Heracles and Heroic Disaster.

Abstract

This dissertation, Heracles and Heroic Disaster, examines the juxtaposition of the glorious victories and terrible disasters of Heracles, as portrayed in Greek literature and visual images from Homer to Apollonius. Beginning in the sixth century B.C.E., as Heracles' apotheosis became an established tradition, his uncontrolled violence, lust, and madness became increasingly problematic. This interdisciplinary study traces the resulting tension between his heroic successes, which entail victories that offer social benefit to others, and heroic disasters, the chaos and destruction caused by the misdirection of heroic strength and skill. My first chapter examines the negative consequences of the heroic violence by which Heracles accomplishes the Labors associated with his apotheosis. Stesichorus' Geryoneis, Aristophanes' Frogs, Book Four of Apollonius' Argonautica, and Pindar's fr. 169a all treat Heracles' achievements with ambivalence by focusing on the innocent victims devastated through Heracles' success. My second chapter argues that, in Sophocles' Trachiniae, Heracles imports the competitive erotic rivalry between male suitors into his own household, by sending a concubine, Iole, to share Deianeira's roof. Deianeira's unheroic response to this competition – reliance on a love potion – is the cause of Heracles' ultimate defeat. In Chapter 3, I argue that Euripides' Heracles formulates a specifically two-pronged definition of aretē: the status of the glorious victor, as encompassed in the epithet kallinikos, and traditional philia. Though the play frames both Heracles' triumphs and madness in the same epinician terms, he is nevertheless redeemed by the same aretē he demonstrates in the first part of the play. Euripides thus integrates Heracles' propensity for unrestrained violence into a consistently admirable figure. My fourth chapter shows how Heracles' erotic attachment to Hylas in Apollonius' Argonautica causes his heroic collapse; his subsequent exclusion from the heroic expedition, a stunning contrast with the poem's positive appraisal of his heroism, serves as a warning for the callow Jason about the dangers of erotic attachment. Thus, this study reveals how Heracles becomes the ideal vehicle for criticizing traditional heroism, questioning the justice of Zeus, and proposing new definitions of excellence, and supplies needed rigor to the poorly-defined concept of the hero.