Famous heroes of the ancient world
Agamemnon is one of the main characters of the ancient Greek epic, the son of the Mycenaean king Atreus and Aeropa, the leader of the Greek army during the Trojan War.
Amphitryon is the son of the Tirinthian king Alcaeus and the daughter of Pelops Astydamia, the grandson of Perseus. Amphitryon took part in the war against the TV fighters who lived on the island of Taphos, which was waged by his uncle, the Mycenaean king Electryon.
Achilles is one of the greatest heroes in Greek mythology, the son of King Peleus, the king of the myrmidons and the sea goddess Thetis, the grandson of Aeacus, the main character of the Iliad.
Ajax is the name of two participants in the Trojan War; both fought at Troy as suitors for Helen's hand. In the Iliad they often appear hand in hand and are compared to two mighty lions or bulls.
Bellerophon is one of the main characters of the older generation, the son of the Corinthian king Glaucus (according to other sources, the god Poseidon), the grandson of Sisyphus. Bellerophon's original name was Hippo.
Hector is one of the main heroes of the Trojan War. The hero was the son of Hecuba and Priam, the king of Troy. According to legend, he killed the first Greek to set foot on the soil of Troy.
Hercules is the national hero of the Greeks. Son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene. Gifted with mighty strength, he performed the most difficult work on earth and accomplished great feats. Having atoned for his sins, he ascended Olympus and achieved immortality.
Diomedes is the son of the Aetolian king Tydeus and the daughter of Adrasta Deipila. Together with Adrastus, he took part in the campaign and destruction of Thebes. As one of Helen's suitors, Diomedes subsequently fought at Troy, leading a militia on 80 ships.
Meleager is the hero of Aetolia, the son of the Calydonian king Oeneus and Alphea, the husband of Cleopatra. Participant of the Argonauts' campaign. Meleager's greatest fame came from his participation in the Calydonian hunt.
Menelaus is the king of Sparta, the son of Atreus and Aerope, the husband of Helen, the younger brother of Agamemnon. Menelaus, with the help of Agamemnon, gathered friendly kings for the Ilion campaign, and he himself deployed sixty ships.
Odysseus - “angry”, king of the island of Ithaca, son of Laertes and Anticlea, husband of Penelope. Odysseus is a famous hero of the Trojan War, also famous for his wanderings and adventures.
Orpheus is the famous singer of the Thracians, the son of the river god Eager and the muse Calliope, the husband of the nymph Eurydice, who set trees and rocks in motion with his songs.
Patroclus is the son of one of the Argonauts Menoetius, a relative and ally of Achilles in the Trojan War. As a boy, he killed his friend while playing dice, for which his father sent him to Peleus in Phthia, where he was raised with Achilles.
Peleus is the son of the Aeginean king Aeacus and Endeis, the husband of Antigone. For the murder of his half-brother Phocus, who defeated Peleus in athletic exercises, he was expelled by his father and retired to Phthia.
Pelops is the king and national hero of Phrygia, and then the Peloponnese. Son of Tantalus and the nymph Euryanassa. Pelops grew up on Olympus in the company of the gods and was the favorite of Poseidon.
Perseus is the son of Zeus and Danae, daughter of the Argive king Acrisius. The winner of the Gorgon Medusa and the savior of Andromeda from the claims of the dragon.
Talthybius, a messenger, a Spartan, together with Eurybates, was Agamemnon’s herald, carrying out his instructions. Talthybius, together with Odysseus and Menelaus, gathered an army for the Trojan War.
Teucer is the son of Telamon and the daughter of the Trojan king Hesione. The best archer in the Greek army at Troy, where over thirty defenders of Ilion fell at his hands.
Theseus is the son of the Athenian king Aeneas and Ethera. He became famous for a number of exploits, like Hercules; kidnapped Elena along with Peirifoy.
Trophonius was originally a chthonic deity, identical with Zeus the Underground. According to popular belief, Trophonius was the son of Apollo or Zeus, the brother of Agamedes, and the pet of the earth goddess Demeter.
Phoroneus is the founder of the Argive state, the son of the river god Inachus and the hamadryad Melia. He was revered as a national hero; Sacrifices were performed at his grave.
Thrasimedes is the son of the Pylos king Nestor, who arrived with his father and brother Antilochus near Ilion. He commanded fifteen ships and took part in many battles.
Oedipus is the son of the Finnish king Laius and Jocasta. Killed his father and married his mother without knowing it. When the crime was discovered, Jocasta hanged herself, and Oedipus blinded himself. Died pursued by the Erinyes.
Aeneas is the son of Anchises and Aphrodite, a relative of Priam, a hero of the Trojan War. Aeneas, like Achilles among the Greeks, is the son of a beautiful goddess, the favorite of the gods; in battles he was protected by Aphrodite and Apollo.
Jason, the son of Aison, on behalf of Pelias, set out from Thessaly for the Golden Fleece to Colchis, for which he prepared a campaign for the Argonauts.
The Encyclopedia of Mythology website contains more than two hundred and fifty articles about famous heroes and legendary personalities of the ancient world, which can be found in our mythological dictionary.
Greek myths, which tell of gods, goddesses and heroes, date back to the Bronze Age, a time of oral tradition. They were first recorded at the beginning of the 6th century. BC. and have continued to live in Western literature ever since. Myths were closely related to the beliefs of the ancient Greeks and interpreted the secrets of nature. They told about the creation of the world about the deeds of the deities, about the golden age of ancient Greek society, about the age of heroic demigods such as Theseus and Hercules, whose exploits inspired ordinary people. The Greeks imagined the gods as ideal people who possessed all the feelings characteristic of humans. The gods lived on Mount Olympus. The supreme god Zeus was considered the father of many Olympians. Each member of the Olympic family was assigned a divine role.
Zeus- the father of gods and people, ruled them from Mount Olympus.
Eris goddess of discord.
Klymene, mother Promethea who gave fire to people.
Hera Zeus's wife was very jealous.
Athena emerged from the head of Zeus in full battle garb, in Greek mythology she was the goddess of wisdom, strategy and war.
Poseidon, god of the seas, one of the brothers of Zeus. The symbol of his power is the trident. Myths bring to us stories about Poseidon's infidelity to his wife, the sea goddess Amphitrite, who was the goddess of the sea in Greek mythology. This statue is kept in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
Paris must award the golden apple to the most beautiful of goddesses. Paris's dog helped him graze his flocks on Mount Ida, where the prince grew up.
Dionysus, the god of viticulture and wine, Zeus gave birth from his thigh.
Hades And Persephone ruled the kingdoms of the dead and the souls of the dead. Hades kidnapped Persephone from her mother Demeter, the goddess of fertility. Angry, Demeter sent a famine to the earth, and then Zeus decided that Persephone would live with her mother for part of the year.
Artemis, maiden goddess of the hunt, daughter of Zeus and sister of Apollo. She is armed with a bow and arrows. The eternally young goddess is surrounded by dogs and nymphs. Having taken a vow of chastity, she was nevertheless also the goddess of childbirth.
Hermes was a messenger of the gods.
Aphrodite, goddess of love, was born from the foam of the sea.
Apollo, son of Zeus and brother of Artemis, god-healer and soothsayer, patron of the arts, was unusually handsome.
Labors of Hercules. Hercules(among the Romans - Hercules) - the greatest of the Greek heroes, the son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene. Endowed with superhuman strength, he achieved success and immortality by completing 12 tasks of the Mycenaean king Eurystheus, which seemed impossible.
First he defeated the Nemean Lion, whose skin he always wore on himself from then on.
The second labor of Hercules was the victory over the Lernaean Hydra. The severed heads of this poisonous monster, raised by Hera, immediately grew back. As in his other exploits, Hercules was helped by Athena.
Then the huge boar that was ravaging Mount Erymanth was caught. Hercules delivered him to King Eurystheus alive. The king was so frightened that he hid in a large jug.
The sixth feat was the extermination of the Stymphalian birds. Hercules saved Lake Stymphalia from man-eating birds with copper beaks: having scared the birds with bronze rattles, he killed them with stones fired from a sling.
In ancient Greek mythology, there was a class of characters called "heroes". Heroes differed from gods in that they were mortal. More often these were the descendants of a god and a mortal woman, less often - of a goddess and a mortal man. Heroes, as a rule, had exceptional or supernatural physical abilities, creative gifts, etc., but did not have immortality.
Achilles (Achilles).
Son of the mortal Peleus, king of the Myrmidons, and the sea goddess Thetis. During the long siege of Ilium, Achilles repeatedly launched raids on various neighboring cities. Achilles is the main character of Homer's Iliad. Achilles joined the campaign against Troy at the head of 50 or even 60 ships, taking with him his tutor Phoenix and childhood friend Patroclus. Having defeated many enemies, Achilles in the last battle reached the Scaean Gate of Ilion, but here an arrow shot from the bow of Paris by the hand of Apollo himself struck him in the heel, and the hero died. Achilles was buried in a golden amphora, which Dionysus gave to Thetis.
Hercules.
Son of the god Zeus and Alcmene, daughter of the Mycenaean king. Numerous myths have been created about Hercules; the most famous is the cycle of tales about the 12 labors performed by Hercules when he was in the service of the Mycenaean king Eurystheus.
There are also many legends about the death of Hercules. According to Ptolemy Hephaestion, having reached the age of 50 and finding that he could no longer draw his bow, he threw himself into the fire. Hercules ascended to heaven, was accepted among the gods, and Hera, who had reconciled with him, marries her daughter Hebe, the goddess of eternal youth, to him. Happily lives on Olympus, and his ghost is in Hades.
Odysseus.
The son of Laertes and Anticlea, husband of Penelope, grandson of Autolycus and father of Telemachus, who became famous as a participant in the Trojan War, was an intelligent and resourceful speaker. One of the key characters of the Iliad, the main character of the poem Odyssey.
Perseus.
The son of Zeus and Danae, daughter of the Argive king Acrisius. He defeated the monster Gorgon Medusa and was the savior of Princess Andromeda. Perseus is mentioned in Homer's Iliad.
Theseus.
son of the Athenian king Aegeus and Ephra, daughter of King Troezen Pettheus. A central figure in Attic mythology and one of the most famous characters in all of Greek mythology. Already mentioned in the Iliad and Odyssey.
Jason.
Son of King Iolcus Aeson and Polymede (Alcimedes). Hero, participant in the Calydonian hunt, leader of the Argonauts who set off on the ship "Argo" to Colchis for the Golden Fleece. Mentioned in the Iliad and Odyssey. According to one version, Jason committed suicide by hanging himself, either he died along with Glaucus, or was killed in the sanctuary of Hera in Argos; according to another version, he lived to old age and died under the rubble of the dilapidated Argo, falling asleep in its shadow.
Hector.
The bravest leader of the Trojan army, the main Trojan hero in the Iliad. He was the son of the last Trojan king Priam and Hecuba (the second wife of King Priam). According to other sources, he was the son of Apollo. His wife was Andromache. He killed Patroclus, a friend of Achilles, and was himself killed by Achilles, who dragged his body several times with his chariot around the walls of Troy and then handed him over to Priam for ransom.
Bellerophon.
Nickname of Hippo. Son of Glaucus and Eurymede (or Poseidon and Eurynome). After he killed the Corinthian Beller, he began to be called “the murderer of Beller.” In the myths about this hero, quite a few feats were described.
Orpheus.
The legendary singer and musician - lyre player, whose name personified the power of art. Son of the Thracian river god Eagr and the muse Calliope. Participated in the Argonauts' campaign for the Golden Fleece. He did not honor Dionysus, but worshiped the Sun-Apollo, ascending Mount Pangea towards sunrise.
Pelops.
Son of Tantalus and Euryanassa (or Dione), brother of Niobe, king and national hero of Phrygia and then the Peloponnese. The oldest mention of PELOPE is contained in Homer's Iliad.
Phoroney.
Son of Inach and Melia. The king of the entire Peloponnese, or the second king of Argos. Phoroneus was the first to unite people into a society, and the place where they gathered was called the city of Phoronicon, after Hermes translated the languages of people, and discord began between people.
Aeneas.
Hero of the Trojan War from the royal Dardan family. In the Iliad he killed 6 Greeks. According to Gigin's calculations, he killed 28 warriors in total. Companions of Aeneas on his wanderings, described in Latin by the ancient Roman poet Virgil in the Aeneid.
The sons of the great hero Pelops were Atreus and Thyestes. Pelops was once cursed by the charioteer of King Oenomaus, Myrtilus, who was treacherously killed by Pelops, and with his curse doomed the entire family of Pelops to great atrocities and death. The curse of Myrtil weighed heavily on both Atreus and Thyestes. They committed a number of atrocities. Atreus and Thyestes killed Chrysippus, the son of the nymph Axione and their father Pelops. It was the mother of Atreus and Thyestes Hippodamia who persuaded them to kill Chrysippus. Having committed this atrocity, they fled from their father’s kingdom, fearing his wrath, and took refuge with the king of Mycenae Sthenel, son of Perseus, who was married to their sister Nikippa. When Sthenel died and his son Eurystheus, captured by Iolaus, died at the hands of Hercules’ mother Alcmene, Atreus began to rule over the Mycenaean kingdom, since Eurystheus did not leave behind heirs. His brother Thyestes was jealous of Atreus and decided to take away power from him in any way.
Sisyphus had a son, the hero Glaucus, who ruled in Corinth after the death of his father. Glaucus had a son, Bellerophon, one of the great heroes of Greece. Bellerophon was as beautiful as a god and equal in courage to the immortal gods. Bellerophon, when he was still a youth, suffered a misfortune: he accidentally killed one citizen of Corinth and had to flee from his hometown. He fled to the king of Tiryns, Proetus. The king of Tiryns received the hero with great honor and cleansed him of the filth of the blood he had shed. Bellerophon did not have to stay long in Tiryns. His wife Proyta, the godlike Antheia, was captivated by his beauty. But Bellerophon rejected her love. Then Queen Antheia was inflamed with hatred of Bellerophon and decided to destroy him. She went to her husband and told him:
O king! Bellerophon is seriously insulting you. You must kill him. He pursues me, your wife, with his love. This is how he thanked you for your hospitality!
Grozen Boreas, god of the indomitable, stormy north wind. He rushes frantically over the lands and seas, causing all-crushing storms with his flight. One day Boreas, flying over Attica, saw the daughter of Erechtheus Orithia and fell in love with her. Boreas begged Orithia to become his wife and allow him to take her with him to his kingdom in the far north. Orithia did not agree; she was afraid of the formidable, stern god. Boreas was also refused by Orithia's father, Erechtheus. No requests, no pleas from Boreas helped. The terrible god became angry and exclaimed:
I deserve this humiliation myself! I forgot about my formidable, frantic strength! Is it right for me to humbly beg someone? I must act only by force! I drive thunderclouds across the sky, I raise waves on the sea like mountains, I uproot ancient oak trees like dry blades of grass, I scourge the earth with hail and turn the water into ice as hard as stone - and I pray, as if powerless mortal. When I rush in a frantic flight over the earth, the whole earth shakes and even the underground kingdom of Hades trembles. And I pray to Erechtheus as if I were his servant. I must not beg to give Orithia to me as a wife, but take her away by force!
Perseus did not remain long after this bloody battle in the kingdom of Kepheus. Taking with him the beautiful Andromeda, he returned to Serif to King Polydectes. Perseus found his mother Danae in great grief. Fleeing from Polydectes, she had to seek protection in the temple of Zeus. She did not dare to leave the temple for a single moment. The angry Perseus came to Polydectes' palace and found him and his friends at a luxurious feast. Polydectes did not expect that Perseus would return; he was sure that the hero had died in the fight against the gorgons. King Serif was surprised when he saw Perseus in front of him, and he calmly said to the king:
Your order has been fulfilled, I have brought you the head of Medusa.
Beautiful, equal to the Olympian gods themselves in his beauty, the young son of the king of Sparta, Hyacinth, was a friend of the arrow god Apollo. Apollo often appeared on the banks of the Eurotas in Sparta to visit his friend and spent time there with him, hunting along the mountain slopes in densely overgrown forests or having fun with gymnastics, in which the Spartans were so skilled.
One day, when the hot afternoon was approaching, Apollo and Hyacinth competed in throwing a heavy discus. The bronze disk flew higher and higher into the sky. So, straining his strength, the mighty god Apollo threw the disc. The disk flew high to the very clouds and, sparkling like a star, fell to the ground. Hyacinth ran to the place where the disk was supposed to fall. He wanted to quickly pick it up and throw it, to show Apollo that he, the young athlete, was not inferior to him, God, in his ability to throw the discus. The disk fell to the ground, bounced off the blow and with terrible force hit the head of Hyacinth, who ran up. Hyacinth fell to the ground with a groan. Scarlet blood gushed from the wound in a stream and stained the dark curls of the beautiful young man.
The son of Zeus and Io, Epaphus, had a son Bel, and he had two sons - Egypt and Danaus. The entire country, which is irrigated by the fertile Nile, was owned by Egypt, from which this country received its name. Danau ruled in Libya. The gods gave Egypt fifty sons. I give fifty beautiful daughters. The Danaids captivated the sons of Egypt with their beauty, and they wanted to marry beautiful girls, but Danai and the Danaids refused them. The sons of Egypt gathered a large army and went to war against Danae. Danaus was defeated by his nephews, and he had to lose his kingdom and flee. With the help of the goddess Pallas Athena, Danai built the first fifty-oared ship and set sail on it with his daughters into the endless, ever-noisy sea.
Danae's ship sailed for a long time on the sea waves and finally sailed to the island of Rhodes. Here Danaus stopped; he went ashore with his daughters, founded a sanctuary to his patron goddess Athena and made rich sacrifices to her. Danaus did not stay in Rhodes. Fearing the persecution of the sons of Egypt, he sailed with his daughters further to the shores of Greece, to Argolis - the homeland of his ancestor Io. Zeus himself guarded the ship during its dangerous voyage across the boundless sea. After a long journey, the ship landed on the fertile shores of Argolis. Here Danai and the Danaids hoped to find protection and salvation from their hated marriage with the sons of Egypt.
The people of the Copper Age committed many crimes. Arrogant and wicked, they did not obey the Olympian gods. The Thunderer Zeus was angry with them; Zeus was especially angered by the king of Lykosura in Arcadia, Lycaon. One day Zeus, disguised as a mere mortal, came to Lycosurus. So that the inhabitants knew that he was a god, Zeus gave them a sign, and all the inhabitants fell on their faces before him and honored him as a god. Only Lycaon did not want to give Zeus divine honors and mocked everyone who honored Zeus. Lycaon decided to test whether Zeus was a god. He killed a hostage who was in his palace, boiled part of his body, fried part of it and offered it as a meal to the great Thunderer. Zeus was terribly angry. With a lightning strike, he destroyed Lycaon's palace, and turned him into a bloodthirsty wolf.
The greatest artist, sculptor and architect of Athens was Daedalus, a descendant of Erechtheus. It was said about him that he carved such marvelous statues from snow-white marble that they seemed alive; the statues of Daedalus seemed to be looking and moving. Daedalus invented many tools for his work; he invented the ax and the drill. The fame of Daedalus spread far.
This great artist had a nephew Tal, the son of his sister Perdika. Tal was his uncle's student. Already in his early youth he amazed everyone with his talent and ingenuity. It was foreseeable that Tal would far surpass his teacher. Daedalus was jealous of his nephew and decided to kill him. One day Daedalus stood with his nephew on the high Acropolis of Athens at the very edge of the cliff. There was no one visible around. Seeing that they were alone, Daedalus pushed his nephew off the cliff. The artist was sure that his crime would go unpunished. Tal fell to his death from a cliff. Daedalus hastily descended from the Acropolis, picked up Tal's body and wanted to secretly bury it in the ground, but the Athenians caught Daedalus when he was digging a grave. The crime of Daedalus was revealed. The Areopagus sentenced him to death.
The wife of the king of Sparta Tyndareus was the beautiful Leda, the daughter of the king of Aetolia, Thestia. Throughout Greece, Leda was famous for its marvelous beauty. Leda became the wife of Zeus, and she had two children from him: the daughter Helen, beautiful as a goddess, and the son, the great hero Polydeuces. Leda also had two children from Tyndareus: daughter Clytemnestra and son Castor.
Polydeuces received immortality from his father, and his brother Castor was mortal. Both brothers were great heroes of Greece. No one could surpass Castor in the art of driving a chariot; he humbled the most indomitable horses. Polydeuces was a most skilled fist fighter who had no equal. The Dioscuri brothers took part in many of the heroic deeds of Greece. They were always together, the most sincere love bound the brothers.
The king of the rich Phoenician city of Sidon, Agenor, had three sons and a daughter, beautiful as an immortal goddess. This young beauty's name was Europe. Agenor's daughter once had a dream. She saw how Asia and the continent that is separated from Asia by the sea, in the form of two women, fought for her. Every woman wanted to own Europe. Asia was defeated, and she, who raised and nourished Europe, had to give it up to another. Europe woke up in fear; she could not understand the meaning of this dream. The young daughter Agenor humbly began to pray that the gods would avert misfortune from her if sleep threatened them. Then, dressed in purple robes woven with gold, she and her friends went to a green meadow covered with flowers, to the seashore. There, frolicking, the Sidonian maidens collected flowers in their golden baskets. They collected fragrant, snow-white daffodils, variegated crocuses, violets and lilies. The daughter Agenor herself, shining with her beauty among her friends, like Aphrodite, surrounded by Charites, collected only scarlet roses in her golden basket. Having collected flowers, the maidens began to dance in a merry round with laughter. Their young voices carried far across the flowering meadow and the azure sea, drowning out its quiet gentle splash.
Works are divided into pagesThe myths of Ancient Greece about heroes were created before the advent of writing in this country. Initially, it was purely oral creativity, passed on from person to person. These are tales about the archaic life of the Greek people, in which real facts are connected in legends about heroes with the imagination of the narrator. The memory of men and women who accomplished real feats, being ordinary citizens or high-born representatives of the people, stories about their achievements help the Greeks to look at their ancestors as beings favored by the gods and, at the same time, related to them. In the imagination of ordinary people, these citizens turn out to be the descendants of gods who created a family with mere mortals. Even now in schools they are forced to read the myths of ancient Greece about such heroes as Theseus, Prometheus, Odysseus and others.
Heroes were born from marriages of Olympian gods with mortals. They were endowed with superhuman capabilities and enormous strength, but did not have immortality. Heroes performed all sorts of feats with the help of their divine parents. They were supposed to fulfill the will of the gods on earth, to bring justice and order into people's lives. Heroes were highly revered in Ancient Greece, legends about them were passed down from generation to generation.
The concept of a heroic act did not always include military valor. Some heroes, indeed, are great warriors, others are healers, others are great travelers, others are just husbands of goddesses, others are ancestors of nations, others are prophets, etc. Greek heroes are not immortal, but their posthumous fate is unusual. Some heroes of Greece live after death on the Isles of the Blessed, others on the island of Levka or even on Olympus. It was believed that most heroes who fell in battle or died as a result of dramatic events were buried in the ground. The tombs of heroes - heroons - were places of their worship. Often, there were graves of the same hero in different places in Greece.
Read more about the characters from Mikhail Gasparov’s book “Entertaining Greece”
In Thebes they talked about the hero Cadmus, the founder of Cadmeia, the winner of the terrible cave dragon. In Argos they talked about the hero Perseus, who, at the end of the world, cut off the head of the monstrous Gorgon, from whose gaze people turned to stone, and then defeated the sea monster - Whale. In Athens they talked about the hero Theseus, who freed central Greece from evil robbers, and then in Crete killed the bull-headed cannibal Minotaur, who was sitting in a palace with intricate passages - the Labyrinth; he did not get lost in the Labyrinth because he held on to the thread that was given to him by the Cretan princess Ariadne, who later became the wife of the god Dionysus. In the Peloponnese (named after another hero, Pelops), they talked about the twin heroes Castor and Polydeuces, who later became the patron gods of horsemen and fighters. The hero Jason conquered the sea: on the ship “Argo” with his Argonaut friends, he brought to Greece from the eastern edge of the world the “golden fleece” - the skin of a golden ram that came down from heaven. The hero Daedalus, the builder of the Labyrinth, conquered the sky: on wings made of bird feathers, fastened with wax, he flew from captivity in Crete to his native Athens, although his son Icarus, flying with him, could not stay in the air and died.
The main hero, the real savior of the gods, was Hercules, the son of Zeus. He was not just a mortal man - he was a forced mortal man who served a weak and cowardly king for twelve years. On his orders, Hercules performed twelve famous labors. The first were victories over monsters from the outskirts of Argos - a stone lion and a multi-headed hydra snake, in which, instead of each severed head, several new ones grew. The last were victories over the dragon of the Far West, who guarded the golden apples of eternal youth (it was on the way to him that Hercules dug the Strait of Gibraltar, and the mountains on its sides began to be called the Pillars of Hercules), and over the three-headed dog Cerberus, who guarded the terrible kingdom of the dead. And after that he was called to his main task: he became a participant in the great war of the Olympians with the rebellious younger gods, the giants - in the Gigantomachy. The giants threw mountains at the gods, the gods struck the giants, some with lightning, some with a rod, some with a trident, the giants fell, but not killed, but only stunned. Then Hercules hit them with arrows from his bow, and they did not get up again. Thus, man helped the gods defeat their most terrible enemies.
But gigantomachy was only the penultimate danger that threatened the omnipotence of the Olympians. Hercules also saved them from the last danger. In his wanderings to the ends of the earth, he saw chained Prometheus on a Caucasian rock, tormented by Zeus's eagle, took pity on him and killed the eagle with an arrow. In gratitude for this, Prometheus revealed to him the last secret of fate: let Zeus not seek the love of the sea goddess Thetis, because the son that Thetis gives birth to will be stronger than his father - and if it is the son of Zeus, he will overthrow Zeus. Zeus obeyed: Thetis was married not to a god, but to a mortal hero, and they had a son, Achilles. And with this began the decline of the heroic age.
