In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves.
He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae ( Ἡρακλεῖδαι), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. He was a great-grandson and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus) of Perseus, and similarly a half-brother of Dionysus. Heracles ( / ˈ h ɛr ə k l iː z/ HERR-ə-kleez Greek: Ἡρακλῆς, lit. 'glory/fame of Hera'), born Alcaeus ( Ἀλκαῖος, Alkaios) or Alcides ( Ἀλκείδης, Alkeidēs), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon. Heracles carrying his son Hyllus looks at the centaur Nessus, who is about to carry Deianira across the river on his back. Aeacus, Angelos, Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Eileithyia, Enyo, Eris, Ersa, Hebe, Helen of Troy, Hephaestus, Hermes, Minos, Pandia, Persephone, Perseus, Rhadamanthus, the Graces, the Horae, the Litae, the Muses, the MoiraiĪlexiares and Anicetus, Telephus, Hyllus, Tlepolemus