HERO (Gr. ἥρως), a term specially applied to warriors of extraordinary strength and courage, and generally to all who were distinguished from their fellows by superior moral, physical or intellectual qualities. No satisfactory derivation of the word has been suggested.
Ancient Greek Heroes.
In ancient Greece, the heroes were the object of a special cult, and as such were intimately connected with its religious life. Various theories have been put forward as to the nature of these heroes. According to some authorities, they were idealized historical personages; according to others, symbolical representations of the forces of nature. The view most commonly held is that they were degraded or “depotentiated” gods, occupying a position intermediate between gods and men. According to E. Rohde (in Psyche) they are souls of the dead, which after separation from the body enter upon a higher, eternal existence. But it is only a select minority who attain to the rank of heroes after death, only the distinguished men of the past. The worship of these heroes is in reality an ancestor worship, which existed in pre-Homeric times, and was preserved in local cults. Instances no doubt occur of gods being degraded to the ranks of heroes, but these are not the real heroes, the heroes who are the object of a cult. The cult-heroes were all persons who had lived the life of man on earth, and it was necessary for the degraded gods to pass through this stage. They did not at once become cult-heroes, but only after they had undergone death like other mortals. Only one who has been a man can become a hero. The heroes are spirits of the dead, not demi-gods; their position is not intermediate between gods and men, but by the side of these they exist as a separate class.
In Homer the term is applied especially to warrior princes, to kings and kings’ sons, even to distinguished persons of lower rank, and free men generally. In Hesiod it is chiefly confined to those who fought before Troy and Thebes; in view of their supposed divine origin, he calls them demi-gods (ἡμίθεοι). This name is also given them in an interpolated passage in the Iliad (xii. 23), which is quite at variance with the general Homeric idea of the heroes, who are no more than men, even if of divine origin and of superior strength and prowess. But neither in Homer nor in Hesiod is there any trace of the idea that the heroes after death had any power for good or evil over the lives of those who survived them; and consequently, no cult. Nevertheless, traces of an earlier ancestor worship appear, e.g. in funeral games in honour of Patroclus and other heroes, while the Hesiodic account of the five ages of man is a reminiscence of the belief in the continued existence of souls in a higher life. This pre-historic worship and belief, for a time obscured, were subsequently revived. According to Porphyry (De abstinentia, iv. 22), Draco ordered the inhabitants of Attica to honour the gods and heroes of their country “in accordance with the usage of their fathers” with offerings of first fruits and sacrificial cakes every year, thereby clearly pointing to a custom of high antiquity. Solon also ordered that the tombs of the heroes should be treated with the greatest respect, and Cleisthenes (q.v.) sought to create a pan-Athenian enthusiasm by calling his new tribes after Attic heroes and setting up their statues in the Agora. Heroic honours were at first bestowed upon the founders of a colony or city, and the ancestors of families; if their name was not known, one was adopted from legend. In many cases these heroes were purely fictitious; such were the supposed ancestors of the noble and priestly families of Attica and elsewhere (Butadae at Athens, Branchidae at Miletus Ceryces at Eleusis), of the eponymi of the tribes and demes. Again, side by side with gods of superior rank, certain heroes were worshipped as protecting spirits of the country or state; such were the Aeacidae amongst the Aeginetans, Ajax son of Oïleus amongst the Epizephyrian Locrians and Hector at Thebes. Neglect of the worship of these heroes was held to be responsible for pestilence, bad crops and other misfortunes, while, on the other hand, if duly honoured, their influence was equally beneficent. This belief was supported by the Delphic oracle, which was largely instrumental in promoting hero-worship and keeping alive its due observance. Special importance was attached to the grave of the hero and to his bodily remains, with which the spirit of the departed was inseparably connected. The grave was regarded as his place of abode, from which he could only be absent for a brief period; hence his bones were fetched from abroad (e.g. Cimon brought those of Theseus from Scyros), or if they could not be procured, at least a cenotaph was erected in his honour. Their relics also were carefully preserved: the house of Cadmus at Thebes, the hut of Orestes at Tegea, the stone on which Telamon had sat at Salamis (in Cyprus). Special shrines (ἡρῷα) were also erected in their honour, usually over their graves. In these shrines a complete set of armour was kept, in accordance with the idea that the hero was essentially a warrior, who on occasion came forth from his grave and fought at the head of his countrymen, putting the enemy to flight as during his lifetime. Like the gods, the cult heroes were supposed to exercise an influence on human affairs, though not to the same extent, their sphere of action being confined to their own localities. Amongst the earliest known historical examples of the elevation of the dead to the rank of heroes are Timesius the founder of Abdera, Miltiades, son of Cypselus, Harmodius and Aristogiton and Brasidas, the victor of Amphipolis, who ousted the local Athenian hero Hagnon. In course of time admission to the rank of a hero became far more common, and was even accorded to the living, such as Lysimachus in Samothrace and the tyrant Nicias of Cos. Antiochus of Commagene instituted an order of priests to celebrate the anniversary of his birth and coronation in a special sanctuary, and the kings of Pergamum claimed divine honours for themselves and their wives during their lifetime. The birthday of Eumenes was regularly kept, and every month sacrifice was offered to him and games held in his honour. In addition to persons of high rank, poets, legendary and others (Linus, Orpheus, Homer, Aeschylus and Sophocles), legislators and physicians (Lycurgus, Hippocrates), the patrons of various trades or handicrafts (artists, cooks, bakers, potters), the heads of philosophical schools (Plato, Democritus, Epicurus) received the honours of a cult. At Teos incense was offered before the statue of a flute-player during his lifetime. In some countries the honour became so general that every man after death was described as a hero in his epitaph—in Thessaly even slaves.
The cult of the heroes exhibits points of resemblance with that of the chthonian divinities and of the dead, but differs from that of the ordinary gods, a further indication that they were not “depotentiated” gods. Thus, sacrifice was offered to them at night or in the evening; not on a high, but on a low altar (ἐσχάρα), surrounded by a trench to receive the blood of the victim, which was supposed to make its way through the ground to the occupant of the grave; the victims were black male animals, whose heads were turned downwards, not upwards; their blood was allowed to trickle on the ground to appease the departed (αἱμακουρία); the body was entirely consumed by fire and no mortal was allowed to eat of it; the technical expression for the sacrifice was not θύειν but ἐναγίζειν (less commonly ἐντέμνειν). The chthonian aspect of the hero is further shown by his attribute the snake, and in many cases he appears under that form himself. On special occasions a sacrificial meal of cooked food was set out for the heroes, of which they were solemnly invited to partake. The fullest description of such a festival is the account given by Plutarch (Aristides, 21) of the festival celebrated by the Plataeans in honour of their countrymen who had fallen at the battle of Plataea. On the 16th of the month Maimacterion, a long procession, headed by a trumpeter playing a warlike air, set out for the graves; wagons decked with myrtle and garlands of flowers followed, young men (who must be of free birth) carried jars of wine, milk, oil and perfumes; next came the black bull destined for the sacrifice, the rear being brought up by the archon, who wore the purple robe of the general, a naked sword in one hand, in the other an urn. When he came near the tombs, he drew some water with which he washed the gravestones, afterwards anointing them with perfume; he then sacrificed the bull on the altar calling upon Zeus Chthonios and Hermes Psychopompos, and inviting them in company with the heroes to the festival of blood. Finally, he poured a libation of wine with the words: “I drink to those who died for the freedom of the Hellenes.”
See especially E. Rohde, Psyche (1905) and in Rheinisches Museum, li. (1895), 28; P. Stengel, Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer (Munich, 1898), p. 124; G. F. Schömann, Griechische Altertümer, ii. (1897), 159; J. Wassner, De heroum apud Graecos cultu (Kiel, 1883); article by F. Deneken in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie, in which a large amount of material is accumulated; J. A. Hild, Étude sur les démons (1881) and article in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités.
Teutonic Legend.
Many of the chief characteristics of the ancient Greek heroes are reproduced in those of the Teutonic North, the parallel being in some cases very striking; Siegfried, for instance, like Achilles, is vulnerable only in one spot, and Wayland Smith, like Hephaestus, is lame. Superhuman qualities and powers, too, are commonly ascribed to both, an important difference, however, being that whatever worship may have been paid to the Teutonic heroes never crystallized into a cult. This applies equally to those who have a recognized historical origin and to those who are regarded as purely mythical. Of the latter the number has tended to diminish in the light of modern scholarship. The fashion during the 19th century set strongly in the other direction, and the “degraded gods” theory was applied not only to such conspicuous heroes as Siegfried, Dietrich and Beowulf, but to a host of minor characters, such as the good marquis Rüdeger of the Nibelungenlied and our own Robin Hood (both identified with Woden Hruodperaht). The reaction from one extreme has, indeed, tended to lead to another, until not only the heroes, but the very gods themselves, are being traced to very human, not to say commonplace, origins. Thus M. Henri de Tourville, in his Histoire de la formation particulariste (1903), basing his argument on the Ynglinga Saga, interpreted in the light of “Social Science,” reveals Odin, “the traveller,” as a great “caravan-leader” and warrior, who, driven from Asgard—a trading city on the borders of the steppes east of the Don—by “the blows that Pompey aimed at Mithridates,” brought to the north the arts and industries of the East. The argument is developed with convincing ingenuity, but it may be doubted whether it has permanently “rescued Odin from the misty dreamland of mythology and restored him to history.” It is now, however, admitted that, whatever influence the one may have from time to time exercised on the other, Teutonic myth and Teutonic heroic legend were developed on independent lines. The Teutonic heroes are, in the main, historical personages, never gods; though, like the Greek heroes, they are sometimes endowed with semi-divine attributes or interpreted as symbolical representations of natural forces.
The origin of Teutonic heroic saga, which may be regarded as including that of the Germans, Goths, Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians, is to be looked for in the period of the so-called migration of nations (A.D. 350-650). It consequently rests upon a distinct basis of fact, the saga (in the older and wider sense of any story said or sung) being indeed the oldest form of historical tradition; though this of course does not exclude the probability of the accretion of mythical elements round persons and episodes from the very first. As to the origin of the heroic sagas as we now have them, Tacitus tells us that the deeds of Arminius were still celebrated in song a hundred years after his death (Annals, ii. 88) and in the Germania he speaks of “old songs” as the only kind of “annals” which the ancient Germans possessed; but, whatever relics of the old songs may be embedded in the Teutonic sagas, they have left no recognizable mark on the heroic poetry of the German peoples. The attempt to identify Arminius with Siegfried is now generally abandoned. Teutonic heroic saga, properly so-called, consists of the traditions connected with the migration period, the earliest traces of which are found in the works of historical writers such as Ammianus Marcellinus and Cassiodorus. According to Jordanes (the epitomator of Cassiodorus’s History of the Goths) at the funeral of Attila his vassals, as they rode round the corpse, sang of his glorious deeds. The next step in the development of epic narrative was the single lay of an episodic character, sung by a single individual, who was frequently a member of a distinguished family, not merely a professional minstrel. Then, as different stories grew up round the person of a particular hero, they formed a connected cycle of legend, the centre of which was the person of the hero (e.g. Dietrich of Bern). The most important figures of these cycles are the following.