Two Is Company, Three Is A Crowd: An analysis of the relationships between Herakles, Hera & Zeus in Apollodoros' Bibliotheke

This thesis examines the relationships between Herakles, Hera and Zeus in five mythic episodes in the Bibliotheke: the punishment of Hera; the Gigantomachy; Herakles’ birth and early life; the madness of Herakles; and his death, apotheosis and marriage to Hebe. These episodes display a variety of interactions between the figures across the life of Herakles. From his birth to his death and apotheosis, his relationship with Hera is of a contentious nature. Zeus’ involvement in the life of Herakles is often absent during crucial points. Apollodoros’ Bibliotheke is a survey of myth composed by an author who evidently had considerable literary resources to hand. What this means for the work is that the options available to Apollodoros were vast; thus we must attribute a great deal of choice to him in his compilations of the myths. As a result, when viewing the relationships between the three figures, we can investigate Apollodoros’ adjustments to the myths and attempt to uncover how he wished to portray the figures of Herakles, Hera and Zeus. As well as displaying information in the text, Apollodoros’ strict structuring method also presents us with more information. The genealogical structure forms the backbone of the work; it is in the deliberate placements of certain myths, however, such as the Punishment of Hera (Bib 1.3.5; 2.7.1) and the Gigantomachy (1.6.1; 2.7.1), that we see the effect of his conscious decisions in regard to the structure of the Bibliotheke.