Hercules

(hür kū-leez.) [Gr. Héraklēs.] (Myth.) A celebrated demigod of antiquity, and the reputed son of Jupiterby Alcmena; he was endowed with prodigious strength by his father, and pursued with unrelenting hatred by Juno. The legends about him are innumerable, but the most famous are those of his 12 labors, which were: his killing the Lion of Nemea; the destruction of the Lernæan Hydra; his capture of the golden-antlered Arcadian stag; his killing the Erymanthean boar; the cleansing of the Augean stables; the killing of the birds of Lake Stymphalis; the capture of the wild bull of Crete; the capture of the anthropophagous mares of Diomede of Thrace; the procuring of the girdle of the Queen of the Amazons; the capture of Geryon's oxen; the procuring the golden apples of the Hesperides; and the bringing to the upper world the dog Cerberus. He was poisoned by the treachery of Ne us the Centaur, by means of his wife Dejanira, and he was taken to Olympus, as he was preparing to ascend his own funeral pile on Mount Eta.-(Ast.) One of Ptolemy's northern constellations, including within its limits the point towards which the sun is [s. 452]