Alcmene gave birth to Heracles, the son of Zeus, and to Iphicles, the son of Amphitryon. When these twins were about a year old Hera sent two serpents to destroy Heracles in his crib. While Iphicles screamed and tried to escape, Heracles strangled the snakes, one in each hand. In his schooling Heracles preferred the athletic disciplines, over which he gained easy mastery, but he was never much of a thinker. Given to rash acts, he brained his music tutor with a lyre. After that Amphitryon sent him into the hills with shepherds. By the age of eighteen he had become the strongest man in the world as well as the ablest athlete, a hero possessed of great courage. Ordinarily a man of courtesy, he was prone to violent fits of temper under provocation, and sometimes he regretted his impulsive rages.
A lion was killing Amphitryon's cattle and Heracles went searching for it. On his first expedition he had the satisfaction of sleeping with King Thespius' fifty daughters with the father's consent. From these matings fifty-one sons were engendered. At length Heracles killed the lion. From it he made a cape and hood. In representations of him he was usually depicted wearing this lion-skin garment and holding the olivewood club with which he killed it.
The city of Thebes was forced to pay tribute to the Minyan king as reparation. Meeting the heralds who had come to collect this tribute, Heracles was treated with insolence so he cut off their ears, noses, and hands and sent them home. This precipitated a war in which the Minyans had the advantage. But with Athena's aid and his own reckless daring, Heracles helped the Thebans defeat their enemies. As a reward King Creon gave the hero his daughter Megara as a wife. But marriage did little to tame Heracles' rashness. Even the responsibility of raising sons could not curb him. So Hera sent a frenzied madness upon him in which he brutally slaughtered his children and wife. When he came to his senses he was overcome with horror and guilt. Despite the meager consolations held out by his friend Theseus and others, he contemplated suicide. Finally he went to the oracle at Delphi to learn how he could expiate his crime. The oracle informed him that he would have to submit himself to King Eurystheus of Mycenae as a slave and perform whatever tasks his royal cousin should command.
