Heracles is probably the biggest hero of the Greek mythology. He is the son of Alcmene and Zeus. Alcmene was the granddaughter of Perseus and she was together with Amphitryon from Thebe. Hera, jealous one more time because Zeus had been with another woman, postponed the birth of Heracles (the Roman Hercules) until the next grandson of Perseus was born so that he would not have the right to the throne of Mycenae.

But Alcmene was still afraid of the revenge of Hera, and she abandoned her baby. One day, Hera and Athena were walking along the beach and they found the little child. They kept him and took care of him, and Hera even breastfed him, through what he became immortal.

The goddesses gave the baby to Alcmene telling her that he was an orphan and she took him happy and free of worries. But Hera knew who the baby was and she wanted to erase him from the world. To make it, she sent two huge snakes that went into the room of the child and laid around his neck. The boy woke up with a scream and, good before somebody could arrive to help him, he had already grabbed and strangled the beasts.

When they saw this, his parents were completely amazed but also quite anxious. So they visited the prophet Teiresias, known from many other stories, who foretold them the brilliant future of the boy. This convinced them to give the child a worthy education, and he did get the best education, learning all about archery, javelin-throwing, art and science.

One day Heracles thought he would like to do something with all what he had learnt. This was not difficult, since by that time in Greece there were lots of forests and marshes full of wild animals, robbers and highwayman.

One of the things he did was to remove the tribute that the citizens from Thebes had to pay to the king Erginos. In appreciation for this he got the hand of the daughter of Kreon, Megara. Hermes gave him a sword, Apollo arrows, Hephaestus a golden case and Athena a tunic. With Megara he had three sons who lived with them a good while.

He also helped the gods in the war against the giants, from which the prophets said that could just be won if they had a mortal fighting by their side. After the victory, Heracles went up to the Olympus.