Greatest of all classical Greek heroes was Heracles, also adopted by the Romans under the Latinised name of Hercules. While lesser heroes like Jason had short series of labours or tests of their mettle, Heracles was challenged by no less than a dozen, and had additional adventures before he was taken up to Olympus as a god.

As with all the best classical heroes, Heracles was the product of a union between a god, Zeus himself, and a mortal human, Alcmene or Alcmena. In this case there’s a double conception: first Zeus disguised himself as Alcmene’s husband Amphitryon to have intercourse with her so she conceived Heracles, and later the same night Amphitryon returned from war and the result was the conception of Heracles’ twin Iphicles.

Hera became aware of Zeus’s infidelity (yet again), and on the night that Heracles was due to be born, she persuaded her husband to swear an oath that the child born that night to a descendant of Perseus would become High King. Hera then delayed the delivery of Heracles, and brought forward that of another of Perseus’s descendants, Eurystheus, so it was he who set Heracles his labours.

As a result of Hera’s intervention, Alcmene was in labour for seven days and nights, in agony, and called on Ilithyia, Hera’s daughter and goddess of childbirth, to deliver her child. Ilithyia had of course received instructions from her mother, and wouldn’t let the labour progress, sitting with her legs crossed and her clothing knotted to prevent delivery.

One of Alcmene’s most loyal maids, Galanthis, took matters into her own hands, and announced to Ilithyia that Heracles had been born. The goddess was so shocked that she jumped up, uncrossing her legs and loosening her knotted clothing, so allowing Alcmene’s labour to conclude at last. When Galanthis ridiculed Ilithyia for this, the goddess seized the maid by her hair and dragged her along the ground. As she struggled to rise she was transformed into a weasel, and Heracles entered the world.

Virgil Solis engraved Alcmena’s Labour at some time around 1550. Alcmene is in the left foreground, in the throes of her protracted labour, with four women attending to her. In the background, two women are talking, and at the far right, Ilithyia is dragging Galanthis to the ground by her hair. There’s also a weasel walking past.

Subsequent engravings have drawn on this. Some show Ilithyia and Galanthis fighting in the background, but most omit the weasel. One other comes close to showing the whole story.

The unknown engraver who made Alcmena Giving Birth to Hercules: Juno, Jealous of the Child, Attempts to Delay the Childbirth, in about 1606, has an almost identical group around Alcmene. The same two women are talking in the background, but the weasel is prominent.

According to Greek myths, sons of Zeus could only become divine if they were suckled at Hera’s breast. Shortly after his birth, Athena took Heracles to Hera, who at first put him to her breast. When she realised who the baby was, she pulled him away, and excess milk released as a result sprayed over the heavens to form the Milky Way.

There are two outstanding paintings showing this unusual scene.

Jacopo Tintoretto’s The Origin of the Milky Way from about 1575 shows the infant Heracles being pulled away by an anonymous assistant, with fine streams of milk gushing upwards to generate individual stars. In the background, Zeus’s eagle appears to have a crablike object in its talons, perhaps representing the constellation of the Crab (Cancer), and Hera’s peacocks are at the right.

Just a few years before his death, Rubens painted an even more wonderful version, The Birth of the Milky Way (1636-37). Zeus sits in the background on the left, seemingly bored. Hera’s milk arcs out from her left breast over the heavens, and her peacocks look distressed.

Other myths tell that Hera was still furious that Heracles had been born, so she placed two serpents in his cradle, in an attempt to kill the child. Heracles’ mortal twin Iphicles screamed at the snakes, bringing their father Amphitryon running. He found Heracles strangling the serpents with his bare hands, proof that he was indeed the son of Zeus.

Several fine paintings seize this unique opportunity to show an infant strangling serpents.

This painting from the mid seventeenth century, attributed to Bernardino Mei, has been neutrally titled Scene from the Infancy of Hercules. Rather than let his father discover the baby’s strange abilities, it’s Alcmene who has come running into his nursery.

Pompeo Batoni’s account, The Infant Hercules Strangling Serpents in his Cradle from 1743, succeeds because it shows so well Heracles’ parents, disturbed from their bed, discovering their baby despatching the snakes by the light of an oil lamp.

The third version of this story comes from Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was commissioned by Catherine the Great of Russia in 1785 to paint her a history subject of his choice. Perhaps Reynolds thought he could flatter the Empress of Russia when he produced this preparatory study (above) for the heart of his final work.

The Infant Hercules was painted between about 1785-88, then exhibited at the Royal Academy before being sent to Russia. Reynolds is reputed to have used a real baby as his model, and later reused this for a painting of Puck as a baby.

Reynolds’ finished painting of The Infant Hercules Strangling Serpents in his Cradle (1788) loses the baby among its elaborate supporting cast. It has also suffered problems with deterioration in its paint layer, a common issue with many of Reynold’s paintings.

One of the most unusual summaries of Heracles’ career is this mosaic from Llíria, Valencia, showing each of his twelve labours around its central panel. They will be the subject of my next articles in this series.