The Splitting of Herakles

The Herakles passage in Homer’s Odyssey 11.601–4 has been seen as problematic because it is not one thing: the vision it gives of Herakles’ place in the afterlife is double—his eidōlon (“image”) and the autos (“self”); the underworld and the heavens. This chapter explores the following questions: Should the afterlife be one thing rather than a plurality of things? Should we mark out as “anomalous” what we think doesn’t “fit”? On what criteria should this be done? The spatial problem of Herakles in Od.11 has been interpreted through a series of oppositions: earlier or later, authentic and inauthentic, Homeric and “Orphic,” “negative” and “positive” eschatologies. In fact, though, Herakles can be interpreted as a force for unity. In one brief moment he maps the extremes of the universe with radical economy. It is the job of eschatology to encompass the world.