Hercules is a hero; we were all brought up to appreciate the basic idea of the ancient hero. But what about him makes him one? This book aims to challenge some of the standard expectations as to what constitutes a hero, considering the phenomenon of heroism from a range of viewpoints. In this book we invite you to walk around the monumental notions of the hero and heroism, and endeavour to reach out and touch them on all sides. The chapters in this volume testify to the difficulty of answering the question 'what is a hero?' and engage with a variety of themes in attempting to offer some replies. They demonstrate not just the variety of ways in which the protagonists of ancient literature can be deemed heroic, but also the tendency for aspects of heroism to turn sour once identified. It seems that the moment we recognise heroic features, we are forced to question them. Do heroes necessitate anti-heroes, for example? Portraying protagonists' heroic qualities in an ambigous light focuses the reader's attention on the problem of realising the ideals of heroism in historic actuality. Various chapters ask the rhetorical question of whether we should expect, or more importantly, desire historical actors to behave like mythical heroes. To what extent can a hero ever be integrated into normal society? What difference might there be between a tragic and an epic hero? The commonplace 'The only good hero is a dead hero' summarises the extent to which this book also focuses on heroic death and dying. Covering Euripides to Monty Python, Roman soldiers to the modern military, this volume offers the reader a chance to think about the changing notion of the hero and recognise heroic qualities throughout western culture.
About the Author: Lydia Langerwerf studied Ancient History at the Universities of Groningen and Cambridge. She was recently awarded a PhD at Nottingham for her thesis 'No Freer than the Helots: Messenian Rebel Behaviour in Pausanias' Messeniaka in Comparative Perspective.' The dissertation developed from her interests in the history and ideology of slavery and other forms of bonded labour in Greek and Roman Antiquity. Other research interests include Greek and Latin concepts of courage, African-American and Caribbean classical scholarship and classical historiography. Cressida Ryan is the Classics Outreach Officer at the University of Oxford. She studied Classics at Cambridge, also taking an MPhil there specialising in Ancient Literature and reception, before teaching in boarding schools. She has recently completed a PhD at Nottingham entitled 'Eighteenth-century responses to Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, ' a synchronic, interdisciplinary study of the play's scholarship and performance reception in eighteenth-century England and France. Other research interests include Neo-Latin literature, theological Greek, Classics and education, alongside music and Greek tragedy more widely