Heracles and Melqart

Abstract

This chapter explores the interrelationships between the Greek Heracles and Phoenician Melqart in cult, myth, and iconography from the Iron Age to Roman period. It articulates these connections not as a simple one-to-one equation of Heracles and Melqart, but rather views the long-term syncretism of these god-heroes as representative of the shared ideologies and cultural mentalities that emerged from human interactions and endeavors around the Mediterranean world in the first millennium BC. As such, a major focus of this chapter is the equivocal statuses that Heracles and Melqart inhabit between mortality and immortality, a status of particular concern for Greek and Roman authors in their portrayal of Heracles, and reflected also in cultic practices surrounding these figures in terms of their death and apotheosis. This status held particular significance for Heracles’ and Melqart’s roles in human affairs as divinized royal ancestors and colonizers par excellence, roles arguably expressed through their bellicose and leonine iconography. Examining the intersections between Heracles and Melqart thus reveals a great deal about human enterprises in the Mediterranean from the Iron Age to the Roman period.