August his visage shone; almighty Jove,
In his swift car his honoured offspring drove:
High o'er the hollow clouds the coursers fly,
And lodge the hero in the starry sky."
Ovid.
If his fame had been universal, his worship soon became equally so, and Juno, once so inveterate, consented to his receiving her daughter Hebe in marriage.
Hercules is generally represented as gigantically proportioned, sometimes naked, sometimes covered with the skin of the Nemean lion; a thick and knotted club in his hands, on which he is often seen leaning.
Such are the most important parts of the life of Hercules, who is held out by the ancients as a complete pattern of virtue and piety, and is asserted by them to have been employed for the benefit of mankind, and for this was deservedly rewarded with immortality.
"O worthy end of his laborious life,
The nectared cup, and Hebe for a wife!