Apollo

Apollo

= = I am Apollo. I am the god of the sun, music, and poetry. I have many interesting myths and stories. I am the son of Zeus and Alcmene. I took the spot of Helios as the god of the sun. As a child I had many interesting feats and talents. One is when I defeated the deadly serpent of Parnassus. Then I built my temple there. One of my talents is bows and arrows and music. My favorite instrument is the Lyre. It is one of my symbols and I play it the best. I helped many different armies, towns, and even popular heroes.

__Heroes__

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I helped many heroes during the Trojan War. One of them is Hector. I helped his army by shooting flaming arrows at the Greeks from my chariot in the sky. Also I helped Aeneas as he was hurt. I picked him up on a cloud and brought him to safety. I did one more thing that changed history forever, I helped kill Achilles. As the arrow was in flight, I helped guide it to his heel. =====





Hercules is a Demi god of Zeus and Alcmene. Alcmene is a mortal and Zeus is a god. “Like most authentic heroes, Heracles had a god as one of his parents, being the son of the supreme deity Zeus and a mortal woman Mythweb.com” Heroes are known to have some unusual things happen to them while a child. One extraordinary feat is either killing something as a baby or moving a huge rock. Also the heroes are usually favored by gods, but not all of them. Hercules is strong, the son of Zeus, brave, and he performed an amazing feat as a child. He was raised by his mother and was living a hard life. He was inhuman like because of his strength. He invented new things and he helped defeat anything that was a threat. He inspired many things and people in his time. Hercules in pop culture is very interesting. He is sometimes put up against a god that was nice to him, or he is being loved by somebody that doesn’t like him in the real myth. E.g. Hera is his mother and loves him very much, or the Disney video game when he fights Poseidon. In movies they have different ways to say how he got off of Olympus. In the movie Hercules in New York, he was kicked off of Olympus because his father Zeus because he was annoyed. He went to New York City and meets new people and become a professional wrestler. Then his father was trying to get him back on Olympus, after a while he finally came back. This movie is mostly the opposite of what the myths say. In the myths the say that Hercules was kidnapped or he was not a god. He was a demi god. He was not allowed on Olympus because he wasn’t a full god. Hercules is mentioned in many books. One of them is //__The Titans Curse__// in the series of Percy Jackson. It says that that Hercules got most of his help with the getting the Golden Apples from Zoe Nightshade, one of the Hunters of Artemis and a former Hesperid. Hercules had an amazing youth. After he was born, he was sleeping in his crib while he was attacked by two snakes sent down by Hera. Hera hated Hercules because he was the son of Zeus who was her husband and another woman. The two snakes were strangled by baby Hercules and killed. “Hera was jealous of Heracles, and when he was still an infant she sent two snakes to kill him in his crib. Heracles was found prattling delighted baby talk, a strangled serpent in each hand. Mthweb.com” Years later he killed his music teacher with his lyre and was sent to tend cattle with his stepfather in the mountains. He then went back and married the king’s daughter. Hercules was then enraged with anger by Hera and killed his wife and two children. Then he was told to go to King Eurystheus and complete the Twelve Labors. The Twelve Labors were to purify him of killing his family. They were organized by Hera to kill him. The first labor was to kill a lion that was a threat to the village. The loin was deflecting the arrows that were coming at him, so Hercules climbed on his back and then strangled him to death. Then he took the head and then used it as a helmet. “Its skin could not be penetrated by spears or arrows. Heracles blocked off the entrances to the lion's cave, crawled into the close confines where it would have to fight face to face and throttled it to death with his bare hands. Ever afterwards he wore the lion's skin as a cloak and its gaping jaws as a helmet. Myhweb.com” The second labor was to kill the hydra. Every time you cut off its head it would grow two back. In the myth Hercules kills the Hydra by burning its necks so a new one cannot grow in. Then he slayed the hydra’s heads and new ones couldn’t grow. The third labor was to capture the Ceryneian Hind. It was said to been able to run as fast as an arrow in flight. The fourth was to kill the Erymanthian Boar. He was said to have killed it by chasing it around in the snow until it died of exhaustion. The fifth labor was cleaning the Augean stables. To do this in only one day he had to get two rivers and make them go through the stables, wiping out the garbage. The sixth labor was to slay all of the Stymphalian Birds. He scared them away with a rattle and then killed them with arrows. The seventh was to capture the Cretan Bull. He strangled it and shipped it back to Athens. The eighth labor was to capture the Mares of Thrace. They were four man eating horses. When Hercules killed their cruel master, they went to normal and they were tamed. The ninth labor was to get the girdle of the Amazon queen. Then the 10th was to get the cattle of the monster Geryon. The 11th was to get the apples from Hesperides. As he was going he saw Atlas and asked him where the apples were. He told him to hold up the sky while he got them. Then the 12th was to bring Cerberus back from Hades. All these were explained in the regular myth. In the Disney movie //__Hercules__// only some of these labors were explained. One that was explained was Hercules killing the Hydra, but he did not burn it or have any help from his nephew like the myths say. At the end when Hercules goes to the underworld to get his love Meg back, he brought one of the labors with him. He rode down on Cerberus, the three headed dog. This was the last labor, get the dog from Hades. In the movie he rides it to Hades as in the myth he goes down to the underworld and Hades gives it to him. In the movie after Hercules killed the Hydra and the city of Thebes thought of him as a hero, he was posing and he had the hide of the lion that he killed as the first labor. It doesn’t show him killing the lion, but shows its hide. In the beginning of the movie it shows Hera as the mother of Hercules and she favors him. In the myth, Hera is the wife of Zeus and Hercules’ mother was Alcmene. Hera did not like Hercules at all in the myth, but in the movie, she loved him. He was very god-like in his appearance. In the movie //__Disney’s Hercules__// he was very clumsy, uncontrollable, and couldn’t control his own strength. Because of being a demi-god he was very strong. He was able to lift anything that got in his way but he was so clumsy that he would drop it. After he was told by his parents that he was the son of Zeus, he went to Phil to get trained. He learned his own strength and how to fight. At the end of the movie he gave up being a god and married Meg, but at the end of the myth after he died he became a god. “…he stopped to visit the centaur Pholus. This creature was half-horse, half-man…Mythweb.com” Hercules was as strong as Achilles and as intelligent on the battlefields as Hector. Hercules was inspiring to the people of his time and still our time today. He is mentioned differently in all different myths and stories. He died an ignoble death, but was remembered greatly for it. He was one of the most trusted hero of all time in Greek and Roman mythology.