)]]In Greek mythology, Heracles or Herakles ("glory of Hera", or "Glorious through Hera," Alcides (original name) " + , )" was a divine hero, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, nephew of AmphitryonBy his adoptive descent through Ampitryon, Heracles receives the epithet Alcides, as "of the line of Alcaeus", father of Amphitryon. and great-grandson of Perseus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, a paragon of masculinity, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman Emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximianus, often identified themselves. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, but added anecdotal detail of their own, some of it linking the hero with the geography of the Cent