All language subtitles for Clash of the Gods - S01E02 - Hercules

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.