"He is the greatest action hero in mythology." "His name is Hercules." "A man tormented by a horrifying sin." "Driven to take on twelve impossible challenges in a quest for redemption." "To us, it is myth, but to the ancients it was reality." "A legend based on an actual warrior." "Filled with hidden codes about the real world." "This is the truth behind the myth of Hercules." "In a strange and unfamiliar world something stirs just below the water line." "It breaks de surface... a giant serpent with not one, but nine dragon-like heads." "It spews poisonous vapours and then eats its victims alive." "But today the monster has met his match." "The strongest hero who ever lived." "Mythology's ideal man." "Hercules." "He is the most popular hero in history." "A half-god, half-mortal with superhuman strength who is destined to rid the Greek world of evil." "But that's only the beginning of his story." "Hercules was something special and at the same time extremely ordinary." "He was a man of the people." "He was a little bit like Babe Ruth in American mythology." "He was a womanizer, he was a heavy drinker, and he was an extraordinary athlete." "He was a little bit like a god but he was very definitely a human being." "Today a lot of people think heroes have superhuman strength, they get the girl, they have superhuman powers, can fly through the air." "It's a different conception in the Greek world." "A hero is someone who has superhuman strength but someone who has to suffer." "And Hercules is the consummate hero in Greek society." "He's destined to suffer more than anyone else." "In his myth, Hercules confronts a legion of terrifying enemies, and endures suffering on a scale no human has ever known." "His story begins with Zeus, the sex-crazed king of the gods having an illicit affair." "Hercules is the son of Zeus and a mortal woman named Alcmene." "Classical mythology is loaded with stories of gods who impregnate mortal women and give birth to gods or demi-gods." "So this demi-god idea means that this person has some features that are very godly, some divine powers but, at the same time, he is mortal, he can die." "I suspect that the Greeks invented this idea because they wanted to reach the gods as much as possible, to create images of themselves that are closer and closer to the gods." "Hercules would grow up to be Greece's model hero." "But he has one powerful enemy who wants to see him destroyed." "Zeus' wife, the goddess Hera." "She's the queen of the goddesses and she has wonderful beauty, she's supremely intelligent, she's mighty, but she's also exceedingly jealous because Zeus is always running after other women." "Zeus fathers countless children with a variety of mortal women." "And Hera hates them all." "But she decides it is Hercules who must pay the ultimate price for the sins committed by Zeus." "Hera's hatred of Hercules is actually very, very irrational." "It's almost as if she knew that he was going to challenge her favour in heaven in some way." "She knew there was something about Hercules that was different than the other children and maybe she felt threatened by this, but every day of his life he seemed to have been paying for this hatred of hers." "One night, while Hercules is still a baby," "Hera sends two poisonous snakes into his nursery." "He's got one snake in each hand and he's squeezing them to death." "A little tiny infant squeezing to death these two giant serpents." "Everyone knew at that point that there was something a little bit different about Hercules." "This is one of the reasons why Hera will hate him, because she cannot kill him." "She can make his life wretched but she cannot kill him because destiny says he will become immortal." "And even a god has to obey destiny." "But Hera is just getting started." "Her vendetta against Hercules will determine the course of his life, from the cradle to the grave." "So goes the myth." "But what is the link to reality?" "February 2004, in a Greek town called Thebes archaeologists discover stunning evidence that sheds new light on the story of Hercules' birth." "They uncover a buried temple beneath an ordinary residential loft." "In its centre are the remains of an altar." "Around the altar are hundreds of ceramic vases and small statues." "They all portray one thing..." "Hercules." "After the discovery, researchers linked the findings to a 2500 year-old text that describes a mysterious house of Hercules at Thebes just outside the gates of the ancient city." "The description and the site match perfectly, but there's more." "The ancient text says that this shrine was erected on the precise spot of Hercules' birth." "Could the hero have been real?" "The hunt for clues leads back to the myth." "As the story continues, Hercules comes of age." "A man-god straddling two worlds, the human and the supernatural." "He is too strong to be a human." "He's sort of like a god trapped in a human's body." "Often, he accidentally does bad things to people around him, like he accidentally kills people." "He accidentally damages property." "He can't really control himself." "This superhuman strength makes it impossible for Hercules to blend into Greek society." "He was unable to form emotional contacts with anyone." "In fact, there seems to have been a kind of schizophrenic quality to his make-up." "He was half-human, and half divine, and yet he had a father who would not protect him from the terrible trials and tribulations that Hera inflicted upon him." "He was left alone, suspended between heaven and earth, and having nowhere to go." "Desperate for some semblance of normalcy" "Hercules marries a beautiful princess who bears him two sons." "But his domestic bliss is short-lived." "His nemesis Hera soon returns determined to make sure he never knows happiness." "This time he'll transform him from family man to murderer by driving him mad." "She sends madness to him as he sleeps." "And he, in his madness, believes that his wife and his children are his enemies." "In the dead of night, Hercules commits an unspeakable horror." "When Hercules wakes up from this madness, from this ravenous madness," "he finds himself covered in the blood of his own family." "He doesn't really even know that he's the one that did it." "But nevertheless he has the blood stains on him, it is the physical mark of guilt." "And this is the guilt he must bear." "And is from this horrible incident that the rest of Hercules' story unfolds." "The strongest man on earth has slaughtered his entire family." "When his blind rage subsides it is replaced with intense remorse, a horrible anguish that will plague him forever." "The ancient Greeks called this a "blood guilt"." "In antiquity a "blood-guilt" was understood to be a kind of curse that clung to you from the blood of the person whose murder you were involved in." "This is a little bit like a Christian penance where you do certain good acts on the earth in other to make up for bad things that you might have done." "From here on, he's going to have to try to get rid of the stain of blood guilt from this horrible act." "And this is the very pivot of Hercules' whole life." "To purify his soul, Hercules will have to survive the most excruciating series of challenges ever confronted by man or the gods." "It is a journey that will take him across the Greek world and beyond and leave a trail of real evidence that sheds new light on the truth behind the myth." "Mythology's superhero, Hercules, has just butchered his wife and children under a spell cast by his stepmother, Hera." "Now, the strongest man on earth must atone for his crime." "But he is lost." "Disoriented." "For guidance, he seeks out ancient Greece's greatest prophetess." "Hercules' crime is so great that only one, the most powerful religious authority of his time, could help him solve it, and that's the Oracle of Delphi." "Delphi, its sacred temple plays a key part in many Greek myths." "But it's not just a mythical place." "Ruins of the Oracle temple can still be found in the mountains of Central Greece." "2500 years ago, a priestess stood in a trance-like state as mysterious vapours rose up around her." "She spoke in riddles and supposedly channelled the word of the gods." "It was a direct phone-line up to heaven to ask the answer to anything you wanted." "A new discovery may reveal where the Oracle's powers originated." "A recent geological survey has shown that the Delphi temple sits precisely on the intersection of two fault lines." "This may explain the magical vapours that surrounded the prophetess." "The new evidence suggests that movements of the earth around these faults might actually have released ethylene gas that would have leaked through these cracks in the earth." "People who breathe a lot of ethylene will fall into a trance that sounds almost exactly like what the Oracle of Delphi experienced." "So basically the Oracle of Delphi was a stoner that everyone in ancient Greek society trusted a lot." "At Delphi, the Oracle tells Hercules that only a terrible penance can absolve him of his crimes." "To receive that penance, he must go to his cousin and archrival," "King Eurystheus." "But it's a trick." "Hera is using the Oracle and King Eurystheus to crush Hercules." "Hera will pursue him with everything she has." "Hera will be his implacable enemy and the dangers, the enemies, she will put in his way will not cease." "Eurystheus assigns Hercules 12 challenges, all designed by Hera." "They will forever be known as the "Labours of Hercules"." "In them, the hero was challenged to rid the Greek world of its greatest evils." "To confront its most savage beasts." "Forces of nature, evil tyrants, and monsters." "No man could be expected to survive even one of these challenges." "But Hercules must overcome 12." "These Labours have a function." "Their primary function is to remove the pollution from having killed his family." "He will need to purify himself, to purify his hands, to purify his soul, later on, of the grievous crime he has committed." "It seems a little unfair to us because the acts that he's doing penance for weren't really his fault." "He was under the influence of the madness sent to him by his stepmother Hera." "In the Greek minds it didn't really matter that it wasn't his fault." "He still needed to perform these acts to wash away the stain of these violent acts that he'd committed." "The quest for redemption begins with the first Labour:" "To kill a savage beast that symbolises mankind's animal instincts, the Lion of Nemea." "The problem for Hercules is even though he's a magnificent archer the Lion's skin is impervious to his arrows." "So it's only through brute strength that he manages to overcome the lion." "And when he does, he skins the lion and he adopts it as his own armour that he begins wearing." "So from then on, Hercules, is always depicted wearing the lion skin which protects him from harm." "King Eurystheus is stunned." "He thought Hercules' first Labour would be his last." "Now, he lays out a series of even more monstrous challenges sure to put an end to the hero." "A theme becomes evident in these early Labours, it's Man versus Nature." "The ancient Greeks viewed nature as a scary place." "They wanted to live in harmony with it, but nature was a bitch that if you didn't watch would kill you." "And that was their view." "They didn't have a romantic view of Nature." "There are a few great heroes, Hercules is prominent among them, who can tame Nature, who can actually bring it under control." "And this is the mark of a truly great hero, to bring this unstoppable force to heed." "The second Labour challenges Hercules to kill another monstrous freak of nature, the dreaded nine-headed Hydra." "A poison-spitting serpent that devours men in one bite." "Hercules draws his sword and attacks." "He slices through one of the Hydra's necks." "Then another." "Decapitating the monster one head at a time." "But as soon as each head is cut off two more grow in its place." "This represents the human lust for pleasure, which the Greeks believed to be unkillable." "The more you attack it, the more you cut its head off, the more heads you have to deal with." "Hercules needs a new strategy." "Against this enemy, his success hinges on more than muscle." "Hercules grabs a torch and scorches the skin of the beast." "He comes up with the idea of burning off the stumps." "To cauterize the neck, so that a head can't grow back in there." "With a final thrust, Hercules severs the last head from the body." "It is a stunning triumph of man over monster." "So after he's slain the Hydra" "Hercules dips his arrows into the blood of the Hydra and from then on he has poisoned arrows." "Our word "toxic", meaning poisonous, comes from the Greek word "toxon"" "which is a bow that you fire arrows with." "And so "toxicos" in Greek simply means relating to the bow." "So it is a strange word in English because it preserves the legend of Hercules inside the word." "Two Labours conquered." "Like a fighter in training," "Hercules is honing the skills necessary to survive in a hostile world - physical strength, mental toughness, and relentless endurance." "In these labours, Hercules is overcoming evil." "And he comes as an avenger and a bringer of justice." "In his next two Labours, Hercules conquers another pair of Nature's most formidable beasts:" "the Golden Stag of Artemis, an animal so fast it could outrun an arrow in flight." "And the vicious man-eating Boar." "A monster Hercules manages to capture alive." "Eurystheus, who set him these tasks, never expected any of them to be accomplished." "So we start to see Hercules as the prototypical superhuman." "He seems unstoppable at this point." "To break the hero's momentum, King Eurystheus tries changing tactics." "He introduces a different kind of natural obstacle." "Raw sewage." "For his fifth Labour, Hercules must take on a dirty job that symbolises the foul side of human nature." "He must clean out a massive complex of manure-filled stables." "This Labour is different from the others because it involves menial labour, in a way that Hercules hadn't really submitted to before." "In the earlier labours he has to slay beasts that are ravaging the countryside and he's trying to protect human beings or to promote civilisation." "But in this one, it's simply a matter of cleaning dung out of a stable that hasn't been cleaned in many years." "And he has one day to accomplish the task." "Hercules notices that these repulsive stables lie between two powerful rivers, and he gets an idea." "What he does is, using his great strength, he diverts two different rivers and have them flood into the stables and flush everything out." "One Labour at a time, Hercules is making amends for killing his family." "So far he has proven himself greater than any obstacle that Hera and her puppet-King, Eurystheus, have dreamed up." "And with each struggle he is only getting stronger." "To the ancient Greeks, the success in the face of such overwhelming odds was an inspiring story." "But, could it have been more than just a story?" "Intriguing historical clues suggest Hercules was not a myth but a real hero." "Hercules is mythology's ultimate superhero." "The combination of strength and suffering in the same character made him relatable to the people of the ancient world." "They saw in Hercules a hero to be both pitied and admired." "Someone who's tragic story was connected to their own reality." "Myths reflect historical events that have long since been past, so they are a kind of code into ancient history that gets passed down from generation to generation." "The stories of Hercules come together from people getting together in different cultures and sharing their own tales of local heroes that they know who'd overcome great difficulties, and as they share these stories they start to realise, wait a minute," "our strong man seems to be a little bit like your strong man." "And then the traditions all weave together." "In ancient Greece, Hercules was the model for the ideal man." "But did he actually exist?" "It might be possible that behind each of these great Greek heroes there is some single historical figure, but history has frustrated all of our attempts to find and locate the actual persons." "Some versions of the Hercules myth say his family came from a Greek settlement called Tiryns." "And ancient sources suggest it was once home to a real warrior who was renowned for his great strength, and even thought to have a direct connexion to the gods." "This warrior, whose name is lost to history, served the ruler of a powerful kingdom called Mycenae." "In the myth, Hercules also serves the king of Mycenae, his cousin Eurystheus, who assigns him the 12 Labours." "Is this coincidence, or something more?" "Other clues about the man behind the myth can be found at one of Greece's most legendary sites." "This is Olympia." "In the year 776 BC, the first Olympic Games were held here." "There are hundreds of games around the Greek world, but the Olympics were the finest and the most prestigious." "If you won at the Olympic Games it was being elevated, in a way, amongst men." "It was as closest a mortal could get to the gods." "There are striking parallels between the challenges Hercules faced in his Labours and those of the Games." "Both were feats of strength and endurance that only the most disciplined athlete could achieve." "But the connexion between Hercules and the Olympics may run deeper." "Hercules reportedly founded the Olympic Games after one of his Labours, so the Labours are directly connected to the original foundation of the Games." "These are the remains of the stadium at Olympia." "Its track measures 600 ft." "According to the ancient Greeks, that's 600 of Hercules' own feet." "According to legend, Hercules himself paced up the "stadion", which was 600 little steps, and it's 192.27 metres." "So historians have deduced that Hercules' feet were actually 12.6 inches long." "That's a size 13 shoe." "More traces of Hercules can also be seen in the main temple here." "Reliefs salvaged from the exterior walls depict his 12 Labours." "He was revered by all athletes and one measured oneself up against Hercules." "Well, it was very important to the Greeks never to surrender, so many athletes died rather than give up." "In the myth, it is the same perseverance that sustains Hercules." "Hercules' message is always one of" ""keep going and you'll eventually succeed"." "No matter how tough things seem success is possible." "In his 6th Labour, Hercules must face a flock of ferocious man-eating birds who symbolise mankind's unreachable goals." "He drives them off with his poisonous arrows and reaches an important milestone, the half-way mark in his 12 Labours." "But 6 more challenges still remain, and each one will only get tougher." "His stepmother Hera will make sure of it." "As the Labours go on they become more and more extreme, and they make him go to further and further and more mystical places." "The next three Labours will take Hercules beyond Greece for the first time and pit him against powerful foreign enemies." "Stories like these resonated with the ancient Greeks in an age when they were anxious to expand their empire." "The Greeks, pressed by land hunger, are beginning to colonize as far out as the South of France, and they're sending colonies throughout the Mediterranean." "And reports are coming back about various monsters, or various things." "For his 7th Labour, Hercules travels to the island nation of Crete, to find and capture the prized Bull of the King, Minos." "The bull is a code for Crete's dominance over mainland Greece at the time when the myth was created." "In the late Bronze Age, Crete really was the most important power in that part of the Mediterranean." "The places that, in the classical period, like Athens and Sparta, which would have a lot of importance and would become the most significant powers, were not anything very important at all." "In fact, they had to pay tribute to Crete because it was the major power in the region." "In the myth, Hercules is about to change that." "He tracks down King Minos' Bull, wrestles it into submission, and sails it back home." "No longer will Greece answer to Crete." "Seven Labours down." "With his conquest of the Cretan Bull," "Hercules has won his war against Nature." "Now it will be man versus man." "In the earlier Labours," "Hercules was performing services that benefited mankind, ridding them of pests and beasts and these other various things." "But at this point we start to see a darker side of Hercules." "And it maybe foreshadows things to come." "In his next set of Labours," "Hercules confronts two foreign rulers who pose a threat to Greece." "First he targets Diomedes, the tyrannical king of Bistonia." "Diomedes has trained his horses to eat the flesh of his enemies." "Hercules makes him their next meal." "This Labour sent a powerful message to the ancient Greeks, that the evil you create will ultimately destroy you." "This is the first Labour where Hercules actually kills someone." "This is the pivotal moment." "For the first time he's actually drawn human blood." "The killing spree continues in his next Labour, where Hercules slays the Amazons, a ferocious tribe of female warriors, after stealing the belt of their leader, Hippolyta." "With that, Hercules has completed nine of his twelve Labours." "His bravery, strength and stamina have carried him through the most impossible series of tasks ever attempted." "But the final battles will prove to be the hardest." "They will take Hercules beyond the outer limits of the known world." "Through territory no Greek has ever seen in search of a realm with intriguing parallels to the biblical Garden of Eden." "The mythical hero Hercules has endured nine daunting Labours in a quest to atone for the crime of killing his family." "Every challenge represents a tougher test of his strength, stamina and resolve." "In his Labours, there's kind of a crescendo of difficulty." "That Hercules is able to overcome even harder and harder Labours shows him to be incredibly powerful in a way no other ancient hero was able to do." "But as the challenges go on, it becomes clear that no amount of physical pain can ease his mental anguish." "Hercules is a prisoner of his own guilt." "No matter how many Labours he performed, no matter how much heroism he exhibited, no matter how extraordinary his physical straits were, inside of him there was no peace, there was no satisfaction." "Three more tests remain for Hercules." "They will take him to the edge of the Earth and into an abyss of death." "What happens is that Hercules continually has to go further and further afield from Greece." "The further you go out into the unknown you actually cross the plane between mortal and immortal world." "In his 10th Labour, Hercules sets out to capture the Cattle of the Geryon." "A vicious monster with three sets of legs, three heads, and a lethal pedigree." "He's the grandson of Medusa, so he too is a kind of semi-monstrous figure and he's not going to let these cattle go without a fight." "But destroying the Geryon is only half of the challenge." "The other half is getting there." "To reach the Geryon, Hercules must venture beyond the Mediterranean Sea, into the Atlantic Ocean." "But one massive obstacle stands in his way." "A mountain range that joins Europe and Africa into one continent and seals off the sea from the ocean." "Hercules decides not to go around the mountain." "He goes through it." "He splits the mountain in two with one blow from his sword." "This part of the myth was created to explain how the Atlantic and Mediterranean were joined." "The cliffs on each side are forever linked to Hercules." "The Straits of Gibraltar are known to the ancient Greeks as the Pillars of Hercules." "And no one could go beyond there, no one knew what was beyond there." "To the people of the ancient world the Pillars of Hercules were not just a gateway into an unexplored ocean," "they were a portal between reality and myth." "For a Greek to talk of somewhere beyond the Pillars of Hercules is kind of like you and I talking about somewhere over the rainbow." "And that Hercules has actually gone there and come back would have only added to his reputation." "All ancient sailors bound for the Atlantic had to sail between the Pillars of Hercules, and one recent discovery suggests there were many who dropped anchor here to pay respects to the hero himself." "In a cave on the rock of Gibraltar archaeologists have turned up hundreds of artefacts believed to be linked to Hercules." "So we took samples and sent them away for radio-carbon dating, and they're all perfect matches within each other, they all seem to point to a period of about 400 years, from about 800 BC to 400 BC." "These are objects that were being placed very specifically for a particular reason, and we're quite confident that we have here is a big shrine." "Experts believe Greek sailors came to the shrine to pray for their lives as the prepared to follow Hercules into the unknown." "They did not know what, if anything, lay beyond the Pillars." "In the myth, Hercules faces the same uncertainty as he crosses this threshold into the unknown." "Beyond the Pillars, the three-headed Geryon and his cattle await." "The monster comes out fighting, hurling huge boulders down the mountain at Hercules." "But Hercules has a secret weapon, arrows dipped in the poisonous venom of an earlier conquest, the Hydra." "He takes aim, and fires." "The Geryon falls dead... and Hercules claims his cattle." "10 Labours down." "Next, Hercules must go to the edge of the world to steal golden apples from a Garden guarded by a dragon with a hundred heads." "Apples, a garden, and a dangerous serpent." "This Labour parallels the biblical story of Adam and Eve." "There are early Christians who made the comparison between the Apple of the Hesperides and the Tree of Life in the Garden." "That's one of those things dealing with ancient material that says these folks talked to each other, and they knew each other's stories." "In the Hercules story, there's a deadly twist." "The Apples he seeks belong to his enemy, the goddess Hera." "Not only do these Apples belong to Hera but they are signs of her sacred marriage to Zeus." "Apples and marriage are very commonly combined in Greek mythology." "Hercules wanders for years in the search of Hera's Apples... with no luck." "Finally, he reaches the end of the world and meets a god with a heavy burden to bear," "Atlas." "Atlas was one of the Titans." "And his job is that he needs to carry on his shoulders the weight world." "Literally he bears the world on his shoulders." "This modern-day phrase, "to carry the world on your shoulders", is derived directly from the myth of Atlas." "Hercules is exhausted and lost but Atlas knows where the Golden Apples are." "So Hercules volunteers to hold the world while he retrieves them." "Atlas eventually returns with the Apples but there's a catch." "He tells Hercules that he doesn't want to take the earth and sky back." "Atlas of course says, "Thanks very much," ""I've been trying to get rid of that for a long time. "" "And is about to walk away." "Hercules says, "Oh, you know, you're right." ""I'm really sorry." "Can you just take it back for just a second?" ""I'm going to pad my shoulders with my lion skin. "" "Atlas takes the world back and Hercules walks away." "Hercules has avenged Hera by stealing her precious Apples." "Now he is one challenge away from winning his freedom, and it will send him to a place no mortal has returned from alive, the land of the dead..." "Hades." "Hercules has confronted eleven of the toughest challenges ever attempted by Man or the gods." "He's fought wild beasts, evil kings, hideous monsters and crossed over to an unknown world in a relentless quest to make amends for killing his family." "Hercules spends his life toiling, trying to get rid of a guilt that he doesn't really feel like he has earned." "Always suffering, always enduring." "Now, one last test remains." "For his 12th and final Labour," "Hercules must find his way to the mysterious underworld of the dead," "Hades." "There he must capture Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog at the gates." "Hercules' final Labour is by far the most outrageous." "Humans had never done anything like this before." "Heroes couldn't typically go to the underworld." "Hades, master of death, is the keeper of all human souls." "And Cerberus is his enforcer." "Now, the dog isn't so much to keep you, the living, from going in, because if you're crazy enough to do that, that's you're problem." "It's to keep the dead from coming out." "One of the biggest problems you have in most ancient civilizations is the fear that if someone dies, they may not realise they're dead, and come back to you." "Hercules tries a diplomatic approach with Hades." "He asks for permission to take his guard-dog up to earth." "Hades agrees on one condition " "Hercules must overpower the beast with nothing but his fists." "This is the final moment of truth." "Hercules wrestles the dog to the ground." "And beats it into submission." "The fact that he was able to bring Cerberus back from hell is an extraordinary event." "Because what it showed was that a Greek hero could go in and break the cycle of life and death." "At last, Hercules has completed his penance." "He has conquered every obstacle that has been put in his path, and endured physical and mental torment beyond measure." "By all rights, he should finally be in peace." "Hercules is someone who struggles, who overcomes, he suffers but he always gets back up." "And there's some vague promise that life is gonna be better for him after this adventure is completed, but of course it never is." "Hera holds an undying grudge against Hercules for being Zeus' illegitimate son." "There is only one escape from her curse... death." "He builds a huge funeral pyre." "His life on earth ends just as he endured it." "In torment." "He wants to have a heroic death, the proper death of a hero." "He wants to burn on a funeral pyre." "But when this happens, it seems to be the final cleansing." "What burns away is not Hercules, what burns away is his mortal flesh." "And this releases his soul, so he himself ascends to the heavens." "In death, Hercules is finally redeemed." "Zeus, the king of the gods, believes his son has suffered enough." "He invites him to join the immortals on Mount Olympus, and his nemesis, Hera, finally relents." "What we see here is that Hercules is the hero of heroes, he's the greatest of the great." "And at the very end of it all Zeus says, ok, Hercules, you've suffered enough and you're so great," "I'm actually gonna go ahead and make you a god." "Hercules is finally gonna get a kind of reward that will last forever." "The suffering is finally over." "In the end, Hercules is resurrected, and joins his father in the eternal kingdom." "It is an ending with an eerie similarity to another divine mortal " "Jesus Christ." "Hercules' final act is one of self sacrifice." "And again there is an interesting Christian parallel with the hero who has to suffer to obtain immortality." "And when he lights himself on fire, it burns away all the mortality and all that's left it's his essence, and that's what ascends into heaven." "This is the myth of Hercules." "A timeless story of strength, suffering and redemption." "It's the kind of story people like to hear... because everyone has experienced trouble, and toil and suffering in their lives." "They've all faced monumental tasks that they don't think they'll be able to complete." "And they want to hear a story of someone who's been through such things but has still gotten through and made it into the end." "That Hercules can achieve success at the end points to us that there's a kind of always a possibility of success no matter how difficult our life might seem."