Euripides’ Heracles and the Decline of Exemplarity

This article examines Euripides’ portrayal of Heracles in his eponymous play, exploring how the once-excellent and glorious hero, favored by Zeus as his son, falls from grace and rejects all ties to divinity. This turning point in his characterization and its departure from the traditional Homeric paradigm are analyzed against the background of Euripides’ typical manipulation of mythical tradition. In this tragedy, Heracles, who is now also the biological son of Amphitryon, rejects his problematic divine heritage and instead chooses his human father. Since resilience in the face of pain, which Heracles sees as the last vestige of his virtue, is a quality he shares with all humankind, the Euripidean Heracles no longer embodies the characteristics of an exemplary hero. The article concludes with an analysis of the tragedy’s reception by the Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson, and the resonance of Euripides’ conception of Heracles in her recent work, H of H Playbook (2021).