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Heracles
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Themes
Perseverance in the Face of Suffering
A central theme of Euripides’s Heracles is suffering and how human beings are to endure that suffering. The first part of the play finds Heracles’s family—his foster father Amphitryon, his wife Megara, and his children—poised to suffer a terrible death at the hands of Lycus. Amphitryon and Megara must find a way to endure their situation. In the second part of the play, Heracles must find a way to endure his own suffering after he kills his wife and children in a bout of madness.
The idea that suffering is inevitable and that courage is defined as perseverance in the face of that suffering is introduced in the Prologue, when Amphitryon tells Megara that “to persevere, trusting in what hopes he has / Is courage in a man” (Lines 105-6). Amphitryon’s view is not the complete or the only definition of courage in the play. As Megara argues, one must also acknowledge the power of fate and of necessity over human life and realize that to resist these powers is futile and “base” (Line 282). Megara’s resignation is not quite despair; rather, it is a dignified acceptance of one’s fate, and represents another way to show perseverance even when external circumstances make perseverance impossible and death inevitable.
The suffering that human beings experience, moreover, is often undeserved. In the first part of the play, Amphitryon prays to Zeus to save Heracles’s children. Besides being innocent themselves, their father is the greatest benefactor of Greece, clearing the earth of its most terrible monsters through his labors. When prayers fail, Amphitryon reproaches the gods and all of Greece for unfairly deserting the family of a man to whom they owe so much. Even more terrible is what Heracles suffers in the second part of the play. Hera, who hates Heracles not for any crime of his own but for the fact that his father Zeus conceived him with another woman, drives the hero mad so that he kills his wife and children. It is by overcoming the suffering, shame, and grief that arise from his actions—actions that are not his fault—that Heracles displays the perseverance lauded throughout the play. Though Heracles contemplates suicide, he finally concludes that doing so would be “cowardice” (Line 1348). Instead of killing himself, Heracles recognized that he must “serve necessity” (Line 1357) and resolves to “prevail against death” (Line 1351)—to go on living and endure his suffering instead of succumbing to it.
The Meaning of Heroism
Another central theme of the play is the meaning of heroism, known as arete by the ancient Greeks. Euripides redefines arete—traditionally conceived as bravery in battle—so that it comes to encompass other qualities, especially friendship (philia in Greek). In the world of Euripides’s Heracles, the true hero is not only brave and strong, but also a good friend: He is therefore concerned not only with acquiring personal glory but feels duty-bound to protect his community and his family.
In demonstrating this new conception of arete, the Heracles represented by Euripides contrasts with earlier versions of the hero. This new Heracles retains his traditional bravery and physical strength, but he is also not restricted by these abilities. Rather, this Heracles also knows when it suits him to be cunning, sneaking into Thebes in secret or ambushing Lycus when he cannot beat him in an open fight. Even more importantly, this Heracles values cooperation and community—his relationship with his friends and family—over the acquisition of personal glory. Heracles even disavows his labors when he realizes that his absence has put his family in danger:
Whom should I defend if not my wife and sons
And my old father? Farewell, my labors!
For wrongly I preferred you to these here.
(574-76)
This Heracles is a new kind of hero. Of his traditional weapons—the club, the bow, and the lion skin—it is the bow that becomes his symbol, especially when Amphitryon defends Heracles’s use of this long-range weapon in the first Episode. Heracles becomes a hero who is not only brave but also intelligent and pragmatic, a hero who is part of a community.
In encompassing friendship, the definition of heroism or arete explored in the play is also very much bound by duty. Heracles, for instance, places his duty to his family above all else when he resolves to risk his life to save them from Lycus—another example of how Heracles’s arete is centered upon his social relationships rather than his glorious deeds. Later, when Heracles is driven by madness to kill his family, he regards his life as over: He has failed in his most important duty—to protect his family—and is therefore as good as dead himself. The fame and glory of his labors count for nothing in the face of his shame.
Heracles even debates at the end of the play whether he should keep his old weapons: the symbols of a life that has become meaningless. Although he decides to keep his weapons, he does so only after embracing a new concept of his heroism. Specifically, Heracles rejects his own divinity as the son of Zeus and assumes, in its place, a kind of humanism. Disassociating himself from the cruelty of the gods, Heracles becomes—possibly for the first time—a truly human hero, a hero who understands heroism as friendship, duty, and perseverance.
The Nature of the Gods and their Role in Human Life
In moving towards Heracles’s rejection of the gods, the play explores the nature of the gods and their relationship to human beings. The theme is taken up early in the play: In the first Episodes, for instance, the gods are attacked for abandoning Heracles and his family. Later, Iris and Madness even appear briefly on stage, a tangible representation of the gods’ potential to impact human life in destructive and unjust ways. Finally, Heracles’s eventual rejection of the gods stands as a final—if not entirely convincing—judgment of the gods’ failings.
Euripides was known in antiquity for the way he questioned the traditional divine pantheon in his plays. According to a later (and probably unreliable) biographical tradition, Euripides was even tried by his contemporaries for impiety and atheism. Euripides’s Heracles presents one of the tragedian’s most challenging representations of the traditional Greek gods. Already in the first part of the play, the gods are conspicuously absent. With the very first lines of the play, Amphitryon establishes his and his family’s closeness to the gods: After all, Heracles himself was born when Amphitryon “shared” (Line 2) his wife Alcmene with Zeus. Given this closeness, he wonders, why does Zeus abandon the children of his son Heracles, when as a god—indeed the most powerful god—he has the strength to help them? Amphitryon, when he realizes his prayers are futile, resorts to attacking the injustice of Zeus:
Your love then was much less than we had thought;
And I, mere man, am nobler than you, great god—
I did not betray the sons of Heracles.
You know well enough to creep into a bed
And take what is not yours, what no man gave:
what do you know of saving those you love?
You are a foolish god or were born unjust!
(Lines 341-47)
Amphitryon is not the only character in the play who comes to view human beings as more just than the gods. By the end of the play, Heracles has rejected the gods—and with them his own divinity. He declares that he counts himself the son of the mortal Amphitryon, not the god Zeus. Heracles refuses to believe in the traditional gods, whose behavior is unjust and amoral:
I do not believe the gods commit
Adultery, or bind each other in chains.
I never did believe it; I never shall;
Nor that one god is tyrant of the rest.
If god is truly god, he is perfect,
Lacking nothing.
(Lines 1341-46)
Within the action of the play, these ideas make little sense: As Heracles himself knows and has stated explicitly, it is the goddess Hera’s unjust hatred for him that caused him to kill his family. Taken out of context, however, Heracles’s attack on the traditional gods is powerful and thought-provoking, echoing the skeptical sentiments of many philosophers living in Euripides’s own time. Even within the play, the ideas Heracles introduces serve to sever Heracles’s ties with the gods and to highlight even more strongly his decision to embrace his humanity.
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By Euripides
