Apollodorus: Renaming Alcides Heracles
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Note: Sir James G. Frazer, who wrote this English translation from the Greek of Apollodorus, uses the conventional western name for Heracles -- Hercules.
[2.4.12] Now it came to pass that after the battle with the Minyans Hercules was driven mad through the jealousy of Hera and flung his own children, whom he had by Megara, and two children of Iphicles into the fire96; wherefore he condemned himself to exile, and was purified by Thespius, and repairing to Delphi he inquired of the god where he should dwell.97 The Pythian priestess then first called him Hercules, for hitherto he was called Alcides.98 And she told him to dwell in Tiryns, serving Eurystheus for twelve years and to perform the ten labours imposed on him, and so, she said, when the tasks were accomplished, he would be immortal.99
96. Compare Eur. Herc. 967ff.; Moschus iv.13ff.; Diod. 4.11.1ff.; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 38; Nicolaus Damascenus, Frag. 20, in Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iii.369; Hyginus, Fab. 32.
97. Compare Diod. 4.10.7.
98. Herakles was called Alcides after his grandfather Alcaeus, the father of Amphitryon. See above, Apollod. 2.4.5. But, according to another account, the hero was himself called Alcaeus before he received the name of Herakles from Apollo. See Sextus Empiricus, pp. 398ff., ed. Bekker; Scholiast on Pind. O. 6.68(115).
99. For the labours of Herakles, see Soph. Trach. 1091ff.; Eur. Herc. 359ff.; Eur. Herc. 1270ff.; Diod. 4.10ff.; Paus. 5.10.9; Paus. 5.26.7; Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica vi.208ff.; Tzetzes, Chiliades 229ff.; Verg. A. 8.287ff.; Ov. Met. 9.182ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 30.
SOURCE: Loeb Apollodorus, translated by Sir James G. Frazer, 1921.
