around him---including his own family---but also to his sanity, as when he is cursed by Hera and kills his wife and children.
Herakles is willing and eager to do battle with whatever foe challenges him, including the mightiest of other gods. For example, with respect to one bronze work described by Pausanias, we read of a struggle between Herakles and Apollo, the god of prophecy:
Herakles and Apollo are holding onto the tripod and set to fight over it, with Athena restraining Herakles' temper and Leto and Artemis restraining Apollo. . . . There is a Delphic legend that when . . . Herakles came to the oracle, the interpretess Xenokleia was unwilling to answer him because of the murder of Iphitos, so he picked up the tripod and carried it out of the temple.
. . . The poets have taken up this legend and sing about Herakles' fight with Apollo over the tripod (Pausanias 1, 440).
Just as Herakles is undaunted by human or godly foe, so is he unhindered by natural obstacles. Pausanias writes that the poet Panyassis "says of Herakles: 'swift-footed he crossed/ snowy Parnassos t
...