Macedonia (ancient kingdom)
The Classical Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides reported the legend that the Macedonian kings of the Argead dynasty were descendants of Temenus, king of Argos, and could therefore claim the mythical Heracles as one of their ancestors as well as a direct lineage from Zeus, chief god of the Greek pantheon. Contradictory legends state that either Perdiccas I of Macedon or Caranus of Macedon were the founders of the Argead dynasty, with either five or eight kings before AmyntasI. The assertion that the Argeads descended from Temenus was accepted by the "Hellanodikai" authorities of the Ancient Olympic Games, permitting Alexander I of Macedon () to enter the competitions owing to his perceived Greek heritage. Little is known about the kingdom before the reign of AlexanderI's father Amyntas I of Macedon () during the Archaic period.
Heracles
Heracles ( ; , "Hēraklês", Glory/Pride of "Hēra", "Hera"), born Alcaeus (, "Alkaios") () or Alcides (, "Alkeidēs") () was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon. He was a great-grandson and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus) of Perseus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, a paragon of masculinity, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae (), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, but added anecdotal detail of their own, some of it linking the hero with the geography of the Central Mediterranean. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well.