truggles to assume a more peaceable mi…if Heracles has gone mad due to his repeated exposure to violence and bloodshed (Heracles 965–967). While Hera is the immediate cause of Heracles’ madness, Amphitryon suggests that Heracles has become so habituated to violence in the course of his labors that he now struggles to assume a more peaceable mindset. John G. Fitch reaches a similar conclusion, asserting that the killings symbolically dramatize the …