Comedy

Abstract

Heracles appeared in Greek and Roman comedy from the early fifth to the second century BC, and beyond. Comedy drew on myths from his birth to his apotheosis, featuring the Labors, among them the journey to the Underworld. Rich comic material was drawn from Heracles as a man of violence and as a master of sacrifice, the latter leading to themes of massive meat consumption, appetite, and ultimately the comic stock figure of the hungry parasite. The comic imagination also exploited his large sexual appetite, extending his fecundity from tragic myth to human sexual encounters in later comedy. Tragic myth often lurks explicitly behind comic versions of Heracles.