The Via Senato Library Foundation in Milan, as part of its programs devoted to archeology and ancient civilizations, and in collaboration with the Naples Archeological Musem and the Archeological Cooperative Society, is welcoming a show devoted to the myth of Hercules at its Milan headquarters. And it is all shown through the iconographic repertoire painted on some 60 vases, especially in red and black figures of Greek and Hellenistic production and some finds from the Roman period, including two precious silver cups from Pompeii illustrating episodes from the mythological story whose hero is the most famous of classic antiquity.
The exhibit is divided by topic. In the first two rooms we read of the hero’s celebrated labors through decorations on 35 black-and-red vases, dating to between the middle of the 6th and 4th centuries B.C. And it is in this section that we find the oldest of the finds on display, an aryballos, i.e., a container for unguents and perfumed substances, proto-Corinthian, datable to the 7th century B.C. In the corridor leading to the following rooms there is a selection of photographs reproducing illustrations from old books (from the 15th to the 18th centuries), a veritable panorama of the popularity of the Hercules myth in the book tradition. The last two rooms feature 26 vases showing black and red figures, in ceramic, with black glaze, datable to between the second half of the 6th and the 3rd centuries B:C:, whose decorations depict aspects and moments of the hero’s life as well as the cultural traditions that developed in the Greek and Hellenistic worlds.
On these vases the hero is involved in other adventures, or we see his apotheosis or his relationship with other deities and the world of the theater. Then we find this hero’s echo in the Roman world, with a small section of artifacts from the Roman period, including two outstanding embossed silver cups and a marble relief with a complete depiction of the twelve labors. Heracles was the Greek hero par excellence (the name meant “glorious for Hera”) by virtue of his destiny and fame depending on Hera, wife of the all-powerful Zeus. According to mythographers, Heracles is the name given him by Apollo to recall that his labors were to serve to glorify the goddess.
The hero’s original name was Alcides or Alkeos (alké in Greek meant physical strength). Over the centuries the name changed repeatedly: he was Herkle for the Etruscans, Hercules for the Romans and Ercole in modern Italian. Hercules is remembered for his twelve labors, the first being that of the Nemean lion, then the Lernean hydra, the Erymathean boar, the Cerynean hind, the Stymphalian birds, the Augean stables, the Cretan bull, the horses of Diomedes, the Amazons, the Geryan cattle, the dog Cerberus, and finally the golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides. It would be wise to consult a brief history of the myth of Heracles in order to have a broader awareness of how this myth has developed over the millennia.
The exact moment or phase of history when the original nucleus of the myth of Heracles appeared can not be established. It is realistic to say that it is the dissemination of an extremely ancient heritage dating back to Neolithic times and then entering the Minoan-Mycenean world. Scholars agree that beginning in the Minoan-Mycenean era (second half of the second millennium B.C.) oral accounts circulated that had as their protagonist a valiant young warrior-adventurer, who took on the role of purifying hero of a world still subject to monsters and the forces of Chaos. Gradually this hero acquired something of the hero-voyager, who conquered new territory for the knowledge of mankind and expanded both to the West and to the East the known boundaries of the Earth: it is not at all difficult to recognize in this character the Heracles of the classical age.
As the Greek colonial experience expanded, the myth of Heracles changed its own horizons: from the Peloponnesus where it originated and which represents the first setting of his adventures, it gradually moves on to other regions of Greece, then into Sicily, Greek settlements in Southern Italy, Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Gaul and to Rome, and even touched on the Near East and India. Heracles today has become a truly ecumenical hero, known and recognized all over the inhabited world. In Rome, Hercules came to be known basically as the protector of trade.
The legends of Hercules’ passage through Italy and his adventurous undertakings there favored this attribution: it seems in fact that the colony of Cuma, which was particularly important in these undertakings (think of the struggle with the Giants and the Geryan cattle) was one of the starting points for dissemination of the cult of Hercules in Italy. Figuratively speaking, the Italian Hercules is not much different from his Greek prototype, often associated with deities, even becoming their lover or husband: a very widespread cult, with his adventures set in the Roman provinces.
The figure of Hercules in the Roman world was spread even through coinage: just think of Hadrian’s coins with their Hercules Invictus.