Comparison Of Herakles And Iliad's Theogony

Stafford opens by explaining how since ancient Greece to modern times how the fight a between heroes and monsters was and still is popular in literature and media. She talks about the development of Herakles’ twelve labors and how the specific number twelve was not established until around 460 B.C. using the collection of twelve labors on the temple of Zeus at Olympia as the earliest depiction. She also talks about how Herakles was already know for overcoming series of challenges in literature before 460 B.C like in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, in Hesiod’s Theogony where Herakles has five labors, and in Peisandros’ Heraklia. Stafford briefly mentions the challenges that Herakles faces in these works. These challenges mainly included fighting monsters, such as Kerberos, the Nemean lion, and the Leranian hydra, or other seemingly impossible tasks like fetching Kerberos from Hades.
She mentions one of the earliest being a chest described by Pausanias depicting Herakles battling Geryon, Herakles approaching Atlas who is supporting the sky and holding the apples of the Hesperides, Herakles battling the hydra, and other related myths. She continues to talk about archaic art depicting Herakles as described by Pausanias. Then she describes Herakles’ depiction on architecture. These architecture depicting Herakles include the first temple of Hera at Foce del Sele in Campania, in the metopes of the Athenian Treasury at Delphi, and on the door of the temple of Herakles-Melquart at Cadiz. Stafford goes on to explain that some of the stories of Herakles were grouped together in Roman accounts and other artifacts and even specified the number of labors he had, though they were not always twelve. Although groups of labors were rare compared to the popularity of induvial labors, she explains that there are hundreds of representations of some of the