across regions and poleis cities, or city-states, such as Athens and Sparta. The principal religious sanctuaries of the Greek Aegean : This map lists the major Greek gods and shows where their principal religious sanctuaries are located throughout the Greek Aegean region. Greek gods were immortal beings who possessed human-like qualities and were represented as completely human in visual art.

They were moral and immoral, petty and just, and often vain. The gods were invoked to intervene and assist in matters large, small, private and public. City-states claimed individual gods and goddess as their patrons.

Temples and sanctuaries to the gods were built in every city. Many cities became cult sites due to their connection with a god or goddess and specific myths. For instance, the city of Delphi was known for its oracle and sanctuary of Apollo, because Apollo was believed to have killed a dragon that inhabited Delphi.

The history of the Greek pantheon begins with the primordial deities Gaia Mother Earth and Uranus Father Sky , who were the parents of the first of twelve giants known as Titans. Among these Titans were six males and six females. Kronos eventually overthrew Uranus and ruled during a mythological Golden Age. Over time, he and Rhea had twelve children who would become the Olympian gods. However, Kronos heard a prophecy that his son would overthrow him, as he did to Uranus.

In an effort to avert fate, he ordered Rhea to allow him to devour each of the children upon their birth. Themis : One of the first 12 Titans, Themis was the personification of divine law, as opposed to human ordinance. Best known among the pantheon are the twelve Olympian gods and goddesses who resided on Mt. Olympus in northern Greece. Zeus, the youngest son of Rhea and Kronos, was hidden from his father, instead of being swallowed. Violence and power struggles were common in Greek mythology, and the Greeks used their mythologies to explain their lives around them, from the change in seasons to why the Persians were able to sack Athens.

Originally, Hermes held a bunch of grapes, with which he teased the infant god of wine. Heroes, who were often demigods, were also important characters in Greek mythology. The two most important heroes are Perseus and Hercules.

Perseus is known for defeating the Gorgon, Medusa. He slew her with help from the gods: Athena gave him armor and a reflective shield, and Hermes provided Perseus with winged sandals so he could fly. Hercules was a strong but unkind man, a drunkard who conducted huge misdeeds and social faux pas. Hercules was sent on twelve labors to atone for his sins as punishment for his misdeeds. These deeds, and several other stories, were often depicted in art, on ceramic pots, or on temple metopes.