Abstract/Summary

Herakles was single most important figure decorating Athens’ late Archaic pottery. These images crystallize his role as paradigm of victory. Through his sheer athleticism, Herakles serves as a role model for athletes, which in part explains his relevance on Attic vases with Panathenaic imagery alongside the boar, deer, bull, and especially lion labors. Both his status as an athletic hero and the pots, especially the sketchy late black-figure wares, would have increased his renown among Athenians and others, fans and other participants in festivals, especially the Panathenaia. For images of Herakles’ role in the Gigantomachy and/or other battles with giants bring him closer to Athena and thus to Athens, literally in the case of Alkyoneus, who he encounters at Pallene, the gates of Athens. In Nemean Ode 1.67-72, Pindar celebrates Herakles’ part in the Gigantomachy alongside his apotheosis and marriage to Hebe, which become entwined in his worship at Gargettos by Pallene, on the outskirts of Athens. Here the tyrant Peisistratos or his marketing manager seemingly brought myth, religion, and politics together: Pallene was both the site of his routing of forces and the starting point of his procession to the Akropolis with Athena/Phyia. Boardman and others have explained Herakles’ overwhelming importance in the vases of Archaic Athens vis-à-vis his connection to Athena, which was deliberately employed by Peisistratos and his sons. No less important, however, are Herakles’ growing roles—through the examples of his labors—in the Panathenaia, as an athlete and victor, also in the Gigantomachy, which became the foundational myth of the Panathenaia. We know that Herakles’ labors, parerga, and much else, were played out on stage in late Archaic and early Classical Athens and beyond. Although the relevant plays have not survived, enough fragments and titles remain to show the importance of Herakles as both tragic and comic character on the Athenian stage. Images on Athenian ceramics, decorated with mythic and historic images known in late Archaic and early Classical Athens, witness this story-telling culture through which Athenians embraced Herakles, alongside Theseus, as one of their own.