Hercules in an Egyptian deity Chons and an Indian Dorsanes, not to mention personages of other mythologies.
Hercules is supposed to have visited Italy on his return from Erythia, when he slew Cacus, son of Vulcan, the giant of the Aventine mount of Rome, who had stolen his oxen. To this victory was assigned the founding of the Ara maxima by Evander. His worship, introduced from the Greek colonies in Etruria and in the south of Italy, seems to have been established in Rome from the earliest times, as two old Patrician gentes were associated with his cult and the Fabii claimed him as their ancestor. The tithes vowed to him by Romans and men of Sora and Reate, for safety on journeys and voyages, furnished sacrifices and (in Rome) public entertainment (polluctum). Tibur was a special seat of his cult. In Rome he was patron of gladiators, as of athletes in Greece. With respect to the Roman relations of the hero, it is manifest that the native myths of Recaranus, or Sancus, or Dius Fidius, were transferred to the Hellenic Hercules. (C. A. M. F.)
See L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie (4th ed., Berlin, 1900); W. H. Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie (1884); Sir R. C. Jebb, Trachiniae of Sophocles (Introd.), (1892); Ch. Daremberg and E. Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines; Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, 1863; J. G. Winter, Myth of Hercules at Rome (New York, 1910).
In the article Greek Art, fig. 16 represents Heracles wrestling with the river-god Achelous; fig. 20 (from a small pediment, possibly of a shrine of the hero) the slaying of the Hydra; fig. 35 Heracles holding up the sky on a cushion.
Hercules was a favourite figure in French medieval literature. In the romance of Alexander the tent of the hero is decorated with incidents from his adventures. In the prose romance Les Prouesses et vaillances du preux Hercule (Paris, 1500), the hero’s labours are represented as having been performed in honour of a Boeotian princess; Pluto is a king dwelling in a dismal castle; the Fates are duennas watching Proserpine; the entrance to Pluto’s castle is watched by the giant Cerberus. Hercules conquers Spain and takes Merida from Geryon. The book is translated into English as Hercules of Greece (n. d.). Fragments of a French poem on the subject will be found in the Bulletin de la soc. des anciens textes français (1877). Don Enrique de Villena took from Les Prouesses his prose Los Doze Trabajos de Hercules (Zamora, 1483 and 1499), and Fernandez de Heredia wrote Trabajos y afanes de Hercules (Madrid, 1682), which belies its title, being a collection of adages and allegories. Le Fatiche d’Ercole (1475) is a romance in poetic prose by Pietro Bassi, and the Dodeci Travagli di Ercole (1544) a poem by J. Perillos.
HERCULES, in astronomy, a constellation of the northern hemisphere, mentioned by Eudoxus (4th century B.C.) and Aratus (3rd century B.C.) and catalogued by Ptolemy (29 stars) and Tycho Brahe (28 stars). Represented by a man kneeling, this constellation was first known as “the man on his knees,” and was afterwards called Cetheus, Theseus and Hercules by the ancient Greeks. Interesting objects in this constellation are: α Herculis, a fine coloured double star, composed of an orange star of magnitude 212, and a blue star of magnitude 6; ζ Herculis, a binary star, discovered by Sir William Herschel in 1782; one component is a yellow star of the third magnitude, the other a bluish, which appears to vary from red to blue, of magnitude 6; g and u Herculis, irregularly variable stars; and the cluster M. 13 Herculis, the finest globular cluster in the northern hemisphere, containing at least 5000 stars and of the 1000 determined only 2 are variable.
HERD (a word common to Teutonic languages; the O. Eng. form was heord; cf. Ger. Herde, Swed. and Dan. hjord; the Sans. ca‘rdhas, which shows the pre-Teutonic form, means a troop), a number of animals of one kind driven or fed together, usually applied to cattle as “flock” is to sheep, but used also of whales, porpoises, &c., and of birds, as swans, cranes and curlews. A “herd-book” is a book containing the pedigree and other information of any breed of cattle or pigs, like the “flock-book” for sheep or “stud-book” for horses. Formerly the word “herdwick” was applied to the pasture ground under the care of a shepherd, and it is now used of a special hardy breed of sheep in Cumberland and Westmorland. The word “herd” is also applied in a disparaging sense to a company of people, a mob or rabble, as “the vulgar herd.” As the name for a keeper of a herd or flock of domestic animals, the herdsman, it is usually qualified to denote the kind of animal under his protection, as swine-herd, shepherd, &c., but in Ireland, Scotland and the north of England, “herd” alone is commonly used.
HERDER, JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON (1744–1803), one of
the most prolific and influential writers that Germany has produced,
was born in Mohrungen, a small town in East Prussia,
on the 25th of August 1744. Like his contemporary Lessing,
Herder had throughout his life to struggle against adverse
circumstances. His father was poor, having to put together a
subsistence by uniting the humble offices of sexton, choir-singer
and petty schoolmaster. After receiving some rudimentary
instruction from his father, the boy was sent to the grammar
school of his native town. The mode of discipline practised
by the pedantic and irritable old man who stood at the head of
this institution was not at all to the young student’s liking,
and the impression made upon him stimulated him later on to
work out his projects of school reform. The hardships of his
early years drove him to introspection and to solitary communion
with nature, and thus favoured a more than proportionate
development of the sentimental and poetic side of his mind.
When quite young he expressed a wish to become a minister
of the gospel, but his aspirations were discouraged by the
local clergyman. In 1762, at the age of eighteen, he went up
to Königsberg with the intention of studying medicine, but
finding himself unequal to the operations of the dissecting-room,
he abandoned this object, and, by the help of one or two friends
and his own self-supporting labours, followed out his earlier
idea of the clerical profession by joining the university. There
he came under the influence of Kant, who was just then passing
from physical to metaphysical problems. Without becoming
a disciple of Kant, young Herder was deeply stimulated to fresh
critical inquiry by that thinker’s revolutionary ideas in philosophy.
To Kant’s lectures and conversations he further owed
something of his large interest in cosmological and anthropological
problems. Among the writers whom he most carefully read
were Plato, Hume, Shaftesbury, Leibnitz, Diderot and Rousseau.
Another personal influence under which he fell at Königsberg,
and which was destined to be far more permanent, was that of
J. G. Hamann, “the northern Mage.” This writer had already
won a name, and in young Herder he found a mind well fitted
to be the receptacle and vehicle of his new ideas on literature.
From this vague, incoherent, yet gifted writer our author acquired
some of his strong feeling for the naïve element in poetry, and for
the earliest developments of national literature. Even before
he went to Königsberg he had begun to compose verses, and at
the age of twenty he took up the pen as a chief occupation.
His first published writings were occasional poems and reviews
contributed to the Königsbergische Zeitung. Soon after this he
got an appointment at Riga, as assistant master at the cathedral
school, and a few years later, became assistant pastor. In
this busy commercial town, in somewhat improved pecuniary
and social circumstances, he developed the main ideas
of his writings. In the year 1767 he published his first
considerable work Fragmente über die neuere deutsche Literatur,
which at once made him widely known and secured for him the
favourable interest of Lessing. From this time he continued
to pour forth a number of critical writings on literature, art, &c.
His bold ideas on these subjects, which were a great advance
even on Lessing’s doctrines, naturally excited hostile criticism,
and in consequence of this opposition, which took the form of
aspersions on his religious orthodoxy, he resolved to leave
Riga. He was much carried away at this time by the idea of
a radical reform of social life in Livonia, which (after the example
of Rousseau) he thought to effect by means of a better method
of school-training. With this plan in view he began (1769) a
tour through France, England, Holland, &c., for the purpose of
collecting information respecting their systems of education.
It was during the solitude of his voyage to France, when on deck
at night, that he first shaped his idea of the genesis of primitive
poetry, and of the gradual evolution of humanity. Having
received an offer of an appointment as travelling tutor and chaplain
to the young prince of Eutin-Holstein, he abandoned his
somewhat visionary scheme of a social reconstruction of a
