Mythos (Dec 2020)
Denominare un dio, denominare un eroe. Erodoto e i ‘due Eracle’
Abstract
In an important part of the second book, Herodotus proposes a famous theory about the origin of the names of the Greek gods. According to him, the great majority of them arrived in Greece from Egypt through the influence of the Pelasgians, a barbarian population that lived in Greece in the past. He comes to such an astonishing conclusion through a complex reasoning that is based on some signs, as we can read in particular in the section about Heracles. Contrary to what people think in Greece, where Heracles is considered one of the latest gods, for the Egyptians passed more than seventeen thousands years from his appearance. It seems that with time there was some confusion between the god and the more recent hero whose parents, by the way, had Egyptian origins. Herodotus concludes that, in his opinion, are right those who have erected for the two Heracles two different Herakleia and pray them in a different way, the one like a god with the epithet of Olympian and the other like a hero.
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