Editing Heracles (section)

===Youth<!--Linked from 'The Choice of Hercules'-->===
[[File:Terracotta kantharos (drinking cup) in the form of the heads of Herakles and of a woman MET DP118168.jpg|thumb|left|Side of terracotta [[kantharos]] in the form of the head of Heracles, [[Athens]], c. 470 BCE]]
[[File:CarracciHercules.jpg|thumb|The choice of Hercules by [[Annibale Carracci]]]]
After killing his music tutor [[Linus of Thrace|Linus]] with a [[lyre]], he was sent to tend cattle on a mountain by his foster father Amphitryon. Here, according to an allegorical [[parable]], "[[Hercules at the crossroads|The Choice of Heracles]]", invented by the sophist [[Prodicus]] (c. 400 BCE) and reported in [[Xenophon]]'s ''[[Memorabilia (Xenophon)|Memorabilia]]'' 2.1.21–34, he was visited by two allegorical figures—Vice and Virtue—who offered him a choice between a pleasant and easy life or a severe but glorious life: he chose the latter. This was part of a pattern of "ethicizing" Heracles over the 5th century BCE.<ref>Andrew Ford, ''Aristotle as Poet'', Oxford, 2011, p. 208 n. 5, citing, in addition to Prodicus/Xenophon, [[Antisthenes]], [[Herodorus]] (esp. [[FGrHist]] 31 F 14), and (in the 4th century) [[Plato]]'s use of "Heracles as a figure for Socrates' life (and death?): ''Apology'' 22a, cf. ''Theaetetus'' 175a, ''Lysis'' 205c."</ref>

Later, in [[Thebes, Greece|Thebes]], Heracles married King [[Creon of Thebes|Creon]]'s daughter, [[Megara (mythology)|Megara]].