Greek Heroes

Heroes in Greek mythology were the men and women of the generation before the historical age, famous for strength, courage or cunning. Most had a god or goddess as a parent or ancestor, and their stories fill the great epics and the Greek stage.

The Race of Heroes

Hesiod, in Works and Days (lines 156–173), makes the heroes the fourth race of men, made by Zeus and more just and noble than the Bronze race before them. He calls them half-gods. Many of them died in the wars at Thebes and Troy; Zeus settled others at the edge of the world, on the Isles of the Blessed beside the stream of Oceanus, where Cronus rules over them.

After their deaths the heroes were worshipped at their tombs. Pausanias describes such hero-shrines all over Greece, among them the sanctuary of Theseus in Athens, whose walls were painted with the Athenians fighting the Amazons and with the battle of the Lapiths and centaurs, in which Theseus has already killed a centaur (Pausanias 1.17.2).

Groups of Heroes

The heroes belong to several cycles of myth.

• Heracles, the strongest of them, who performed the Twelve Labours and was received on Olympus.
• Perseus, who killed Medusa, and Theseus, who killed the Minotaur and became king of Athens.
• Jason and the Argonauts, who sailed to Colchis for the Golden Fleece, and Meleager, who led the Calydonian boar hunt.
• Achilles and Odysseus, the heroes of the Trojan War in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Aeneas, who escaped from Troy to found a new people in Italy.

Others, such as Bellerophon, Peleus, the huntress Atalanta (Atlanta) and Actaeon, have shorter tales, and the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, are listed with them. The pages below tell each story in turn.

See Also: Heracles, Perseus, Theseus, Jason, Achilles, Odysseus, Ages of Man, Argonauts