Theseus and Heracles

Abstract Myths evolve and develop out of the needs of the society that tells them: a myth that has no interest for its audience will die, and thus narrators of myths will always ‘customize’ their material, according to what is required of it at a particular moment. Euripides’ Heracles is an especially instructive example of how historical place and time can influence the retelling of an established myth. What we know of the myth of Heracles’ madness before, and after, Euripides’ play, strongly suggests that his version of the story differs from the more common one in three major respects: he invents the character of the tyrant Lycus; he inverts the traditional order of the labours and the madness, so that the labours are no longer directly connected with the madness; and–most importantly–he introduces Theseus into the myth to offer Heracles honour and a home at Athens, and (by implication) a place to die. Euripides’ account seems to have cotained too many novelties for it to have influenced later Greek versions, and the introduction of Theseus into a story which originally has no place for him must be a product of a specifically Athenian perspective. Like the Theseus of Euripides’ Suppliants, the Theseus of the Heracles exhibits many of the qualities deemed essentially Athenian by Athenian encomia of Athens.