Do Arrows Kill People Or Does Hercules Kill People?

Michael Goyette
EIDOLON
Published in
10 min readNov 2, 2015

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Albrecht Dürer, “Herakles und die symphalischen Vögel” (1600)

Hailed as the ultimate strongman in Greek and Roman mythology, Hercules (sometimes also called Heracles) is famous for having been a hypermasculine, semi-divine hero who protected humanity by dispensing with a series of menacing beasts and brutes. But Hercules possessed a distinct, often overlooked advantage that enabled these illustrious conquests: exceptionally potent weapons. Indeed, perhaps no figure from any mythological tradition is more identified with weapons — and thus the capacity for onslaughts of violence — than Hercules, who wielded an oversized club, a vaunted bow, and poison-tipped arrows.

Hercules was a favorite subject not only in the literature and mythology of the Greeks and Romans but also in their visual arts, where he is almost always shown to be engaged in violence (or at least armed and ready to lash out). It is rare to find representations of Hercules in which his weapons are not close at hand.

Despite his glorious exploits, Hercules and his weapons occupy a rather pessimistic place in Greek and Roman mythology. The image of Hercules in American popular culture often glosses over the fact that his weapons repeatedly cause harm, sometimes with casualties (including his own family), within civil society. These cautionary tales of the Greeks and Romans can and should lead us to reflect upon the place of deadly weapons in the United States, where the irresponsible use of such weapons has become commonplace. In a world with weapons far more technologically advanced than those of Hercules, and in a year when there have already been hundreds of mass shootings across the country, the lessons imparted by Hercules’ weapons take on a special poignancy.

According to various accounts in Greek mythology (e.g. Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.4.11; Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.13.3), Hercules received his bow and arrows as a gift from Apollo, the god of archery as well as of healing and disease. Apollo’s arrows are said to have rained plague upon the Greeks until they appeased his grievances at the beginning of Homer’s Iliad. Implicit in this narrative is the dualistic nature of Apollo’s bow and arrows, with their capacity for both defense and destruction — aspects that recall the polarized rhetoric surrounding the use of guns today. As we will see, this duality problematizes the possession of such weapons by fallible mortals such as Hercules.

Having received the bow and arrows, Hercules sets out to complete his famous Twelve Labors. In one labor, he is pitted against the Lernaean Hydra (Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.5.2; Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 4.11.5), a poisonous water-serpent with regenerating heads that had been terrorizing the surrounding countryside. Hercules vanquished the Hydra by cauterizing each of its heads with fire upon cutting them off; then, for his own future use, Hercules dipped his arrows in the serpent’s poisonous venom — enhancing what Apollo provided, and thus creating what scholar Adrienne Mayor has dubbed “the first biological weapon” (p. 44). After all, the English word “toxic” derives from the ancient Greek word for bow — toxon.

Instantaneously fatal, Hercules’ poison-tipped arrows represent a fearsome augmentation of divine weapons, comparable in their devastating potential to modern firearms. These arrows help Hercules overcome the slew of monsters in the remaining labors, but they end up causing unanticipated fatalities when he returns home. After completing his final labor by capturing Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hades, Hercules returns home triumphant and ready to assume a place among the immortal gods (Seneca the Younger, Hercules Furens 592–615). But his transition back to domestic life goes awry when the vengeful goddess Hera causes Hercules to fall into a state of madness. In a lesser-known mythological episode (one certainly not included in the 1997 Disney movie “Hercules”), Hercules erroneously perceives his own wife, Megara, and their three children to be the family members of a rival ruler and shoots them down. Despite their pleas for mercy, Hercules executes them in his deluded mental state before being subdued by a deep sleep.

This dark episode in Hercules’ life was dramatized in two surviving plays: Euripides’ Heracles and Seneca’s Hercules Furens. In Euripides’ play, Heracles’ father, Amphitryon, observes the massacre perpetrated by his son and wonders if Heracles has gone mad due to his repeated exposure to violence and bloodshed (Heracles 965–967). While Hera is the immediate cause of Heracles’ madness, Amphitryon suggests that Heracles has become so habituated to violence in the course of his labors that he now struggles to assume a more peaceable mindset. John G. Fitch reaches a similar conclusion, asserting that the killings symbolically dramatize the Heracles’ “complete failure to engage with a human mode of life.”

Implicit in Amphitryon’s observations is the point that frenzied violence — and the weapons capable of performing such violence — may have their place when performing labors or fighting in battles, but they must be controlled when in range of family members and civilians. Indeed, as soon as Heracles falls into his coma-like sleep, Amphitryon binds him up and takes away the weapons. He is well aware that those arms, when coupled with delusions or nefarious intentions, possess a great capacity for harm and destruction. Indeed, Amphitryon remarks that Hera, Heracles, and the weapons themselves all share blame in the bloodshed that occurs in the play (1135).

Near the end of the play, Heracles fully returns to his senses and struggles to decide what to do with his weapons. Addressing the weapons themselves as though they have taken on a life and power of their own, he reflects upon the pain they have inflicted and speaks of his “mournful partnership with these weapons” (λυγραὶ δὲ τῶνδ᾽ ὅπλων κοινωνίαι, 1377). Nonetheless, he is ultimately unwilling to relinquish them, offering the familiar justification that he may still require them for his protection from unnamed and vaguely-defined “enemies” (1383–1385). In this respect, the play ends on deeply unsettling note, with Heracles failing to grasp an important lesson about the dangers of his weapons. His decision parallels the United States’ continued fascination with guns on the heels of recent atrocities such as the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, making the end of Euripides’ play seem even more disquieting.

The tragedy Hercules Furens by the Roman playwright Seneca the Younger follows a plot similar to that of Euripides’ play, and it underscores some of the same points about his weapons’ devastating potential when introduced into society. But there are some key differences between Seneca’s play and that of Euripides, particularly in how Hercules talks about his weapons in the wake of the murder of his family. Emerging from his maddened state, Hercules almost immediately observes, with great concern, that his weapons are missing (1152–1153). But as soon as he realizes what he has done, he demands them back from Amphitryon, intending to break his arrows and smash his bow. At one point, he even exclaims, “the weapons must pay the penalty” (dent arma poenas, 1235).

In a fleeting moment of heightened self-awareness, it appears that Seneca’s Hercules, unlike the Euripidean character, comprehends that the weapons are safe in neither his hands nor anyone else’s. But shortly after, Hercules modifies his request, asking his father to return the weapons, but only if his mind is “sane” (1243–1244); he then changes his tune yet again, demanding that his father bring out the weapons so that he can “conquer Fate itself” (1270–1272). Rather than dismiss this grandiose delusion outright, Amphitryon listens to what his son has to say and rather surprisingly decides to return the weapons, even as Hercules threatens to commit suicide. Ultimately, Hercules is convinced to live in Athens as an exile, and he departs almost as soon as he returns. The audience of the play is left with the troubling knowledge that Hercules still has his weapons in tow as he heads off to live among a large, peaceful population.

While some details differ, both plays leave us with the haunting image of hazardous weapons producing grave violence in a domestic environment. One does not have to look very hard to find close parallels in the present day United States, where pretty much anyone can obtain assault rifles and hordes of ammunition at the local Walmart, with few questions asked. This ease of access, combined with the sheer potency of modern weapons, presents a threat far more menacing than a legion of berserk Herculeses.

Hercules’ weapons go on to cause further calamities for those around him. In one myth, Hercules visits one of his closest friends, the immortal centaur Chiron, and accidentally drops an arrow on Chiron’s foot (Pseudo-Hyginus, Astronomica 2.38). In a similar myth, related by the mythographer Pseudo-Apollodorus, Hercules mistakenly shoots Chiron with an arrow while trying to defend him from a group of hostile centaurs; the injury that results from this accidental shooting is so painful that Chiron begs to be relieved of his immortality and perishes soon thereafter (Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.5.4).

Additionally, due to the trick of an enemy, the mighty Hercules is killed by the virulent venom that he used to coat his own arrows (Sophocles, The Women of Trachis 1046–1263; Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.126–272). As Hercules writhes in torment, he bestows his bow and arrows upon his friend Philoctetes, the only person who is willing to light his funeral pyre; he then throws himself on top of the pyre while still alive (Metamorphoses 9.229–238).

Nor do the weapons bode well for Philoctetes. Marooned on Lemnos by the Greek army on the way to Troy after being bitten by a snake (or, according to some late antique sources, after being grazed by one of the arrows he acquired from Hercules), Philoctetes survives by hunting birds with Hercules’ bequest. After years of war, the Greeks return for him, mindful of a prophecy that they will not be able to win the war without the weapons of Hercules. According to Sophocles’ Philoctetes, the hero begrudgingly agrees to return with the Greeks to Troy. He goes on to kill some of the greatest Trojan heroes, including Paris, and becomes a major factor in the Greeks’ eventual victory (Apollodorus, Epitome 5.8–10; Parthenius, Erotica Pathemata 4).

While Hercules’ indomitable weapons served Philoctetes well in hunting and war, he comes to recognize that their uses do not outweigh their perils to society. According to various mythological sources, he settles down in Italy after the Trojan War and founds a temple to the god Apollo, where he permanently stores the weapons (Apollodorus, Epitome 6.15b; Pseudo-Aristotle, On Marvelous Things Heard 107). The weapons of Hercules are removed once and for all from human society and returned to the god from whom they originated. One might conclude that Hercules should have taken that step immediately upon the completion of his final labor — before returning home — and that any reasonable society would take similar measures to restrict the use of destructive weapons. Perhaps the right to bear arms ought to be infringed when a well regulated militia is no longer necessary.

Far from simply glorifying Hercules’ strength and skill in arms, the myths and tragedies of the ancient Greeks and Romans offer insights into the dangers that such forces pose when unleashed upon civil society. These timeless narratives show the valor that arms can bring on the battlefield, but they just as often emphasize the double-edged nature of deadly weapons, demonstrating that tragic accidents can result from their very presence in domestic settings. In the wake of atrocity after atrocity in the recent history of the United States, that dangerous weapons can afford certain “protections” has become a familiar refrain. But these purported protections cannot exist without the possibility of devastating harm.

Euripides and Seneca underline how potent weapons can become a source of relentless violence and destruction, and how they present practical and ethical dangers even when they are in the hands of a superhero with a reputation for defending civilization. Just as the bow and arrows are inextricably linked with Hercules’ identity in Greek and Roman myth, guns and ammunition have become disturbingly entrenched in the United States’ national identity. But if we look to the example of Philoctetes and his decision to retire Hercules’ weapons, we can see that it is possible to inhibit cycles of violence by reining in the accessibility of devastating weapons. Overcoming the significant political barriers to installing stricter gun control measures may require a herculean effort, but it shouldn’t take another tragedy to get there.

Michael Goyette, Ph.D., is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Classics Department at Brooklyn College, where he teaches courses on a variety of topics, including Greek and Roman literature, mythology, the Latin language, and ancient medicine.

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