Hey everyone,
Welcome to another installment of Mythology Explained. Let’s dive right in to it.
Perseus and Hercules are two of Greek mythology’s A-list Heroes. They were iconic in ancient times,
and their fame endured to modern times in which they both enjoy
respected positions in pop culture.
Both Perseus and Hercules were demigods. Zeus was their father, and they each had mortal
mothers. What’s interesting about their familial connection is that Perseus is Both Hercules'
great grandfather and half-brother, something I hope has never been recreated by us mortals.
Because Perseus and Hercules aren’t contemporaries of one
another - they’re separated by generations - there’s no instance in which the two
ever competed against each other, meaning we’ll have to look to their feats and heroics
to suss out who was the superior warrior of the two and who would win in single combat.
The reason this is an interesting topic is because there’s two ways to unpack it,
with weapons and without weapons. We’re going to examine each version,
armed and unarmed, and see who the winner would be in each circumstance.
When it comes to Perseus and Hercules fighting to the death sans weapons,
there really isn’t much of a debate here. Hercules wins by a landslide. In fact,
if you put this fight into a simulator and ran it a million times, I’m confident that Hercules
would emerge with an unblemished record. I don’t think Perseus would manage a single victory.
Here’s why: while Perseus and Hercules have the same divine lineage from their shared father,
Zeus had it in his mind that Hercules, not Perseus, should be the greatest of
all mortals. So great, in fact, were Zeus aspirations for Hercules that he planned
for the hero to eventually ascend to godhood. And to ensure Hercules started off on the right foot,
Zeus tricked his wife, Hera, into breast feeding Hercules, further increasing the
infant's strength, endurance, and resilience by being weaned on the milk of immortality.
What does this all mean? It means that Hercules’ inherent power greatly exceeded that of Perseus.
I mean, as an infant, with the little, fat stubby fingers of an infant,
Hercules managed to crush two snakes to death with his bare hands.
Just extrapolate from that to adulthood. Hercules would throttle Perseus. The hardest aspect of the
fight for Hercules would be washing all of the blood off of his body afterwards.
And just to really emphasize the one-sidedness of this fight I’m going to list some of Hercules
weaponless accomplishments: strangling the Nemean Lion because no weapon could cut or
pierce the beasts coat; holding up the sky for the Titan Atlas; subduing and then carrying Cerberus,
the mighty three-headed hellhound, back to the land of the living,
and lifting a giant above his head and breaking the giant’s neck in mid-air. Need I say more?
I would give you a list of Perseus’ weaponless combat achievements, but there are none. The
only thing he does bare-handed is steal an eye from three blind women. Perseus was
only the harbinger of death when using his sword or the gaze of Medusa’ severed head.
When it comes to weapons, this contest gets much more interesting. Throughout
his life - all his trials and tribulations - Hercules received little to no divine help.
What’s more, not only was he not aided, the whole time Hercules had Hera working against him,
trying to thwart him at every turn: she sent the two aforementioned snakes to kill him in his crib;
she afflicted him with madness, causing him to kill all his sons;
she turned the Amazonians against him… the list goes on.
This is in stark contrast with the treatment Perseus received.
Hera took far less umbrage with his existence, and he was showered with gifts: Perseus was
given an impossibly sharp sword that could cut through anything, Hades' own cap of darkness,
which made the wearer invisible, the Aegis, Zeus’ own shield, and Hermes’ winged sandals,
which allowed the wearer to fly. This version of Perseus, when compared to Hercules,
is much more competitive. Just imagine him fully adorned with his divine gifts.
He would be flying around invisible while armed with an impenetrable shield and an unstoppable
blade. I really don’t know how you would deal with that, even if you were Hercules.
By contrast, Hercules was more modestly equipped. He had his club, his sword, the Nemean Lion pelt -
a pelt that no weapon could pierce of puncture - draped over him, and he had his bow, which was
especially deadly because Hercules had dipped all of his arrow heads in the Hydra’s venom.
Of course, Hercules was more than formidable, and he surely would
have destroyed any man equipped with weapons of similar potency to his own,
but because of the deep disparity in the potency of each hero’s weapon, with Perseus’s
being greatly superior, I would definitely have to give Perseus the advantage here.
By my estimation, Hercules’ best approach would be to fling mud in the air,
hope Perseus would become partially coated and, thus, visible, and then snipe Persues mid-flight;
but after further thought, I don’t think that would work. The cap of darkness renders the
wearer's clothes invisible, too, so I think if any mud, or other material or liquid,
were to coat Perseus, it would also become invisible, rendering the whole approach
ineffective. I think Hercule’s only chance of victory would be entirely luck-dependent,
something like blindly shooting arrows into the sky, hoping one of them finds their mark.
And that’s it for this video
Do you guys agree? Comment down below
Until next time
Remember
Someone with an unrelenting heart is his own executioner