of Eurystheus, to his suicide, and to his ascension to Olympus, at which point he marries Hebe:
The most ancient Phliasian authorities call the goddess . . . Ganymeda, but later they call her Hebe: Homer mentions her in the duel of Menelaos and Paris, saying she served wine for the gods, and then in Odysseus's descent to Hades he says she was the wife of Herakles (Pausanias 1, 160-161).
It is difficult to devise a chronological biography of Herakles based on Pausanias's works because the Greek historian deals not specifically with the individual life of Herakles or of the other characters in the Greek history and myth covers. Instead, he studies the places and artifacts of Greece. He mentions Herakles and other characters only in relation to those places and artifacts, so that chronology is lost, or, at best, reduced to secondary importance. Nevertheless, it is impossible to consider the reporting by Pausanias of Herakles's life and accomplishments without recognizing the heroic and godly nature of this character.
Pausanias writes that Herakles is shown in a painting by a Marathon artist along with the gods Theseus and Athena: "The people of Marathon reckon to have been the first to believe Herakles was a god" (Pausanias 1, 46). Pausanias goes on to say that
The people of Marathon worship as divine heroes those killed in the battle [with the barbarians], and Marathon from whom the place gets its name, and Herakles; they claim to have been the first Greeks to believe Herakles was a god. They say there was a man in the battle with a country look about him and country equipment; he killed numbers of barbarians with a ploughshare, and vanished when the fighting was over (Pausanias 1, 93).
If there is one quality which seems to mark the life of Herakles, it is utter fearlessness. This fearlessness does not always serve him well, for it leads him into conflicts which are threatening not only to his life and the lives of those...