Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Trachiniae

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The Homeric poems contain only incidental allusions

Heracles in the Homeric poems.

to Heracles, who is associated with the generation before the Trojan war. We hear that he was born at Thebes, being the son of Zeus and Alcmena. His life-long foe, the goddess Hera, defrauded him of his inheritance, the lordship of Argos, by ensnaring Zeus into a promise that this dominion should be held by Eurystheus¹. Heracles performed labours (“ἄεθλοι”) for Eurystheus, whose commands were brought by the herald Copreus: but only one of these tasks is specified,—viz., the descent in quest of ‘the dog of Hades².’ Apart from the ‘labours’ proper, some other exploits of the hero are mentioned. He delivered Laomedon, the father of Priam, from the seamonster (“κῆτος”) sent by the angry gods; and, when the false king withheld the due reward, he sacked Troy. Returning thence, he was driven by storms to Cos³. Further, he made war on Pylos, killing the Neleidae, Nestor's brethren, and wounding the immortals, Hera and Hades, who opposed him⁴. Under his own roof he slew his guest Iphitus; but no motive is assigned by the Homeric poet. The victim's father, Eurytus, king of Oechalia (in Thessaly), is not attacked or killed by Heracles; he is more quietly despatched by Apollo, who is jealous of his skill in archery⁵. The Homeric weapon of Heracles is the bow; there is no mention of the club. His Homeric wife is Megara, daughter of Creon. Finally he dies, ‘subdued by fate and by the wrath of Hera⁶.’ There is no hint of his apotheosis, except in one passage, which clearly bewrays interpolation⁷.

The parts of the Homeric epics in which these allusions occur are of various ages; and the allusions themselves are derived from various regions,—Argos, the western Peloponnesus, Boeotia, Thessaly, the Dorian colonies in Asia Minor. Several of the passages have a more or less intrusive air; one⁸, at least, has manifestly been adapted to the Iliad from some epic<*> which Heracles was a principal figure. Speaking generally, we may say that in the Iliad and the Odyssey the Dorian hero is a foreign person.

But this negative result is not the only one which the Homeric notices suggest. They make us feel how difficult it would have been for epic poetry, working in the Homeric spirit, to treat the story of Heracles as a whole. His acts are too incoherent to derive a properly epic unity from his person,— such an unity as the Odyssey, for example, derives from the person of Odysseus. The original Dorian legend of Heracles had, indeed, the unity of a moral idea; but that is not enough for an epic.

The Heracleia of Peisander.