Hercules: The hero with many faces

Few ancient Greek heroes can rival Hercules in the popular imagination. He was equally famous in antiquity. We possess more stories about Hercules than any other figure from Greek myth. Tales about his adventures were told throughout the Mediterranean. 

Collectively, these tales depict a hero riven by contradiction; brave and stoic in one instance, cowardly and debauched in another. This lecture examines the many facets of this hero and explores how different writers, artists and film-makers have exploited them. 

Through the figure of Hercules, we can see the full gamut of human emotion and experience represented. He is us when we are at our best and worst. He inspires, amuses, and horrifies us in equal measure. 

Professor Alastair Blanshard is the Paul Eliadis Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland. Among his many publications, he is the author of Hercules: A Heroic Life and, together with Emma Stafford, he recently edited a collection on the representation of Hercules in the 20th and 21st centuries. 

Header image: Unknown artist, [Heraklean landscape], ca. late 1700s, oil on canvas, donated by Sir Charles Nicholson, 1865, University Art Collection, UA1865.34