Born at Thebes to Alcmene, driven mad to slay his children, and bound to serve Eurystheus at Tiryns — Heracles performed twelve labours that took him from Nemea to the edge of the world and down into Hades, and became the hunter who wired the atlas of monsters to mortal valour.1
Son of Zeus and Alcmene
Through Perseus the hero's blood ran back to Danae and Andromeda; at Thebes, Alcmene bore twin sons — Heracles, whom Zeus begot in a night made threefold, and Iphicles by Amphitryon. Hera sent serpents to the cradle; the infant strangled them with his hands, and the poets ever after disputed whether his true father was the god or the man.2
Eurystheus' trick
When Zeus boasted that a child of his blood would rule the neighbours, Hera bound him by oath and hastened the birth of Eurystheus son of Sthenelus while she held back Alcmene's labour — so the crown fell to the Perseid cousin, and the mightiest hero became his subject at Tiryns and Mycenae.3
The twelve tasks
After madness and exile, the Pythia sent him to serve Eurystheus. Apollodorus numbers twelve labours — though two were later disqualified — from the Nemean Lion to Cerberus dragged up from Hades; Hesiod knows Geryon and the cattle at the edge of the world, and Hyginus rolls the same ordeal-list in his Fabulae.4
Beyond the labours
When the tasks were done, he sacked Troy for Laomedon's broken oath, marched on Oechalia when Eurytus withheld Iole after the archery contest and carried the princess away, was sold to Omphale in Lydia and fought beside the gods at Phlegra, wrestled Achelous for Deianira at Calydon, and at last died on Oeta by the centaur's poison — yet Hesiod places him on Olympus wedded to Hebe, and Homer saw his shade among the dead: mortal agony and godhead both.5
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Episodes
How the centuries saw it
Farnese Hercules
After Lysippos (signed by Glykon of Athens), c. 216 CE (Roman copy after a 4th-century BCE Greek original)
The colossal exhausted hero leaning on his club with the Nemean lion-skin and the apples of the Hesperides behind his back — the canonical image of the Twelve Labours complete.
The Choice of Hercules
Annibale Carracci, 1596
Carracci's Farnese Camerino painting of Virtue and Pleasure offering the young Alcides his path — the moral crossroads before the labours and the wide wars.