Abstract
The paper presents the first part of a wider study on Herakles’ religious relevance both mythical traditions and documentary evidence concerning Greek cities of Magna Graecia. In this part some myths and material evidences will be investigated which show how in Magna Graecia, between the late 6th and the 5th centuries BC, Herakles becomes an active agent in some rituals of heroization. The hero-god appears indeed to be an important and recurrent presence in some regional myths and cults, whose peculiar aspects are connected to processes of change towards the heroic condition. Herakles represents here a fundamental – divine – agent which leads other figures to the heroic status. He gives opportunity and tools, in religious and cultural terms, to these actual processes, also hinting at ideologies that suggest the possibility of a transformation in the direction of the super-human.
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