Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Hera, still hostile, drove Heracles mad in Thebes. In that frenzy he shot with arrows the children he had by Megara, and he cast into the fire two sons of Iphicles who were with them. When the fit passed and he saw what he had done, he condemned himself to exile from Thebes, was purified by Thespius, and went up to Delphi to ask where he should live. The Pythia then first addressed him as Heracles—he had been called Alcides after Amphitryon’s father Alcaeus—and ordered him to settle in Tiryns, serve Eurystheus for twelve years, and accomplish the labors imposed on him; when they were finished, she said, he would win immortality. The formal beginning of that service and the first labor follow in later entries; this unit closes on the household slaughter, the purification, and the Delphic renaming that redirects the hero from Theban catastrophe to Argive bondage. Apollodorus’s sequence is decisive for this version line: the madness interrupts domestic prosperity *before* any labor is assigned, and Megara herself is not said here to die in the fit (later Apollodorus has Heracles give Megara to Iolaus when he seeks other marriages). The Attic tragic chronology, in which the killings follow the completion of the labors and include Megara among the dead, is reserved for entry 013.