Heracles

Traditionally, Heracles was the son of Zeus. Zeus swore that the next son born of the Perseid house should
become ruler of Greece, but – by a trick of Zeus’s jealous wife, Hera – another child called Eurystheus,
was born first and became king. When He acles grew up he married Megara the daughter of the King of
Thebes, but he killed her and their children in a fit of madne s caused by Hera. For that crime, he was
obliged to serve Eurystheus. Eurystheus himself gave Heracles the famous 12, usually arranged as follows:
(1) the killing of the Nemean lion, whose skin he then wore; (2) the killing of the nine-headed monster
called the Hydra; (3) the capture of the stag of Arcadia; (4) the capture of the wild boar of Mount Erymanthus; (5) the cleansing, in a single day, of the cattle stables of King Augeas; (6) the killing of the monstrous
man-eating birds of the Stymphalian marshes; (7) the capture of the mad bull of the island of Crete; (8)
the capture of the man-eating horses of King Diomedes; (9) the stealing of the girdle of Hyppolite, queen
of the Amazons; (10) the capture of the cattle of Geryon the giant; (11) the bringing back of the golden
apples of the Hesperiades at the world’s end; and (12) the fetching from the underworld of Cerberus, the
three-headed dog that guarded its gates.