Philolog

Herakles' iconography is present but is not so pointed as in prior sculptural formulae where his primary attributes like lion skin and club - visual clues to myth identity - are held or used by his hands, or where they are worn as clothing or other garb, or even where the narrative context is known by association with other myth personae. (5) In this case, Herakles' club and lion skin - emptied of the hero - are almost discarded because the physical rigors of the ordeal - indeed all ordeals - are almost over. Whether there were either ten or twelve labors, depending on sources, and whether or not this is his ultimate or penultimate labor, the net result is the same: he is a mature and even possibly weary hero. Perhaps he is even prepared to put down his weapons and signature club and lion skin forever, ready to retire from his profession of hero after this ordeal. Yet, after having survived all his other labors, this obstacle of obtaining the Apples of the Hesperides may be just about his ultimate hurdle in more ways than one. As mentioned, this is now not a physical labor but a mental one. Having skirted death many times - and defeated Hera's likely intent of having him never return from the Underworld - now he faces a wholly different challenge even more daunting than his previous labors where he had to wrestle external monsters or horrific creatures. Now the monster is mostly within and the ordeal entirely new.

Here Herakles ponders a choice between two kinds of immortality, that of the body or that of the soul. Immortality, as elaborated from Plato via the Symposium, is at least of two kinds and via different routes: there is physical immortality through offspring (Symposium 207a-208e) - the normal human route - or divine immortality because of an incorruptible nature, like that of the gods. For few mortals, there might also be a rare possible deification as with Asklepios, deified son of Apollo. But for humans there is also metaphysical immortality of one's name through fame and glory, the typical kleos of heroes, although this is mostly useless when dead, however useful for one's progeny (6) unless they are fine achievements, "a fairer sort of children" (Symposium 209c-d). Suddenly Herakles is faced with another possibility, probably intended by Hera as his undoing. She has sent him to far Hesperia where the daughters of Atlas tend the sacred tree - her wedding gift from Gaia - guarded by the dragon. She requested him - via Eurystheus - to bring back some fruit ostensbly for her own pleasure.(7) Herakles has almost too easily been received by the Hesperides and the dragon was no challenge along with the maidens' hospitality.(8) He knows that eating the Apples of the Hesperides will confer physical immortality but will also bar him from Olympus because he will then lose kleos, the glory of immortality in an honored name. (9) He also suspects or at least hopes at this mature point of his life that his name will likely also be immortalized for his great deeds and ordeals already gloriously done. There is a powerful ancient curse, however, if one eats the fruit without Hera's permission. Because he has to ironically undertake the labors in the first place due to his having slaughtered his wife and children in the madness Hera sent, thus needing to purge blood guilt, thereby voiding that kind of physical immortality through the normal familial offspring Hera could have blessed, all this personal history passes through the scarred battlefield of his mind.

Other than "Glory of Hera" (Hera + kleos), one might wonder about other possible original or obscure lesser meanings of the name of Herakles beyond the traditional etymology of Hera's "glory " in her triumph over him at birth. This usual etymology of his name is full of ironic contradiction because Hera's triumph is not very glorious in its rejection - since Zeus continues lifelong to protect his son who is not her son - and is ultimately not permanent. An added idea is that the one divine breast of Hera nourishing the infant hero by the strategem of Zeus and Aphrodite perhaps confers partial immortality, but then he is cut off or "barred and closed" (Old Attic Greek kles or from the verb kleio "to shut up, close or block") to Hera by her surprised anger yanking him from her breast before he can finish his breastfeeding and assume immortality. He spends the rest of his mortal life thus closed off and blocked by Hera's hatred, but is reconciled to her at his apotheosis in Olympus where iconography shows him restored to the divine milk of Hera's other breast, as in the famous Etruscan mirrors with this vignette (10), thereby becoming fully the "glory of Hera" in the positive sense, assuming his divinity after death. Another possible obscure etymological gloss is the Greek idea of a legal summons or prosecuting klesis by which Hera judges him for the murderous madness she sent and thereby can legally assign his ordeals since he violated her domain of marriage in slaughtering his family. These are of course, only conjectural ironic paronomasic wordplays on his name.

Fig. 2 Apotheosis of Herakles (Ercole-Hercle), Herakles at Hera's breast in Olympus, Etruscan Mirror, Museo Archeologico, Firenze


Fig. 3 Glykon's Herakles (rear view)

From the front of the Glykon sculpture, it is clear that Herakles holds something - the apples of immortality - behind him. Curiously, if his half-hidden arm is instead hypothetically extended in front of him, it would pass over his genitals as the source place of physical immortality. It might also appear from the front with the half-hidden arm that this contact with his loins and resulting physical immortality has been severed because he "cut off" his wife Megara and their children so long ago. From the rear, however, the hand is held slightly higher over the general loin area of the lower torso. Is this illusional placement from the frontal view a suggestion by the sculptor that Herakles is struggling over his options of physical immortality, vacillating between eating the fruit and risking the curse (and losing the kleos "immortality" of his name) or not? His brow is mightily furrowed as if this concentration of thought is almost too much for him.

Here is the sort of scenario he must think through, perhaps a mentally gymnastic agility he finds far more difficult than any prior wrestling. On the one hand, he knows Hera doesn't need to eat the Apples of the Hesperides because she is already immortal. On the other hand, Herakles craves immortality with all the intensity of such a great hero. Although it would be his only likely opportunity as an aging hero, Herakles in myth does not taste the fruit but obediently brings it back uneaten to the goddess (via her agent Eurystheus) and denies himself this kind of physical immortality - immensely difficult for such a hero so conscious of his physicality even in the face of lost youth and the prospect of increased weakening with age and ultimate physical death. This is because he is Herakles, the greatest of mortal Greek heroes. Myth-literate viewers of this sculpture know after the fact that Herakles will make the right decision and his heroic immortality of name will be rewarded with the ultimate immortality of deification. But at this moment of troubled wrestling with an intellectual, volitional and moral quandary memorialized (and also immortalized!) by this sculpture, Herakles does not yet know that hidden truth, his ultimate immortality hidden like the apples from his and temporarily our immediate sight.

Notes

(1) Gisela M. A. Richter. The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks. The Metropolitan Museum Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, 4th ed., 226, 246. fig. 801.

(2) J. J. Pollitt. Art in the Hellenisic Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 (1996 repr.) 50.

(3) John Boardman. Greek Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1985 ed., 190.

(4) Anthony Bulloch, Erich Gruen, A. A. Long and Andrew Stewart. Images and Ideologies: Self-Definition in the Hellenistic World (Hellenistic Culture and Society) Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

(5) Andrew Stewart. Art, Desire and the Body in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 ed., 6. Stewart makes a case for not ignoring iconography as "obsolete" as it is still a valid part of an informed art historical approach.

(6) Antisthenes said, athanatos he psyche, "the soul is deathless."

(7) Eurystheus may be the human intermediary but Hera is always the divine instigator in his Labors that were superficially to absolve his blood guilt. The undercurrent, however, is always that Hera's hatred intends the undoing of her husband's son, not her own offspring. Ironically, if his name means Hera + kleos "glory of Hera", it ought to equally mean Hera + kles "cut off from Hera" as she pushed him off her breast and rejected him in life.

(8) H. J. Rose. A Handbook of Greek Mythology. London: Routledge. 1991 ed., 216 ff. In a range of myth variants Herakles either slays the dragon or somehow puts it to sleep.

(9) Showing he understands well the deep meaning, C. S. Lewis alludes to this myth and offers yet another retelling of a similar encounter with the Tree of Life, where in The Magician's Nephew, the young hero Digory must choose between obedience and selfishness in Aslan's Garden; whether to eat of the tree's fruit of immortality or bring it back uneaten to Aslan. Spurning the wicked example of Jadis, Queen of Charn, who has climbed over the high hedgy wall and thus eaten - she becomes immortal but will as predicted hate its taste forever afterward - Digory has come invited by a now absent Aslan through the gate. Yet the fruit is not for him but for protecting the new world. That C. S. Lewis' modern narrative also alludes to a generic Greek myth hero is underscored by Digory's Pegasus-like steed that only heroes ride.

(10) Larissa Bonfante. Etruscan Life and Afterlife. Wayne State University Press, 1986, plates VIII.13 & VIII.14, 240-3, mirrors respectively from the Museo Civico in Bologna (published in Corpus Speculorum Etruscorum Italia I.1.15) and Museo Archeologico Firenze, as well as related to a study in E. Gerhard, A. Klugman and C. Korte. Etuschische Spiegel 5.60 (Berlin, 1849?).

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Patrick Hunt © 2005