Heracles, Hercules and the Foundation Stories of Athens and Rome

One hero, two names

The Greeks called him **Heracles**; the Romans called him **Hercules**. Unlike most of the gods, he was not born divine: he was a mortal who earned a place among them. That is why both cultures found him so useful. A hero who suffers, works and is rewarded can be claimed by anybody, and the Romans did not just borrow him. They gave him their own episodes, on Italian ground, doing things that mattered to Rome.

The episodes you actually need

This topic is a defined set, not a tour of every story ever told about him. These are the ones the specification names.

Why Olympia?

This course studies the twelve Labours "as depicted on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia". Why does that phrasing matter?

• Because it fixes which version of the Labours you are studying: the set carved on the metopes there, rather than any of the other tellings
• Because the exam is really about the architecture of the temple
• Because Olympia is the only place the Labours were ever shown
• Because the Romans built it

Match each Labour to what he faced

Hercules at Rome, before Rome

In **Virgil's Aeneid**, Hercules passes through Italy driving the cattle he has taken from Geryon, and stops at the place where Rome will later stand. **Cacus**, a fire-breathing monster living in a cave there, steals some of the cattle and drags them backwards by their tails so the hoofprints point the wrong way. Hercules is fooled until the hidden cattle low and give themselves away. He tears open the cave and kills Cacus. The point of the episode for a Roman reader is what it leaves behind: a cult and an altar on the future site of their city, so their ground was already sacred before Rome existed.

The Cacus episode

Select the TWO statements that are true of Hercules and Cacus.

• Cacus drags the stolen cattle backwards so their tracks appear to lead away from his cave
• The episode is set at the future site of Rome, which is much of the reason a Roman poet tells it
• It is counted as one of the twelve Labours
• Hercules spares Cacus once the cattle are returned

From the river god to the pyre

Ovid runs these events in one chain. Put them in order.

• Hercules wrestles the river god Achelous and wins Deianira
• The centaur Nessus tries to carry Deianira off, and Hercules shoots him
• The dying Nessus tells Deianira his blood will keep her husband's love
• Years later, fearing a rival, Deianira sends Hercules a robe soaked in it
• The poison burns him, he builds a pyre, and he is taken up among the gods

Why did she send the robe?

Deianira sends the robe believing it will help her. What does the story gain from that?

• She is trying to win her husband back, not to harm him, so the greatest hero is destroyed by an act of love rather than by an enemy
• She has decided to kill him in revenge, showing how dangerous he had become
• She is acting on instructions from the gods
• She never sends anything and he simply falls ill

Where did we come from?

Every ancient city told a story about its own beginning, and those stories were not history. They were arguments: about who the city belonged to, what it valued, and why it deserved to exist. Athens and Rome both had one, and they are strikingly different in what they choose to be proud of. That difference is what this half of the topic is for.

Athens against Rome

Two cities explaining themselves, and choosing very different things to explain.

Match each figure to their part in a founding

Both foundings in one paragraph

Athens chose its patron by a contest between Poseidon and _____, who offered the _____ and won the city. Rome traced itself back to _____, who escaped the fall of Troy, and then to the twins suckled by a _____. The founding was completed when _____ killed his brother and named the city after himself.

Plutarch pairs them

Plutarch set the life of Theseus beside the life of Romulus so the two could be judged against each other. Work through what that comparison actually shows.

• Both are founders. What is the clearest DIFFERENCE in how each founding is completed?
• Why might Romans have been willing to keep a founding story with a killing in it?
• What does comparing the two tell you that studying either one alone would not?

What the comparison question wants

**"Compare the foundation stories of Athens and Rome. (8 marks)"** "Both cities explain themselves through myth rather than record, and both make a divine claim: Athens takes its name from a goddess who won it in contest, Rome descends from Mars through Romulus. What separates them is the tone. Athens is founded on a gift and a choice, and Theseus then unites Attica by agreement. Rome is founded on flight from a burning city and completed when Romulus kills his brother. Each story flatters a different quality: Athens claims wisdom and civility, Rome claims endurance and the will to survive at any cost." Notice the structure: shared ground first, then the difference, then what the difference means. Two summaries side by side would not score this.

Two cities, one sentence

Build a sentence that compares the two foundings rather than describing them.

Your turn: what is a founding story for?

Explain what the foundation stories of Athens and Rome were FOR, using both stories as evidence.

• Say what each city claims about where it came from
• Give one specific detail from the Athenian story and say what it flatters
• Give one specific detail from the Roman story and say what it flatters
• Explain why a city would want a founding story at all, given that neither is history