Heracles is, literally, the “hero” of Euripides’s Heracles. In ancient Greek performances of the play, the character would have likely been performed by the actor known as the “tritagonist,” who would have also played Lycus and the Messenger. The most physically imposing and arguably the most famous of all Greek mythical heroes, Heracles was the son of Zeus, the king of the gods, and Alcmene, the mortal wife of the Peloponnesian hero Amphitryon. As an illegitimate and half-mortal son of Zeus, Heracles was hated by Hera, who in her attempts to destroy him caused him to kill his family and forced him—at least in most accounts—to complete twelve grueling “labors” for the Mycenaean king Eurystheus.

Euripides’s version of Heracles is, in many ways, a departure and even an inversion of the traditional conception of the famous hero. Euripides’s Heracles performs his labors before rather than after the murder of his family, which is a reversal of the usual sequence of events. More importantly, Heracles’s heroism is represented in a somewhat unusual manner. Most ancient sources portrayed Heracles as a very “macho” figure, almost a brute: brave to the point of being rash and obsessed with personal glory and divinity. The traditional Heracles is defined by excess, both in his heroic achievements as well as in his vices—there is no shortage of myths about Heracles’s herculean misdeeds (women raped, cities pillaged), and in ancient comedy, Heracles was routinely depicted as a glutton.