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EuripidesHeracles
Fiction | Play | Adult | BCEA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Lines 1-450Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Lines 1-139 Summary (Prologue and Parodos)
The play opens in front of Heracles’s palace at Thebes, where Heracles’s family—his father Amphitryon, his wife Megara, and his three children—sit as suppliants before the altar of Zeus the Savior. The Prologue scene consists of two main parts. In the first part, Amphitryon details Heracles’s background in a monologue. He tells of Heracles’s lineage and his birth from the union of the god Zeus and his own wife Alcmene; how the family settled in Thebes after being banished from their homeland in Argos; how Heracles married Megara, the daughter of the Theban king Creon; how Heracles left to perform the famous twelve labors for Eurystheus in an effort to win his family’s return to Argos; and how the tyrant Lycus, having taken advantage of Heracles’s absence to kill Creon and take over Thebes, now plans to kill Heracles’s family.
In the second part of the Prologue, Megara addresses Amphitryon. In the dialogue that ensues, the two discuss their unhappy situation. Though Megara is already resigning herself to her and her children’s fate, Amphitryon advises her to hold on to hope that Heracles will return and reverse their fortunes.
The Chorus, made up of old Theban men, enters and sings the first choral song, known as the parodos. They lament that they are too old and too frail to help Heracles’s family. They pity Heracles’s children, who in dying will deprive Hellas of nobly-born allies.
Lines 140-450 Summary (First Episode and First Stasimon)
Lycus, having been identified by the Chorus as the “country’s tyrant” (Line 138), arrives on stage. He asks Amphitryon and Megara why they are trying to extend their lives when their situation is hopeless. He impugns Heracles’s reputation for heroism, calling him a coward because he has chosen to fight beasts with long-distance weapons such as the bow instead of fighting in wars, which Lycus presents as the true measure of courage. Lycus explains that he has no choice but to kill Heracles’s children, who will no doubt seek to avenge the murder of their grandfather Creon if he lets them live.
Amphitryon responds to Lycus in a long monologue, seeking to rebut Lycus’s statements and thus initiating an agon, or debate scene, a popular convention of Attic tragedy. First, Amphitryon defends Heracles’s heroism, citing some of his most famous exploits—including the part he played in helping the gods defeat the monstrous Giants—and praising the superiority of the bow to close-range weapons such as the spear. Amphitryon contends that it is Lycus who is the coward, and asks him to spare them and let him and Heracles’s family go into exile if all he wants is to be ruler of Thebes. He then delivers an invective against Thebes and all of Hellas, which have abandoned Heracles and his family despite all the ways he has benefited them. He wishes that he were not so old and still had the strength of his youth to help his grandchildren.
Lycus orders his servants to bring wood and pile it around the altar to burn Heracles’s family alive. He also threatens the Chorus for standing by Amphitryon and Megara, saying that in this way he will teach them “that you are only slaves; I am the master” (Line 252). The Chorus continues to defy Lycus, declaring that they will continue to support Heracles and his family and that Lycus is a usurper and a tyrant. The members of the Chorus again lament that they are too old to take up weapons and fight Lycus.
Megara now steps forward. She thanks the Chorus for their support, and then tells Amphitryon that it is “base” to resist necessity and that if they must die, they should at least die with dignity. With Heracles presumed dead, Megara does not see any hope for them. She asks Amphitryon to join her in facing death, and Amphitryon concedes, asking Lycus only to kill him and Megara before the children. Megara then requests that they be allowed to go into the palace to dress and prepare themselves for death. Lycus grants this request and exits as Megara and her children enter the palace. Amphitryon stays on stage to deliver a brief speech criticizing Zeus’s abandonment of the sons of Heracles, whom he had conceived “for nothing” (Line 339) with Amphitryon’s wife Alcmene. Concluding that he, a mere mortal, is nobler and more just than the god Zeus, Amphitryon follows Megara and the children into the palace.
The Chorus is left alone on stage to sing the first stasimon. Assuming that Heracles is dead, they sing of his heroic deeds as a kind of eulogy, “a dirge of praise” (Line 356). They describe his famous labors, though in many ways the labors they describe are idiosyncratic, departing from the conventional list known from most mythological sources (See: Background). Since setting out for his final labor—fetching the three-headed dog Cerberus from the Underworld—Heracles has not returned, and the Chorus assumes he is dead. They wish again that they had the strength to defend Heracles’s family, weeping as they see Megara return with the children, prepared for death.
Lines 1-450 Analysis
Euripides’s Heracles has often been interpreted as a play marked by duality. Most obviously, the play can be divided into two distinct parts. The first part, which comprises the Prologue and the first and second Episodes, is a “rescue story” of the kind found in many Attic tragedies, such as Aeschylus’s Suppliants or Euripides’s Children of Heracles, with Heracles’s family sitting before the palace as suppliants until they are saved by Heracles’s return. The second part of the play, introduced by the abrupt entrance of Madness and Iris in the third Episode, is a very different kind of story, with Heracles being driven mad and killing the family he has just rescued. The second part of the play thus cancels out the first.
The duality of the play is revealed early on. The Prologue, for instance, has two parts: a monologue spoken by Amphitryon, followed by a dialogue between Amphitryon and Megara. Many of characters in the play, moreover, represent diametrically-opposed perspectives or worldviews. In the Prologue and first Episode, Amphitryon argues the case for hopefulness while Megara presents a case for accepting the hopelessness of their situation. Later, Heracles and Lycus are juxtaposed as representatives of contrary notions of heroism and courage, a juxtaposition that is introduced in the agon scene of the first Episode.
The central duality in the play is that of Heracles. Heracles is presented throughout the play as inherently dual, a “divine man” (theios aner in Greek)—that is to say, simultaneously human and divine, as the offspring of a god (Zeus) and a mortal mother (Alcmene). Even his parentage is duplicated—a detail that is highlighted in the very first lines of the play when Amphitryon introduces himself as one “who shared his wife / With Zeus” (Line 3), so that Heracles has two fathers, one mortal and one immortal.
Behind the duality of the play are several unifying themes, which are also introduced in the opening scenes. Sitting as a suppliant at the altar of Zeus the Savior, Amphitryon reflects in the Prologue on the vicissitudes of fortune, which cause all human beings to constantly pass back and forth between happiness and suffering:
Human misery must somewhere have a stop:
There is no wind that always blows a storm;
Great good fortune comes to failure in the end.
All is change; all yields its place and goes
(Lines 101-4)
Within this world of suffering and change, the importance of courage, duty, and heroism (arete in Greek) is strongly emphasized. Different characters interpret the meaning of heroism in different ways. For Amphitryon, heroism is perseverance (Line 105). For Lycus, on the other hand, heroism lies in going to war and doing what they must, as a “real man stands firm in the ranks / And dares to face the gash the spear may make” (Lines 163-64). Other duties are important too. Friendship, another motif that is highlighted throughout the play, is exemplified notably by the Chorus, who support Heracles’s family despite their weakness. Thus friendship and strength—or weakness—are tied together.
However, the play also highlights that the will to help and do good is not enough, as one must also have the strength to act or fight. The opening of the play is characterized in large part by the impotence of the Chorus and Amphitryon, who wish to help Heracles’s family but who are too old and too weak to do so. Their weakness will be juxtaposed with the strength of Heracles, who will save his family when he returns in the second Episode. The weakness of the impotent Chorus and Amphitryon is also juxtaposed in the opening scenes with the strength of Zeus, Heracles’s divine father, who as a god has the strength to help his son’s children but does not do so. Zeus’s abandonment and betrayal of his son’s family prompts Amphitryon to assert that he is “nobler” (Line 342) than the god, whom he berates as “foolish” and “born unjust” (Line 347). The nature of the gods and their relationship—positive or negative—with human beings will continue to be explored even more explicitly throughout the rest of the play, especially in the agon between Heracles and Theseus in the Exodos.
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By Euripides
