Hercules at the Crossroad

In his journal, Albrecht Dürer referred to this
enigmatic engraving as “the Hercules,” but
the image is not a typical representation of
the mythological hero’s 12 labors. The subject
derives from a Greek parable, where Hercules
decides between a life of pleasure or one of
virtue. The moral dispute plays out here as a
battle between two personifications, Virtue,
wielding a club, and Pleasure, lying with a
satyr. Hercules’s crossroad is a copse of trees
between two paths: the ascent to civilization
at left (pleasure?), or the winding river to the
wilderness at right (virtue?).