希腊神话 Compare and contrast the characters of Perseus and Hercules.doc

compare and contrast the characters of perseus and hercules perseus and hercules are two of the most important heroes in greek mythology. in greek mythology, they were the mortal sons of the great god zeus, and blessed with extraordinary strength by their demi-god birth. they received the impossible quest or set of tasks, imposed by a rival who seeks to dispose of the hero; the love-struck enemy princess who helps him; the fated disaster and the attempt to evade it. both of them share the repeated themes and motifs. now i will talk about the common parts of their characters. the common characters i think include: 1、they were brave. for example, perseus cut off the head of medusa. medusa was a gorgon whose look could turn a person to stone. medusa lived with her two sisters. all of them had golden wings, claws of brass, and serpents for hair. hercules, of all of zeuss illegitimate children seemed to be the focus of heras anger. she sent a two-headed serpent to attack him when he was just an infant. he simply strangled the snake with one head in each hand. 2、the common character of them was tough. no matter how hard the challenge lay in the front of perseus and hercules, they still tried their best to accomplish the task all the time. 3、the most important i think it is the wise. maybe because they were the sons of the zeus, they endowed the intelligent mind, which helped them to finish the task successfully. the representations of their wisdom are: perseus traveled to the witches lived cave. persues needed them to tell him the secret location of medusas cave, so he waited until one of them took out the eye to hand it to another, and grabbed it. in addition, he entered medusas cave, and he used a polished bronze shield to watch the three gorgons so not to look at them directly and turn to stone. hercules attacked the hydra and began to chop off its many heads. yet each time he chops off a head, the hydra would grow two more in its place. he called on its friend iolaus to burn each wound which did not arrow the heads to grow back. in this way he defeated the hydrs. they were warm-hearted persons. after cut off medusas head, perseus started his journey back to his home. on the way, he encountered a beautiful woman named andoromeda chained to some rocks. he learned from her that her mother, cassiopeia, had offended poseidon by stating that her own beauty was greater that the nereids who attended poseidon. to punish her, poseidon had sent a flood and a sea serpent to harass the people of her country. an oracle had told andromedas father cephus to sacrifice andromeda to the serpent to appease poseidon. when andromeda begged perseus to save her, perseus agreed to help her. hercules took the apples and walked away. on the way back from this journey, hercules came across the titan prometheus, who was chained to a rock. he killed the bird which came every day to feed on his liver, and freed prometheus. they have something in common, but they have many differences in theircharacters. here are the differences.perseusperseus belongs to an earlier generation than the other heroes; he is, in fact, hercules great grand-father. he was the son of zeus and danae, daughter of king acrisius of argos. the most important characters of perseus, i think, are gentle and allegiant. his characters were embodied in the following three parts: 1、spare no efforts to protect his mother.perseus was abandoned by his grand-father, acrisius, who was warned by an oracle that his daughters child would kill him. so he sealed the two of them up in a wooden chest and floated it out to sea. perseus and his mother came to the island of seriphos. but danae was annoyed by the king of seriphos, polydectes. in order to protect his mother, perseus was forced to finish the impossible quest that he would give the king the head of gorgons. helped by athena, perseus finally achieved the task and rescued his mother.2. he made peace with his grandfather acrisius., who was cruel to perseus. acrisius was afraid of the prophecies that his grandson would kill him, so he fled to lirissa. perseus followed him, not to revenge, but to make peace with him. while perseus accidently threw the disk into the crowed and killed his grandfather, he felt so saddened by this accident.3. spend whole life with one wife. compared with other heroes, perseus was one of with andromeda to whom he was faithful the rest of his life. i think this is very rare. hercules hercules was the son of zeus by a mortal woman, alcmena. alemena and her husband amphitryon were both grandchildren of perseus. while amphitryon was away one day, zeus disguised himself as amphitryon and spent a long night with alcmena. so was begotten hercules. the most remarkable characters of hercules are direct, crude, out of all reason and amorous. these were embodied as the followings:1. atone after faultas a man of the few who spent his whole life with only one wife. he and had six children bastard child of zeus, hercules was always bitterly jealous of by hera, zeus wife. when he got married with megara and gave birth to three children, he was set a fit of madness be hera, in which he killed megara and the children, taking them for monsters. having recovered his sanity, he asked apollos oracle at delphi how he could purify himself of blood-guilt.2. after completing twelve labors, hercules waged a number of wars.some just, some less so, against cities and kings who offended him. for instance, when king laomedon of troy refused him the promised reward for rescuing his daughter from a sea-monster, hercules came back with an army, sacked troy, killed laomedon, and put his son on the throne. 3. marry three women and a goddesshercules married four times in his life. her first wife w