Attic red-figure hydria attributed to Aegisthus painter (c. 470 BCE).
J. Paul Getty Museum 86.AE.230
"As the first of his twelve Labors, the Greek hero Herakles had to slay the Nemean Lion, a monstrous beast that was ravaging the countryside around the city of Nemea. Since weapons were of no use against the creature’s impenetrable hide, Herakles' only option was to strangle it. Herakles battling the Nemean Lion was the most frequently depicted mythological scene in Greek art." [1]
There are more narratives (textual and visual) about Herakles than any other hero in Greek mythology. The number of city-states (poleis) that connect themselves to Herakles is likewise greater than any other hero. The stories surrounding Herakles (again, textual and visual) were produced throughout the entire gamut of Greco-Roman myth, from early Archaic Greece to Imperial Rome. Depictions of the hero, including the aspects of his physical and psychological attributes, fluctuate, but certain aspects persist throughout and survive long after the fall of Rome and beyond. One could state, without hyperbole, that Herakles represents the most popular template of the mythological hero in Western Civilization including (and perhaps beyond?) the twentieth century. Our concern in this survey will focus on Herakles’ representation in surviving literary and visual art from Archaic Greece to Imperial Rome with an interest in Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greece.
The most sustained surviving ancient source on Herakles is the Library of Apollodorus (c. 0-200 CE). Apollodorus collects all (or most) of Herakles’ exploits in one place and in a mostly clear, chronological order. Individual exploits of the hero, however, persist as far back as Corinthian and Attic protoblack-figure painting, and occur thereafter in every medium of Greek art and literature, from mentions in 8th Century Homeric epic to 5th Century tragedies.
Because of the vast number of sources on Herakles and the introductory nature of this essay, we will break slightly away from our pattern of following Apollodorus and shift some of the heavy lifting to Emma Stafford’s Herakles,[2] which breaks down myths of the hero into thematic sections. We'll abridge her taxonomy and focus on the four most popular representations of Herakles in the Greek world (numbering is loosely chronological):
[1] Attic Red-figure Kalpis. The J. Paul Getty Museum.
[2] Emma Stafford. Herakles. Routledge (2012).