Hero: Encyclopedia - Hero

Hero

From the Greek cognate ηρως, in mythology and folklore, a hero (male) or heroine (female) is an eminent character who quintessentially embodies key traits valued by its originating culture. The hero commonly possesses superhuman capabilities or idealized character traits which enable him or her to perform extraordinary, beneficial deeds (i.e., a "heroic deed") for which he or she is famous (compare villain).

Hero - Overview

A person normally becomes a hero by performing an extraordinary and praiseworthy deed. Traditional deeds are slaying of monsters and saving people from certain death. A hero normally fulfills the definitions of what is considered good and noble in the originating culture. However, in literature, particularly in tragedy, the hero may also have serious flaws which lead to a downfall, e.g. Hamlet. Such heroes are often referred to as tragic heroes and have a strong basis in ancient Greek tragedy.

Sometimes a real person might achieve enough status to become a hero in people's minds. This is usually complemented by a rapid growth of myths around the person in question, often attributing to him or her powers beyond those of ordinary people.

Some social commentators prescribe the need for heroes in times of social upheaval or national self-doubt, seeing a requirement for virtuous role models, especially for the young. Such myth-making may have worked better in the past: current trends may confuse heroes and their hero-worship with the cult of mere celebrity.

Hero - The Greek Hero

Homer applies the Greek word ηρως to all free men who were fighting in the Trojan War. Another epic poet, Hesiod, uses it in the context of the Fourth Age of Men. The most common mythological meaning comes from the Greek poet Pindar, who presents them as the offspring of mortals and the gods or those who had done a great service to mankind.[1]

Hero - Nature of hero cult

Hero cults were one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion. Greek hero-cults were distinct from ancestor worship: they were usually a civic rather than familial affair, and in many cases none of the worshipers traced their descent back to the hero.

They were distinct on the other hand from the Roman cult of dead emperors, because the hero was not thought of as having ascended to Olympus or become a god: he was beneath the earth, and his power purely local. For this reason hero cults were chthonic in nature, and their rituals more closely resembled those for Hecate and Persephone than those for Zeus and Apollo.

The two exceptions to the above were Heracles and Asclepius, who might be honored as either gods or heroes.

Heroes in cult behaved very differently from heroes in myth. They might appear indifferently as men or as snakes, and they seldom appeared unless angered. A Pythagorean saying advises not to eat food that has fallen on the floor, because "it belongs to the heroes". In a fragmentary play by Aristophanes, a chorus of anonymous heroes describe themselves as senders of lice, fever and boils.

Hero - Types of hero cult

Hero cults were offered to predominantly to men, but also to women and even children. Cult status was given to many classes of people, a few of them being the following:

• Famous men of the mythical past (heroes in the modern English sense), like Oedipus at Athens or Pelops at Olympia.
• Founders of cities, like Battus of Cyrene

Most reasons involved violent or unusual deaths, as in the following cases:

• Those killed in war. This was usually collective rather than individual, so as not to upset the delicate balance of the Greek polis, as in the case of the dead from the Battle of Marathon.
• Those struck by lightning, as in several attested cases in Southern Italy.
• Those who disappeared into the ground, as in the cases of Oedipus and Amphiaraus.

Hero - Heroes politics and gods

Hero cults could be of the utmost political importance. When Cleisthenes divided the Athenians into new demes for voting, he consulted Delphi on what heroes he should name each division after. According to Herodotus, the Spartans attributed their conquest of Arcadia to their theft of the bones of Orestes from the Arcadian town of Tegea.

Heroes in myth often had close but conflicted relationships with the gods. Thus Heracles's name means "the glory of Hera", even though he was tormented all his life by the queen of the gods. This was even truer in their cult appearances. Perhaps the most striking example is the Athenian king Erechtheus, whom Poseidon killed for choosing Athena over him as the city's patron god. When the Athenians worshiped Erechtheus on the Acropolis, they invoked him as Poseidon Erechtheus.

Hero - Later European History

The classic hero often came with what Lord Raglan (a descendant of the FitzRoy Somerset, Lord Raglan) termed a "potted biography" made up of some two dozen common traditions that ignored the line between historical fact and mythology. For example, the circumstances of the hero's conception are unusual; an attempt is made by a powerful male at his birth to kill him; he is spirited away; reared by foster-parents in a far country. Routinely the hero meets with a mysterious death, often at the top of a hill; his body is not buried; he leaves no successors; he has one or more holy sepulchres.

Most European indigenous religions feature heroes in some form. Germanic, Hellene and Roman heroes, along with their attributes and forms of worship have been largely absorbed by the Orthodox and Catholic denominations of Christianity, forming the basis of modern day Saint reverring.

Hero - Operatic Hero

In opera and musical theatre, the hero/heroine is often played by a tenor/soprano (more vulnerable characters are played by lyric voices while stronger characters are portrayed by spinto or dramatic voices.)

Hero - The Modern Fictional Hero

In modern movies, the hero is often simply an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances, who, despite the odds being stacked against him or her, typically prevail in the end. In some movies (especially action movies), the hero may exibit characteristics such as superhuman strength and endurance (even the point of being seen as being nearly unkillable, despite whatever damage is done to them). Often a hero in these situations has a foil, the villain, typically a charismatic evildoer who represents, leads, or himself embodies the struggle the hero is up against.

See also

• List of fictional heroes
• Anti-hero
• Tragic hero
• Culture hero
• Hero City
• Hero-Fortress
• Superhero
• Xia (philosophy)
• Action hero
• Byronic hero

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Hero", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki