Heracles.
Heracles · Greek hero
The strongest of the Greek heroes — twelve impossible labours, then a place among the stars.
Demigod son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene. Hera's lifelong rival; placed among the stars after death as the constellation Hercules.
Heracles · Heracles · Greek hero
Demigod son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene. Hera's lifelong rival; placed among the stars after death as the constellation Hercules.
Heracles was the son of Zeus by the mortal Alcmene of Thebes. Hera, jealous of her husband's affair, hated the child from birth and sent two serpents to kill him in the cradle — but the infant strangled them with his bare hands. He grew into the strongest mortal alive, and married Megara, daughter of the Theban king.
Hera struck again, this time with madness, in which Heracles killed his own children. To purify himself he was sent to King Eurystheus, who ordered the twelve labours: kill the Nemean lion, the Lernaean Hydra, capture the Erymanthian boar, clean the Augean stables in a day, retrieve Cerberus from the underworld. Each labour was meant to be impossible. He completed all twelve.
"He cleansed the Augean stables, slew the Lernaean Hydra, and brought back Cerberus from the gates of the underworld."
His death came not in battle but by poison — a cloak soaked in the blood of the centaur Nessus, whose final act of revenge his wife Deianira had unwittingly carried out. On Mount Oeta Heracles built his own pyre and was carried into the heavens, where Zeus placed him among the stars as the kneeling figure of Hercules.
Where this comes from.
Mythology
- Apollodorus Bibliotheca 2.4.8–2.7.7
- Hesiod Theogony 287–294, 313–318
- Hyginus Fabulae 30, Astronomica 2.6
Paintings & illustrations
- Farnese Hercules — Glykon (after Lysippos), Roman copy (3rd c. CE (after 4th c. BCE original)) · Wikimedia · PD
- Hercules and the Hydra — Antonio del Pollaiolo (c. 1475) · Wikimedia · PD
- Hercules at the Crossroads — Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1610) · Wikimedia · PD
For fun · sources cited. We don’t publish horoscopes, personality readings, or compatibility takes — just astronomy + classical mythology, with public-domain art where available. See all 88 constellations.