Heroes

Heroes. What exactly are they? More to the point, what were they to the ancient Greeks? If I was an ancient Greek, what image would my mind conjure when I heard the word 'hero'?

Unfortunately we do not have an ancient Greek brain to pick and so we have to look to archaic written sources. In Hesiod's Works and Days we find a reference to what the heroes were to the ancients. Hesiod tells us that men were created as five successive races (to date) and the current crop of men were of the fifth or iron race. The four preceding races (or ages) were the golden race, the silver race, the bronze race and the race of heroes. So by Hesiodic definition, heroes were the race of men that preceded the current Iron race of men.

Today classicists define a hero as any larger than life figure who has, or at one point had, an active localized cult. Basically, in ancient Greece, each hero had his/her own localized cult and all who pass through the land and past the cult would have to pay homage to the figure of the hero. So all the great heroes that we talk about today, like Perseus, Atlanta, Theseus, Achilles, Diomedes and the like, would have had their own localized cults in ancient Greece and this is what made them heroes.

An interesting case of a hero would be that of Heracles. Heracles was undoubtedly a hero of great significance. He traveled all over the ancient Greek world doing heroic things and killing all sorts of things. The problem arose when because of this travelling, and his stature, cults in his name sprung up all over Greece and beyond. He could no longer be strictly defined as a hero because his cult wasn't localized . So the Greeks elevated him to the rank of a god to explain his large following and this is why Heracles often exists in the dual roles of hero and deity in ancient Greek sources.