Hepzibah (Pyncheon), gentlewoman, reduced to the necessity of keeping a small shop in the ancient homestead. She idolizes her brother Clifford, a melancholy, refined man, who, terrified by an empty threat of his cousin, Judge Pyncheon, flees the house. Hepzibah goes with him. Recovering from their panic, they return in time to avoid the suspicion of having caused the Judge’s sudden death, which makes them rich.—Nathaniel Hawthorne, House of the Seven Gables (1851).
Herbert (Sir William), friend of Sir Hugo de Lacy.—Sir W. Scott, The Betrothed (time, Henry II.).
Her´culês shot Nessus for offering insult to his wife Dei´-j-a-nī-ra, and the dying centaur told Deijanira that if she dipped in his blood her husband’s shirt, she would secure his love forever. Herculês, being about to offer sacrifice, sent Lichas for the shirt; but no sooner was it warmed by the heat of his body than it caused such excruciating agony that the hero went mad, and seizing Lichas, he flung him into the sea.
Herculés Mad is the subject of a Greek tragedy by Eurip´idês, and of a Latin one by Sen´eca.
As when Alcīdês ... felt the envenomed robe, and tore,
Thro’ pain, up by the roots Thessalian pines,
And Lichas from the top of Œta [a mount] threw
Into the Euboic Sea [The Archipelago].
Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 542, etc. [1665].
⁂ Diodōrus says there were three Herculêses; Cicero recognizes six (three of which were Greeks, one Egyptian, one Cretan, and one Indian); Varro says there were forty-three.