Action heroes who achieve success through physical prowess and battering their enemies into submission or to death are a staple of much literature, cinema and television. However, I find their stories tedious. For me, the nadir of any superhero film is when two superhuman figures pick up vehicles or bits of buildings and start lobbing them at each other. There is no real sense of suspense in these scenes; moreover, they reflect the odd idea that it is the body and not the mind of human beings that is, or at least should be, paramount. This detracts from us as a species, for the real superpower of Homo sapiens – meaning the wise humans – has been its ability to overcome difficulties and hardships through the ingenious solving of problems. As such, those stories that represent the ingenuity of human beings are far more interesting than those that reflect brute strength, except when the latter is tied to the former.
The classical hero Hercules, whose Twelve Labours I covered in my previous piece on the Hercules sarcophagus in Konya, superficially seems a hero of that bland muscular type. With his super strength and his knotted club, he appears able to simply bludgeon his way to success wherever he goes, and, even worse, seems to symbolize the flawed idea that brute violence is the go-to solution to most problems, whereas, as we are witnessing once again in this region, and history has repeated shown us, its result is usually only to store up more problems for the future. Nevertheless, in his Twelve Labours, there are hints that Hercules is a more interesting figure than he may at first appear. When the labors are looked at more carefully, it comes to be seen that although none of them could have been carried out successfully without raw strength, they also require Hercules to make use of his mind and to adapt his behavior strategically in an interesting way just alluded to to ensure a successful outcome. For instance, the hero has to employ lateral thinking to change the course of rivers to clean the Augean Stables.
Even so, my interest in classical mythology had led to next to no interest in Hercules until I saw the imposing statue of him in the Antalya Museum. This brilliantly rendered marble muscular statue, which is a copy of a famous bronze statue from some centuries earlier, is from Perge in Antalya Province and dates to the second century B.C. Its chequered history has made it of special importance in Turkish archaeology. While the lower part of the statue was discovered at Perge by Jale Inan in 1980, the upper part was illegally smuggled to the U.S. It was returned in 2011, allowing this exquisite piece of heritage to be put back together, but unfortunately, by then, İnan herself was no longer alive to see it. Today, this imposing piece of statuary stands on its raised platform on the other side of a vast and relatively empty display hall. It means that the eyes are immediately drawn to it. This is even more the case as this statue is displayed against a black background by which the illuminated white marble is particularly well offset. If the visitor walks diagonally across this hall straight to the statue, more detail is visible with each step, and at their final approach, they will find the hero begin to tower above them.
This, in turn, allows the visitor to look straight up into the face of his inclined head. When I did this, my view of Heracles itself was altered. This is what great art can do. It can cause us to make dramatic re-evaluations and question our preconceptions. One would expect the club-wielding muscular Hercules to seem smug or at least content in that he can overcome any obstacle placed in his way. But here, the face of the statue, framed by a full head of tousled hair and a thick, bushy beard, is a weary one. The turn of the lips expresses a sense of lassitude; the eyelids over his open eyes seem slightly heavy, and there are signs of stress on his forehead. This is not the expression that one would expect from an undefeatable hero, reveling in his physical strength. This statue is known as “the Statue of Weary Heracles”; nevertheless, I feel his expression reflects disillusionment more than tiredness.
The question as to why he would be disillusioned is the focus of this piece. First, however, it is necessary to understand at what point in Hercules’ career we are looking at. As is clear from my previous piece, there is a period in which Hercules goes insane and slaughters his family. If this statue was designed to reflect Hercules soon after this event, then his depressed features could be those of a deeply regretful man. Yet, this cannot be the case. The Hercules of the statue has either completed or is about to finish the last of his Twelve Labours, as there is evidence of completed labors with him. Draped over his huge club is the skin of the Nemean lion, and in his right hand, he holds an apple from the Hesperides.
The idea that he is weary rather than disillusioned must also be addressed. Seeing that this is Hercules either after or close to completing his Twelve Labours, he may have been physically and mentally drained by the years he has spent on his superhuman feats. Nonetheless, there is no evidence in the tales of the laborers to suggest that they oppress him in this way. Moreover, William Smith, an expert on classical mythology, notes that “besides these twelve labors, Hercules performed several other feats without being commanded by Eurystheus.” This would hardly be the action of a man who was finding the original Twelve Labours too exhausting.
I think there is a compelling argument for Hercules suffering from disillusionment, though. This argument would date the statue to the full completion of the Twelve Labours. Though it might be expected that his success in completing all Twelve Labours would engender in him a sense of euphoric satisfaction, it could also cause him a profound sense of disillusionment.
The reason for this is the ambiguity that surrounds happiness. Even if it is accepted that human beings strive for happiness, it is not always clear what generates this elusive condition. Stereotypically, happiness is connected with peace, ease and pleasure. It can be surmised in this famous quatrain of Omar Khayyam as translated by Edward Fitzgerald:
"Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse – and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness –
And Wilderness is Paradise enow."
For Hercules, once his labors are successfully completed, there is no obstacle to him engaging in the happiness of this Khayyam-like kind. Yet, even if some find happiness in pleasurable repose, there are others for whom such a condition is akin to the poisoned shirt that will later come to burn in an excruciatingly painful way into Hercules's skin and lead to the end of his mortal existence. Hercules is a man of action and finds happiness in the struggle. Thus, Hercules revels in his Twelve Labours rather than being wearied by them. This surely also explains why, as Smith reveals, Hercules even takes on extra labor that he is not obliged in any way to do.
Further support for this point and greater elucidation as to Hercules’ disillusionment is offered by the example of another classical hero – Ulysses, also known as Odysseus. He is the hero of "The Odyssey," which is the earliest adventure story in Western Literature. This story contains strange and violent monstrous creatures, powerful femme fatale sorceresses, spirits of the dead and divinities that walk the earth. It is a story that recounts the adventures of a man as he travels widely across the Mediterranean basin and the hardships and losses that he faces as he does so. Even so, it does not contain all the trials and tribulations of Ulysses, as these actually predate the events of "The Odyssey" by commencing with the Trojan War.
Thus, Ulysses, like Hercules, is something of a classical action hero. Yet, "The Odyssey" is not the story of a man who roams the world avid for adventure but rather a tale of homecoming. Throughout the story, Ulysses remains focused on reaching his remote island kingdom of Ithaca to be reunited with his beloved wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus, whom he left as an infant. He succeeds, of course, and Ulysses’ eventual reunification with Penelope is very moving and renders "The Odyssey" the first romantic story in Western Literature.
Moreover, Ulysses’ devotion to his wife and child is not the result of a hotheaded young man eager for war who later penitently finds in the bitter and sordid reality of conflict that true happiness is to be found in home and hearth. Ulysses never wants to leave to fight against Troy in distant Asia Minor in the first place.
He does so due to the rulers of Greece, including himself, having sworn an oath to protect the man who marries Helen of Sparta, the most beautiful woman in the world. The idea for this oath came from Ulysses, and it was to avoid conflict breaking out among the princes of Greece, who all vie for the hand of this peerless princess. However, it is an oath that comes back to hurt Ulysses when Helen is abducted by the Trojan prince Paris and the brother of the wronged husband calls upon the oathtakers to sail with him to Troy to exact revenge.
Ulysses attempts to escape the consequence of his oath by means of a ruse. When the party that has come to call Ulysses to the expedition arrives in Ithaca, Ulysses pretends that he is mad by means of plowing his field with an ox yoked to a donkey and by throwing salt over his shoulder. One of the party, however, grabs the infant Telemachus and places him in the line to which the plow is approaching. Ulysses is forced to reveal his sanity and head off for war when he reigns in his animals to prevent them from crushing his son. What is of significance here, though, is that Ulysses never wishes to leave his home and then spends twenty years away obsessed with the idea of returning to it. As such, the adventures of Ulysses are bookended by another of those supposed epitomes of happiness – domestic bliss in the peaceful bosom of one’s family.
Indeed, not only hardships are overcome by Ulysses to return to it. He also turns down the possibility of immortality as the partner of a beautiful goddess, a life which exceeds even the hedonistic one painted by Khayyam, as it would not be overshadowed by the passing of time and death, two themes of which Khayyam has a keen and bitter awareness.
"The Odyssey" ends with a reunited family that is presumably to live happily ever after. Yet some are deeply dissatisfied with this ending, and this dissatisfaction has implications for understanding Hercules’ condition.
For two great poets, the nineteenth-century English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson and the twentieth-century Greek poet Nikos Kazantzakis, in their sequels to "The Odyssey," cannot believe that following a twenty-year absence that is so full of action and adventure, Ulysses could ever find contentment in restored domesticity. They feel that the intensity of his experiences would have awakened in him a thirst for challenges that need constant satiation to provide him happiness.
As Tennyson’s poem is considerably shorter and avoids the philosophical and religious excursions of that of Kazantzakis, I will limit my focus to his work only, although the spirit of Ulysses on Ithaca is the same in both. In his poem, Tennyson imagines Ulysses, at some point after his return, deeply dissatisfied with his lot. He now feels constricted by his tiny remote island and is fired by memories of his past. He exclaims: “I cannot rest from travel: I will drink/Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly.” Here, it is highly significant that he pairs enjoyment with suffering, for they are combined for him. The highs of the one result from overcoming the lows of the other. Now, back at his hearth, he finds that supposed familial happiness is actually bland, and he is oppressed by being faced with an emotional numbness as he moves on toward death.
Thus, having spent twenty years longing for his native island and family, now it is the extreme experiences of that period that haunt Ulysses and draw him away. He views these experiences as “an arch” through which a future can be viewed. These tempting images of a life of action stand in stark contrast to the life he has found on his return, which is stultifying in its passivity. In an explicit repudiation of the Khayyam-like outlook, Tennyson’s Ulysses’ exclaims, “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!” It inspires Ulysses to put to sea again “To sail beyond the sunset.”
The implication is that a life that is supposedly blissful in being free of trial and tribulation is, in fact, a torment in that it is nothing more than a living death. A man who spent 20 years of his life in a myriad of struggles that taxed to the utmost his mind and body is not a figure who can enjoy a passive and carefree retirement. Its lack of challenge is torture to him.
If the Antalya statue of Hercules reflects a disillusioned hero, then his disillusion can be seen as akin to that Tennyson sees in Ulysses in Ithaca. Yet, Tennyson’s Ulysses seems to have one advantage over Heracles. The implication of Ulysses now leaving Ithaca and setting sail for “the baths Of all the western stars” is that greater adventures than those of the past are yet to come for him. However, this possibility is not available for Hercules, for he has fulfilled the 12 most difficult tasks imaginable. He has already taken on the greatest challenges that can be set for him and is thus no longer left with any way to find a sense of fulfillment and its concomitant feeling of bliss. All he has left is either minor, less-inspiring challenges that will fail to make his blood rise or a boring passivity. Thus, Hercules has nothing in front of him until his mortal life is over and he is taken to Olympus to join the gods as one of them. Though that may be something for him to look forward to, the time that will elapse until then seems oppressive to Hercules and explains the disillusion that the statue of him so brilliantly expresses.
