56 pages • 1-hour read
Tales of the Greek Heroes
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Chapter 16-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, gender discrimination, child death, and death by suicide.
Chapter 16 Summary: “The Return of the Argonauts”
After Medea’s crime, the Argonauts cross the Black Sea. Because the ship contains timber from Dodona, the location of an oracle, it speaks to them about Zeus’s anger and their need for purification. The voice guides them to the island of Aeaea, home of Circe the enchantress. On the way, the Argonauts encounter wild bears and the violent Laestrygonians before reaching the Garden of the Hesperides, where they rest.
Next, they sail to Circe, who is also Medea’s aunt. Circe purifies them, and they continue their journey. Along the way, however, they encounter the sirens, creatures who entice travelers with their song and then tear them apart with their claws. Orpheus plays music and manages to drown out the sirens, many of whom die because mortal men resist their song.
The Argonauts continue their journey, passing by the monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, along with other wonders. Jason and Medea marry while in the land of the Phaeacians. When they arrive in Crete, a giant named Talos, created by Hephaestus for King Minos, is causing havoc by sinking every ship that approaches. Medea tricks him, promising to make him king if he allows her to land on the island with one companion. Medea lands with the Argonaut Poeas and brews a magic potion, which renders Talos drowsy. Poeas then kills him with an arrow.
The Argonauts arrive at the land of Iolcus and go their separate ways. Jason is no longer interested in claiming the throne, but Medea aims to become queen and tricks Pelias’s daughters into killing him. After being banished, Jason and Medea land in Corinth, where the king offers Jason his daughter, Glauce, as his bride. In response, Medea murders the king, the princess, and her own children before fleeing on flying dragons. Jason sails in the Argo, his only “friend,” until a rotten piece of wood slips and kills him.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Meleager and Atalanta”
Meleager, one of the Argonauts, has a happy life. When he is a baby, the Three Fates, Zeus’s daughters, appear to his mother, Queen Althea of Calydon. The Fates—Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos—determine the length of human lives by measuring and cutting threads. Atropos has decided that Meleager’s life will end as soon as a piece of firewood finishes burning, but Althea defies the Fates by snatching it from the fire. She declares that her son will live forever.
Meleager grows into a fair prince and joins Jason’s expedition. There, he falls in love with Atalanta, a huntress trained by Artemis who is the princess of Arcadia. On his way to Calydon, Meleager sees that a wild boar has ravaged the crops and asks for Atalanta’s help. Despite the Argonauts protesting about a woman joining the hunt, Meleager defies them. Atalanta shoots the boar, and Meleager praises her bravery, which causes the hunters’ resentment. Finally, Meleager kills the boar and gives its hide to Atalanta. When Meleager’s uncles, Phexippus and Toxeus, grab it from her, Meleager becomes furious and stabs them. Althea, overcome by grief for her brothers, throws the burning brand into the fire. While feasting, Meleager feels like he is burning inside and dies. Later, Althea also dies, by suicide.
Heracles falls in love with Meleager’s sister, Dianeira, and marries her. The pair lives happily in Calydon. Meanwhile, Atalanta returns to her father, King Iasus, but vows to marry only the man who can race her and prove faster. Prince Melanion falls in love with her and, with Aphrodite’s help, manages to beat Atalanta. The two marry and become king and queen of Tegea.
Heracles and Dianeira are forced to return to Greece when Heracles accidentally kills someone in an argument; on the way, Heracles battles the centaur Nessus, who hates him. Before dying, Nessus tells Dianeira to soak a robe in his blood, claiming that the garment will reinforce Heracles’s love for her. Dianeira does so before settling with Heracles in Thebes. Soon, however, Heracles must start a new daring exploit.
Chapter 18 Summary: “The First Fall of Troy”
Heracles asks King Laomedon for the two horses Laomedon promised him. Laomedon, however, breaks his word, and Heracles seeks revenge. He sails with two companions, Telamon and Peleus, to Troy. When they arrive, King Laomedon prepares his army and blocks the city’s gates. Heracles, though, finds a breach and finally marches into the city. He kills Laomedon but spares Podarces, the king’s youngest son, for trying to convince his father to keep his promise. Rather than keep Podarces as a captive, Heracles agrees to free him, asking only for Hesione’s veil as ransom. Podarces’s name then changes to Priam, meaning “ransomed.” After Heracles leaves, Priam builds the new city of Troy and has two sons, Hector and Paris, with his wife, Hecuba.
Meanwhile, Hera’s jealousy intensifies, and she asks Hypnos to keep Zeus asleep so that she can kill Heracles. Hera then causes a tempest to destroy Heracles’s ship, but Zeus intervenes in time. He hangs Hera by the wrists and feet and casts Hephaestus off Olympus when he attempts to free her.
Heracles lands on the island of Cos, but King Eurypylus, prompted by Hera, attacks him and his men, thinking that they are pirates. The group scatters, but Heracles, disguised as an old woman, manages to rally his men and defeats the king. Heracles, however, is wounded.
As Heracles recovers, Athena appears. She declares that the time has come for him to confront the giants. Then, she carries him to the fiery plain of Phlegra.
Chapter 19 Summary: “The Battle of the Giants”
The giants, led by Alcyoneus, prepare to attack the immortals. They first strike Olympus with rocks and burning trees, and Zeus calls for Heracles’s help, knowing that a mortal must defeat them. He sends Athena to find Heracles and search for a magic herb that will protect the hero.
A great battle soon starts. Heracles shoots Alcyoneus with a poisoned arrow, seizes him, and kills him with his club. Giant Porphyrion is shot by Eros and hit by Zeus’s thunderbolt. Heracles makes sure to kill any Giant wounded by an immortal as the fight continues. Finally, Heracles confronts Ephialtes and Otus, the mightiest giants, who capture Ares and demand Hera and Artemis. Zeus tricks them into fighting, and they end up killing each other. The immortals defeat the remaining giants, and Heracles proves himself as the “great Hero” whom Zeus would make immortal.
Heracles returns home after restoring Nestor and Tundareus as kings on the way. Dianeira, fearing that Heracles has lost his love for her, gives him Nessus’s poisoned robe. After putting it on, Heracles burns to death, asking his son Hyllus to light a pyre for him on Mount Oeta. He also gifts his arrows to Philoctetes, the son of Poeas. Meanwhile, Dianeira dies by suicide.
Zeus welcomes Heracles to Olympus, and Hera forgets her jealousy, giving Heracles her daughter Hebe as his wife. Alcmena, Heracles’s mother, dies of grief, but Zeus takes her body and brings her to live in the Elysian Fields.
Epilogue Summary
Green notes that the Heroic Age does not end with Heracles’s death, but with “the tale of Troy divine” (266). Some of the heroes of this war are included in the book, but the story itself requires a separate volume.
Chapter 16-Epilogue Analysis
The theme of The Significance of Heroism in Greek Mythology expands with the end of the Argonauts’ story and Jason’s character arc. Before returning to Greece, the Argonauts face a series of challenges that symbolize Jason’s attempt at redemption. After he is warned about Zeus’s wrath, Circe purifies them to remove the “shadow” of Medea’s crime, and Jason continues to exhibit courage as a leader of the Argonauts, overcoming the threat of the Laestrygonians and the temptation of the sirens. While this journey illustrates the possibility of a hopeful outcome, Medea’s repeated crimes and Jason’s ambition foreshadow the hero’s downfall. After betraying Medea to become a king in Corinth, Jason confronts the tragic repercussions of his actions. Green emphasizes his dishonorable end as a forgotten, lonely man inside his once glorious ship, contrasting Heracles’s elevation to godhood. Jason, thus, embodies certain characteristics of an anti-hero, a figure whose struggle and failure grant him more human aspects than the conventional mythical and immortal heroes.
The story of Meleager and Atalanta, meanwhile, provides one of the book’s most explicit explorations of Free Will and the Limitations of Human Agency. Despite the Three Fates’ prophecy of Meleager’s unexpected death, his story shows a complex interaction between destiny and human choice. His mother, Althea, intervenes against the Fates’ will to protect her son, ensuring that he has a blessed life as a hero. At first, Meleager is depicted as a skilled hunter, following Heracles’s heroic example by fighting the Calydonian Boar and joining the Argonauts. However, his pride and uncontrolled rage, which lead him to murder his uncles, ultimately fulfill the Fates’ prophecy and bring about his tragic end. In the end, Meleager’s story implies that a character’s fate is often the result of their choices and actions rather than in tension with them.
Heracles’s heroism dominates in the final chapters as the book approaches the end of the Heroic Age. The final stages of his journey are marked by Hera’s resentment and Zeus’s protection, which underscores The Complex Relationship Between Gods and Humans. Heracles becomes a point of conflict between two immortals: Zeus’s clash with Hera, her punishment, and Hephaestus’s ostracization reiterate the complex power dynamics among the Olympian gods and showcase Zeus’s attempt to reestablish his authority. This event in turn proves key in Heracles’s character arc, as Zeus’s agency allows the hero to complete his journey, implying the interdependency of gods and mortals.
Heracles fulfills his character arc in the battle of the giants, which marks the culmination of the good versus evil motif. Green highlights that the giants’ attack comes “suddenly” and uses imagery of fire and rocks to depict a scene of apocalyptic chaos. The giants threaten the cosmic order represented by the Olympians and thus could bring chaos and destruction to humanity as well. Heracles is crucial in defeating the giants, suggesting that the heroic ideal relies on sacrifice for the greater good. At the same time, Heracles’s heroism is supported by divine intervention, reinforcing an idealized image of the male hero.
Despite his divine powers, Hercules still shares the fate of humanity because he is partly mortal. The agony and pain he experiences while dying—as Green describes, he “drag[s] his tortured body” to his pyre (261)—encapsulate this vulnerability. However, his tragic end, accidentally caused by his wife Dianeira, also allows him to achieve immortality by shedding his flawed humanity. The burning pyre becomes a symbol of Heracles’s heroism and a testament to his mortal suffering and perseverance. Ultimately, Heracles completes his character arc through his transformation into an immortal, shown by his ascent to Olympus and his reconciliation with the gods. This cements him as an aspirational ideal and evokes the immortalizing process of mythologizing itself.
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