While Heracles was still an infant, Hera sent two serpents to kill him as he lay in his cot.

Here, according to an allegorical parable, " The Choice of Heracles ", invented by the sophist Prodicus ( c. 400 BC ) and reported in Xenophon's Memorabilia 2. 1. 21-34, he was visited by two nymphs — Pleasure and Virtue — who offered him a choice between a pleasant and easy life or a severe but glorious life: he chose the latter.

Eurystheus decided to give Heracles ten labours, but after completing them, Heracles was cheated by Eurystheus when he added two more, resulting in the Twelve Labors of Heracles.

Eurysteus set two more tasks ( fetching the Golden Apples of Hesperides and capturing Cerberus ), which Heracles performed successfully, bringing the total number of tasks up to twelve.

On his way back to Mycenae from Iberia, having obtained the Cattle of Geryon as his tenth labour, Heracles came to Liguria in North-Western Italy where he engaged into battle with two giants, Albion and Bergion or Dercynus, sons of Poseidon.

Augeias remained undefeated due to the skill of his two generals, the Molionides, and after Heracles fell ill, his army was badly beaten.

The gateway to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean, where the southernmost tip of Spain and the northernmost of Morocco face each other, is, classically speaking, referred to as the Pillars of Hercules / Heracles, owing to the story that he set up two massive spires of stone to stabilise the area and ensure the safety of ships sailing between the two landmasses.

By a nymph, Pareia, he had four sons, Eurymedon, Nephalion, Chryses and Philolaus, who were killed by Heracles in revenge for the murder of the latter's two companions ; and by Dexithea, one of the Telchines, he had a son Euxanthius.

The state was ruled by two hereditary kings of the Agiad and Eurypontid families, both supposedly descendants of Heracles and equal in authority, so that one could not act against the veto of his colleague.

In some versions, Heracles instead built the two great Pillars of Hercules to hold the sky away from the earth, liberating Atlas much as he liberated Prometheus.

Strabo notes that the two bronze pillars within the temple, each eight cubits high, were widely proclaimed to be the true Pillars of Hercules by many who had visited the place and had sacrificed to Heracles there.

Aegimius had two sons, Dymas and Pamphylus, who migrated to the Peloponnese and were regarded as the ancestors of two branches of the Doric race, the Dymanes and the Pamphylians of Anatolia, while the third branch, the Hylleans, derived its name from Hyllas, the son of Heracles, who had been adopted by Aegimius.

She secreted a knife in the marriage bed and on the wedding night tried to kill Telephus, but Heracles separated the two with a flash of lightning and they both recognized each other as mother and son.

In Greek mythology, fraternal twins Castor and Polydeuces, and Heracles and Iphicles, are sons of two different fathers.

The cave had two entrances, one of which Heracles blocked ; he then entered the other.

Seeing that Heracles was being overwhelmed by the multi-headed monster ( the Lernaean Hydra ), who grew two heads in place of each one cut off, Iolaus sprang to help, cauterizing each neck as Heracles beheaded it.

* Hipponous and Adrastus, two otherwise unknown sons of Heracles, were said to have thrown themselves into fire in obedience to an oracle of Apollo.

The latter reminded her of mighty Heracles ( now, an Olympian himself ) who held the record of wounding not one but two Olympians as a human.

Unlike the other two Sarpedons, this Thracian Sarpedon was not a hero, but an insolent individual who was killed by Heracles.

For example the temple of Heracles Monoikos ( i. e. the lone dweller ), built far from any nearby town upon a promontory in what is now the Côte d ' Azur, gave its name to the area's more recent name, Monaco.

The ancient name Ηράκλειον was revived in the 19th century and comes from the nearby Roman port of Heracleum (" Heracles ' city "), whose exact location is unknown.

Diodorus Siculus credits Heracles with the foundation of sacred precincts of Iolaus and of Geryon, and the creation of a nearby lake.

Invoked in passing by poets and figured as the father of rivers and streams, thus the progenitor of river gods, Oceanus appears only once in myth, as a representative of the archaic world that Heracles constantly threatened and bested.

Heracles rerouting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus.

However, Heracles succeeded by rerouting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus to wash out the filth.

In Greek mythology, the Peneus and Alpheus were two rivers re-routed by Heracles in his fifth labour in order to clean the filth from the Augean Stables in a single day, a task which had been presumed to be impossible.

In Greek mythology, the Peneus and Alpheus were two rivers re-routed by Heracles in his fifth labour in order to clean the filth from the Augean Stables in a single day, a task which had been presumed to be impossible.

Heracles was able to overpower Cerberus and proceeded to sling the beast over his back, dragging it out of the underworld through a cavern entrance in the Peloponnese and bringing it to Eurystheus.

Eurystheus was so scared by Heracles ' fearsome guise that he hid in a subterranean bronze winejar, and from that moment forth all labors were communicated to Heracles through a herald, Copreus.

Once again, Heracles purified himself through three years of servitude — this time to Queen Omphale of Lydia.

While walking through the wilderness, Heracles was set upon by the Dryopes.

When Dyrrhachus was attacked by his own brothers, Heracles, who was passing through the area, came to his aid, but in the fight the hero killed his ally's son by mistake.

The child was suckled by a deer through the agency of Heracles.

In Greek mythology, it was also the name of an underground cavern, through which Heracles dragged Cerberus as one of his Twelve Labors.

Heracles then chased the hind on foot for a full year through Greece, Thrace, Istria and the land of the Hyperboreans.

Having scared the horses onto the high ground of a peninsula, Heracles quickly dug a trench through the peninsula, filling it with water, thus making it an island.

The Roman pantheon quickly absorbed native deities through identification ( Melqart became Hercules, for example, having long been taken by the Greeks as a variant of their Heracles ).

He is also connected through Vajrapani through a theory to his connection to Greco-Buddhism, as Wei Tuo's image is reminiscent of the Heracles depiction of Vajrapani.

The brief fertilizing mystical union engenders Dionysus, and doubled unions, of a god and of a mortal man on one night, result, through telegony, in the semi-divine nature of Greek heroes such as Theseus and Heracles among others.

Having scared the horses onto the high ground of a peninsula, Heracles quickly dug a trench through the peninsula, filling it with water, thus making it an island.

Heracles was able to overpower Cerberus and proceeded to sling the beast over his back, dragging it out of the underworld through a cavern entrance in the Peloponnese and bringing it to Eurystheus.

His genealogy was traced through Aristodemus, Aristomachus, Cleodaeus and Hyllus all the way to Heracles, and he belongs to mythology rather than to history.

Halfway through he made a grab at her, but Heracles came to her rescue and quickly shot him with an arrow.

Skanda may be connected through Vajrapani through a theory to his connection to Greco-Buddhism, as Wei Tuo's image is reminiscent of the Heracles depiction of Vajrapani.

Despite this, McClaren invested money to sign Wesley Verhoek from ADO Den Haag for £ 1. 5 million ( a player McClaren had previously tried to sign while in charge at Nottingham Forest but the proposed deal fell through ) and Glynor Plet from Heracles Almelo for £ 1. 5 million.