the Latinized form of Heracles, one of the most famous heroes of the Greek mythology. He was Hercules the son of Jupiter and the Theban Alcmena, the granddaughter of Perseus; but his reputed father was Amphitryon of Mycenae, who having accidentally killed Electryon, king of that city, was obliged to fly for refuge to Thebes. There Hercules was born and brought up, and there he performed the renowned exploits of his infancy and youth, such as the strangling of the snakes, and the slaughter of the lion of Mount Citheron. A trick of the goddess Juno condemned the young hero to the service of his kinsman Eurystheus, who, at once jealous and afraid of him, tried to procure his death, by appointing him a series of almost impossible exploits to perform. These, known as the twelve labours of Hercules, need only be recapitulated—the slaughter of the Nemean lion, the conquest of the Lernaean hydra, the capture of the golden-horned stag of Ceryneia, the combat with the Erymanthian boar, the cleaning of the stables of Augias, the destruction of the Stymphalian birds, the capture of the Cretan bull, the capture of the carnivorous mares of the Thracian Diomedes, the successful theft of the girdle of Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons, the slaughter of Geryon and the capture of his oxen, the finding of the golden apples of the Hesperides, and the fetching up of Cerberus from the lower world. The other numerous exploits of Hercules it is hardly necessary to recapitulate—such as his expedition against Troy, and afterwards against Lacedaemon, his slaughter of the centaur Nessus, and his co-operation with the gods against the giants—or to do more than allude to his self-sought death on the funeral pyre of Mount Eta. The myth of Hercules is regarded by scholars as of purely Greek origin and development; though some of the deeds attributed to the hero have evidently been engrafted on the original story from some Oriental religion. The idea of Hercules, essentially the same in the Roman mythology as in the Greek, is that of force—that physical and mental power which enables men and communities to crush under foot all the obstacles and difficulties which nature and fate throw in their way, as they struggle onwards and upwards to a higher state of existence. (The best accounts of the myth of Hercules are given by Müller in his Dorians, and by Buttmann, in his Mythologus.)

Pillars of. See Gibraltar.