Day Eleven: Hercules the Playa

Special Valentine's-Day-ish edition: Hercules' love life!

So first off, we have Megara. Everybody knows her from the Disney version. "Kidnapped" by Hades, although I think she did it to herself. (She did volunteer, all Hades really did was hold her to the agreement . . .) Anyway, they had several children and life seemed good, but then Hera, being the angry, no good very bad high queen goddess that she was, decided to mess with Hercules some more. So she made him insane and he killed his kids and sometimes Megara, though that depends on the version. (In the versions where she survives, she's given to Iolaus.)

A while later, Hercules accidentally kills this guy Iphitus when he accidentally threw him over a wall in a fit of rage. As punishment, he's made the slave of Omphale, daughter of either the king of Lydia or a river god. Most records of her are MIA, but the general concensus is that she made Hercules wear women's clothing and stole his lion skin and club. After a year or so, she set him free and made him her husband (heiro gamos!). Then she just disappears from the story and he's suddenly single again.

Then comes Deianira, whom we just read about in Ovid. Hercules fought the river god Achelous for her, then a centaur named Nessus tried to rape her. Centaur dies and gives Deianira poisoned "love cloak," Deianira later sends it to Hercules, Hercules puts it on and has his skin burned until he dies. Nasty. Then "till death do us part" comes in, and Hercules is once again Single Bachelor of the Year.

Once Hercules arrives at the pearly gates of Mount Olympus, Hera has apparently decided to forgive him. Feeling a little bad for maybe being just a bit mean, she gives him her daughter Hebe, also known as Juventas, the goddess of youth. She also happens to be his half-sister. Yuck.






Other interesting note: When Hercules is in the "thirteenth labor" and kills the Lion of Cithaeron, King Thespius challenges him to have sex with all of his daughters in one night--all fifty of them. Hercules, being the amazing studly man that he is, does so with no problem. Every single girl becomes pregnant, making the entire next generation of the royal family of Thespiae his illegitimate children.

Yikes.