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The Twelve Labors of Hercules (Greek: Δωδεκαθλος, dodekathlos) are a series of archaic episodes connected by a later continuous narrative, concerning a penance carried out by the greatest of the Greek heroes, Heracles, romanised as Hercules. The establishment of a fixed cycle of twelve labours was attributed by the Greeks to an epic poem, now lost, written by Peisandros of Rhodes, dated about 610 BC (Burkert).
As they survive, the Labors of Hercules are not told in any single place, but must be reassembled from many sources. Ruck and Staples[1] assert that there is no one way to interpret the labours, but that six were located in the Peloponnese, culminating with the rededication of Olympia. Six others took the hero farther afield. In each case, the pattern was the same: Hercules was sent to kill or subdue, or to fetch back for Hera's representative Eurystheus a magical animal or plant. "The sites selected were all previously strongholds of Hera or the 'Goddess' and were Entrances to the Netherworld".[1]
A famous depiction of the labours in Greek sculpture is found on the metopes of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, which date to the 450s BC.
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Zeus, having made Alcmene pregnant with Hercules, proclaimed that the next son born of the house of Perseus would become king. Hera, Zeus' wife, hearing this, caused Eurystheus to be born two months early as he was of the house of Perseus, while Hercules, also of the house, was three months overdue. When he found out what had been done, Zeus was furious; however, his rash proclamation still stood.
In a fit of madness, Hercules slew his wife, Megara, and their three children. The fit then receded. Realizing what he had done, he isolated himself, going into the wilderness and living alone. He was found (by his cousin Theseus) and convinced to visit the Oracle at Delphi to regain his honor. The Oracle told him that as a penance he would have to perform a series of twelve tasks, or labors, set by King Eurystheus, the man who had taken Hercules' birthright and the man he hated the most.
In his labors, Hercules was often accompanied by a male companion (an eromenos), according to Licymnius and others, such as Iolaus, his nephew. Although he was only supposed to perform ten labors, this assistance led to him suffering two more. Eurystheus didn't count the Hydra, because Iolaus helped him, or the Augean stables, as he received payment for his work, or because the rivers did the work. Hercules could have been made to do even more work since he had help on quite a few labours, but we must assume that the Greeks gave up from exhaustion after twelve.
A traditional order of the labors found in Apollodorus[2] is:
German scholar Walter Burkert has called the labors and other myths of Hercules "a conglomerate of popular tales which was exploited only secondarily by the high art of poetry", and it was not until the fifth century that poets of the Classic age could draw the myth into "a tragic, heroic, and human atmosphere and away from its natural thrust outwards to a carefree realm beyond the human".[3] As philosophical, moral, and eventually allegorical overlays came to be applied to his death-cheating superhuman exploits, behind their outer, literal meaning, the Hercules figure came to represent an inner mystical tradition, and thus the labors could be interpreted in terms of the spiritual path. The last three labours (10-12) of Heracles are generally considered metaphors about death. Hercules was unique among Greek heroes in that no tomb of Hercules was ever localized, and the Olympian sacrifices and chthonic libations were offered simultaneously to him everywhere.
Pointing to a possible location for their origin, or at least their formalisation, is the fact that most of the geographic locations are located in, or on the borders of what was classical Arcadia (today's prefecture of Arcadia is smaller).
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