Herakles and Hercules
Exploring a Graeco-Roman Divinity

Louis Rawlings (Edited by), Hugh Bowden (Edited by)

9781905125050

Hardback, published 1 December 2005

254 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.7 cm, 0.596 kg

Herakles and Hercules: two names for a figure of pervasive appeal in Antiquity. He was a hero of myth and a god with cult associations. He was ancestor of Macedonian kings, patron of Carthaginian generals and of Roman emperors, and a role model for Stoic philosophers. As a performer of the famous labours, wanderer, liberator, madman and murderer of kin, Herakles-Hercules has retained his fascination down to the present. The eleven new studies in this volume explore why this figure appealed so widely in Antiquity. They examine his role in ancient myth and philosophy, drama and art, as well as in politics and propaganda, warfare and religion,