* Heracles killed Lityerses after beating him in a contest of harvesting.

According to one story, found in the Iliad, he was accidentally killed in his old age by Heracles ' son Tlepolemus, when the latter was beating his servant with a stick and Licymnius ran in between ( or else Tlepolemus and Licymnius had a quarrel over a certain matter ).

The act eventually led to Heracles ' own death, as Deianeira, fearing that Heracles loved Iole more, gave Heracles a robe smeared with the blood of the Centaur Nessus, believing it was a love-charm.

In Greek mythology, Mount Pelion ( which took its name from the mythical king Peleus, father of Achilles ) was the homeland of Chiron the Centaur, tutor of many ancient Greek heroes, such as Jason, Achilles, Theseus and Heracles.

) Soon after they wed, Heracles and Deianira had to cross a river, and a centaur named Nessus offered to help Deianira across but then attempted to rape her.

As he lay dying, Nessus plotted revenge, told Deianira to gather up his blood and spilled semen and, if she ever wanted to prevent Heracles from having affairs with other women, she should apply them to his vestments.

Later, when Deianira suspected that Heracles was fond of Iole, she soaked a shirt of his in the mixture, creating the poisoned shirt of Nessus.

Travelling to Tiryns, a centaur, Nessus, offers to help Deianira across a fast flowing river while Heracles swims it.

However, Nessus is true to the archetype of the mischievous centaur and tries to steal Deianira away while Heracles is still in the water.

Deianira, remembering Nessus ' words, gives Heracles the bloodstained shirt.

Heracles, Deianira and Nessus ( mythology ) | Nessus, black-figure hydria, 575-550 BC, Louvre ( E 803 )

Deïanira or Dejanira ( pronounced, Greek,,, or ; Deïaneira " man-destroyer " or " destroyer of her husband ") is a figure in Greek mythology, best known for being Heracles ' third wife and, in the late Classical story, unwittingly killing him with the Shirt of Nessus.

A wild centaur named Nessus attempted to kidnap Deianira as he was ferrying her across the river Euenos, but she was rescued by Heracles, who shot the centaur with a poisoned arrow.

As he lay dying, Nessus tricked Deianira, telling her that a mixture of olive oil and his heart's blood would ensure that Heracles would never again be unfaithful.

The robe was poisoned by the blood of the hydra ( which the arrow that Heracles shot Nessus with had been dipped in ).

Heracles saved her from Nessus by shooting him with poisoned arrows.

She had kept some of Nessus ' blood, because he had told her with his dying breath that if she were to give Heracles a cloak ( chiton ) soaked in his blood that it would be a love charm.

Deianira, being concerned by Heracles's infidelity, believed Nessus ’ lie that Heracles would no longer desire any other woman after he was under the spell of the love philter.

He was considered one of the lovers of the hero Heracles, and when Heracles wore the shirt of Nessus and built his funeral pyre, no one would light it for him except for Philoctetes or in other versions his father Poeas.

Heracles later used an arrow dipped in the Hydra's poisonous blood to kill the centaur Nessus ; and Nessus's tainted blood was applied to the Tunic of Nessus, by which the centaur had his posthumous revenge.

Heracles and Nessus by Giambologna, ( 1599 ), Florence.

In Greek mythology, Nessus ( Ancient Greek: ) was a famous centaur who was killed by Heracles, and whose tainted blood in turn killed Heracles.

Upon his assumption into immortality on Olympus, Heracles is given ambrosia by Athena, while the hero Tydeus is denied the same thing when the goddess discovers him eating human brains.

It is said that after Heracles was apotheosised, Hyllus, having pursued and killed Eurystheus, cut off Eurystheus ' head and gave it to Alcmene, who gouged out the eyes with weaving pins.

When Alexander was trying to show that he is divine so that the Greeks and Macedonians would perform proskynesis to him, Anaxarchus said that Alexander could " more justly be considered a god than Dionysus or Heracles " ( Arrian, 104 )

Cerberus featured in many prominent works of Greek and Roman literature, most famously in Virgil's Aeneid, Peisandros of Rhodes ' epic poem the Labours of Hercules, the story of Orpheus in Plato's Symposium, and in Homer's Iliad, which is the only known reference to one of Heracles ' labours which first appeared in a literary source.

This fourth play in his tetralogy for 438 BC ( i. e. it occupied the position conventionally reserved for satyr-plays ) is a ' tragedy ' that features Heracles as a satyric hero in conventional satyr-play scenes, involving an arrival, a banquest, a victory over an ogre ( in this case Death ), a happy ending, a feast and a departure to new adventures.

The immediate necessity for the Labours of Heracles is as penance for Heracles ' murder of his own family, in a fit of madness, which had been sent by Hera ; however, further human rather than mythic motivation is supplied by mythographers who note that their respective families had been rivals for the throne of Mycenae.

In Greek mythology, Zeus places his son born by a mortal woman, the infant Heracles, on Hera's breast while she is asleep so that the baby will drink her divine milk and will thus become immortal.

In the myth of the birth of Heracles, it is Hera herself who sits at the door instead, delaying the birth of Heracles until her protégé, Eurystheus, had been born first.

Hera was the stepmother and enemy of Heracles, who was named " Hera-famous " in her honor ; Heracles is the hero who, more than even Perseus, Cadmus or Theseus, introduced the Olympian ways in Greece.

One account of the origin of the Milky Way is that Zeus had tricked Hera into nursing the infant Heracles: discovering who he was, she pulled him from her breast, and a spurt of her milk formed the smear across the sky that can be seen to this day.

However the Shield of Heracles is now known to be spurious and probably was written in the sixth century BC.

Of these works forming the extended Hesiodic corpus, only the Shield of Heracles (, Aspis Hērakleous ) is transmitted intact via a medieval manuscript tradition.

Hercules is the Roman name for the Greek demigod Heracles, who was the son of Zeus ( Roman equivalent Jupiter ) and the mortal Alcmene.

In later Western art and literature and in popular culture, Hercules is more commonly used than Heracles as the name of the hero.

What is believed to be an Egyptian Temple of Heracles in the Bahariya Oasis dates to 21 BC.

A major factor in the well-known tragedies surrounding Heracles is the hatred that the goddess Hera, wife of Zeus, had for him.

The fight of Heracles and the Nemean lion is one of his most famous feats.

In Apollonius of Rhodes ' Argonautica it is recalled that Heracles had mercilessly slain their king, Theiodamas, over one of the latter's bulls, and made war upon the Dryopes " because they gave no heed to justice in their lives ".

The expedition against Cycnus, in which Iolaus accompanied Heracles, is the ostensible theme of a short epic attributed to Hesiod, Shield of Heracles.