#Heracles

Greatest of the heroes; the Twelve Labours; deified after death.

Marble statue of Hera as queen, standing veiled in a long chiton and himation with a diadem band across her brow, her raised right hand holding a sceptre and her extended left hand bearing a shallow offering dish.

Hera, Queen of Olympus

The goddess of marriage who ruled beside Zeus and warred against him in the same breath, dressing for seduction as a strategy of state.

6 minHomer

An engraving of a colossal, heavily muscled Hercules standing frontally, the Nemean lion-skin worn as a hood over his head and draped down his left side, the knotted olive-wood club resting over his right shoulder; small background vignettes show his combats with Antaeus, Cacus and Achelous in a classical landscape.

Greek

Heracles, the Greatest Hero

The strongman son of Zeus strangled serpents in his cradle and cleaned the world of monsters, but the labour that made him a god began in the ruin of his own house.

6 minPseudo-Apollodorus