This is the year 2012 and we still don't have the definitive scene with a baby Hercules wrestling with snakes. Isn't this a shame? Excluding the few forgettable TV mini-series or cartoons which showed it I mean definitive, as in classic. IMO, this is one of the most iconic moments in Greek mythology and it's still hasn't been immortalized brilliantly on film.
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Thank God that today's cinema hasn't tackled this, because baby Hercules would probably have a beard and a mean and nasty look on his face all caught and shown in 3D!! I remember that very forgettable TV Miniseries about Hercules and the snake scene was lousy. The whole story was cockeyed, and I hated what they did.
The miniseries was terrible. It was more medieval than Greek.
"Infant Heracles and snakes (pi. 35).
H. .64 m. Parian marble. Restored : nose, r. arm from shoulder with all free part of snake, half r. foot, penis. The surface is much worked over.
The infant Heracles is seated on the ground, with the left leg bent and the toes tucked under the other knee. His body is inclined to his left, and he is struggling with two snakes, one of which he forces against the ground with his left hand, while the other he holds away from him with the right.
The forms of the body are plump and square, and the modelling rendered in a perfunctory manner by hard grooves. Even the passage of the thigh into the trunk, and the pressure of the toes against the right knee, are indicated in the same rude manner. Such excellence as the statue possesses resides in the head, which may be called a vivacious portrait of a second-century Roman gamin, though essentially the modelling and work is no better. The hair is rendered in loose strands, undercut, and with small attachments between the locks. The eyebrows are hatched, the pupils sunk, and the irises incised ; the nipples are also sunk.
The subject is common in Greek times on coins (Thebes, Ephesus, Lampsacus, &c.) and elsewhere, but this work is thoroughly Roman in form and treatment and, though much inferior, may be compared with the boy with the mask (Fauno 8).
The base, which belongs, has a bow-shaped front decorated with a groove between plain mouldings ; the back is rounded and left rough, as also the sides.
Until 1816 this figure stood in the Stanza del Fauno."
A catalogue of the ancient sculptures preserved in the municipal collections of Rome by British School at Rome; Musei capitolini (Rome, Italy); Jones, Henry Stuart. Oxford 1912
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