Labours of Hercules Traditionally, Hercules was the son of Zeus, the chief deity among the Greek gods, and Alcmene, a mortal princess whom Zeus tricked into sleeping with him. (See my previous posts.) In courtrooms across the country, forensic psychologists and psychiatrists, judges and juries are confronted with exactly this same question, albeit employing somewhat different explanatory myths or metaphors: How responsible is the angry, mad, mentally disordered or psychotic violent offender for his or her destructive actions? Was it bad biochemistry, faulty neurology, defective genes, childhood trauma or the devil or demons that made them do it? Are they themselves, like Hercules, hapless victims of powerful forces - either biological, psychological, sociological, or metaphysical - that eventually take control and compel them to do evil? Or are they - and should they be - held morally and legally accountable for such evil deeds? For the ancient Greeks, the answer was never unequivocally either/or, but rather, ambivalently both. Labours of Hercules, also called Tasks of Hercules, the 12 labours, or tasks, assigned to the Greco-Roman legendary hero Hercules (Heracles) by King Eurystheus. Summaries Hercules, the demigod son of Zeus and the strongest man in the world, must undertake twelve arduous tasks as compensation for the deaths of his. Titus kills both Lavinia and Mutius while Hercules kills his three children and his wife Megara as well (990-1030). During this 12-year period, Hercules had to perform the 10 labors the king would require of him. The first of these Labors of Hercules is to kill the lion of Nemea. To learn what further course he must take, Hercules consulted the oracle at Delphi where the Pythian priestess told him to expiate his crime by serving King Eurystheus for 12 years. Today, almost three millennia later, we bear witness with escalating incidence to similar savage acts of so-called senseless violence in our own culture. Hercules is maddened by the twelve labours that he was forced to complete and Titus goes insane because of the war and all of the tragedies that happen to him throughout the play. Spurred on by Hera, Eurystheus devises a series of twelve impossibly difficult tasks.
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