HEROES ( r/rwc plu. 1pwcs) were men among the Greeks distinguished for exceptional strength, bravery or achievement. The etymol ogy of the word has not been satisfactorily made out. It may be connected with a root that means °strong," or one that signifies "to guard, protect," either suggestive of soldierly qualities or attributes. (Cf. F. Deneken, in Ro scher's 'Lexicon der Mythologie>). Other races cherish the memory of such outstanding figures, and by analogy the term is applied to them also. The heroes, whether of Hellas or elsewhere, belong invariably to an early age, before history records aught of their race; they live in the earliest form of that race's poetry, and draw thence an immortality in succeeding literature. They are often, rightly or wrongly — for there has been much written on the subject, — identified with myths and mytho logical beings; but their proper sphere is in legend, and as legendary characters they come down to us, except in the classical literatures, where they attain divine dignity analogous to that which the gods themselves enjoy.
Greek Heroes.— Among the Greeks in his torical times the heroes were half mythological beings who enjoyed a distinct cult of their own. *What god, what hero, or what man (riva Ofav, rite iipwa, riva tNivdpa) shall we resound?" asks Pindar in the beginning of the second Olympian ode, thus giving the heroes their hierarchic place between the Olympians and mortals. Hesiod and Days> 156-170) understands by heroes men of great renown, the fourth of the races of "speech-gifted men" whom the immortals created, and who lived probably for but a few generations = between the brass age and his own, the iron age. They were the warriors celebrated in epic poetry and perished in the wars before the "seven-gated Thebes" and in the struggle for Helen at Troy; but they now dwell in the Isles of the Blessed beside the streams of Ocean. A former age, says Hesiod, calls them demi-gods Optfleol). It is not clear what particular period of time is here meant. It has been customary to under stand by the former age the age of the heroes themselves, and to see in 010eot an early belief in hero-cult similar to that well-defined worship of heroes which we find in proto historic and historic times, at least down to Pausanias, and thence to deduce that heroes are "depotentiated" gods, who sank from mythology and myth to legend, and are related to the chthonic gods in nature and origin.
(F. Deneken, J. Wassner, and others). Rohde combats this view, and thinks the cult-heroes are the glorified souls of the dead, differing even from the Demons, who are real deities of a lower order. The latter, as all the chthonic deities, were always immortal and never suc cumbed to death, though they were of the underworld. Heroes, on the other hand, he points out, were always conceived to have been once mortals and, what is important, to have gone through death, whence the hero's grave always became the centre of the cult. An cestor worship, therefore, would seem to be the root whence alone the cult of heroes sprang, though when this was once in full development influence from the cult of the chthonian deities was, of course, to be expected. But confusion between the two cults and the two sets of deities can hardly be shown to have existed in the Greek mind. Hesiod's 41418toi Rohde in terprets as merely defining their place between gods and men, and not in any sense indicating their origin. Certainly Homer knows nothing of the later hero-cult. The one striking pas sage in the 'Iliad' where the heroes are called demi-gods (018E01) is known to be an in terpolation and probably much later than the older parts of the poem. In the 'Iliad' the heroes are the warriors who fight before Troy, generally kings and sons of kings, hut not infrequently participants in the struggle who are of meaner origin. The 'Odyssey extends the meaning of the term to include wise and venerable old men. To the Homeric heroes life is a serious matter and death a grim affair. True, they are men of great mold and do mighty deeds; but that is because their purpose is lofty. They live and work and battle, how ever, in the shadow of common human fate, and after death there is for them no °Islands of the Blessed." The very heroes who in Hesiod are made to people these happy realms are in Homer consigned to a gloomy fate, and they prefer any condition of life to the happiest lot possible in the land beyond the Little of glorified deification is there, indeed, in the greeting of the shade of Achilles to Ulysses in the 'Odyssey' when the latter had the boldness of heart to visit Hades to obtain the counsel of Tiresias (XI, 488).