Heracles

Heracles, the Roman Hercules, greatest of the Greek heroes, was the son of Zeus by a mortal woman. Through the famous Twelve Labours and a life of superhuman toil he won, alone among heroes, a place among the gods on Olympus — the very model of the mortal who, through suffering and endurance, is made divine.

The philosophers made him a symbol of virtue achieved through hardship. The parable of the 'Choice of Heracles' — who chose the steep path of Virtue over the easy road of Vice — became a favourite of the moralists, and the Stoics took the labouring, all-enduring hero as their very pattern of the wise man. In the Orphic hymn he takes on a cosmic, solar grandeur, a mighty power who orders the seasons and subdues the savage.

Epithets

• Kallinikos Καλλίνικος — of glorious victory
• Alexikakos Ἀλεξίκακος — averter of evil
• Soter Σωτήρ — the savior
• Hercules Invictus Lat. — the unconquered (Roman)