Xena's case is a little different. In her last appearance on Hercules, she mentions Hercules' motivation--fighting for his lost family--and laments she doesn't share that, so she doesn't know what to fight for. Merely fighting for her own redemption isn't enough; making reparations for what she's done will never be enough either; her crimes are too great, and no amount of good works will ever rectify them. Her quest is too abstract for a mortal to take on, and as we can see in Herakles, it's too much even for an immortal to handle alone. Herakles shows Hercules returning from his last labor, the capture of Cerberus, and before he completes its delivery, he stops to see his family--after returning from the grim world of death underground, he wants to see the people he loves the most before anyone else; they best can restore his spirit to the land of the living. They're being held prisoner by the king who wants his rival's children dead before they can grow to avenge Hercules, whom the king assumes will not return from Tartarus. They learn that Hercules has returned, and await their rescue. But Hera has been watching Hercules' success in his labors, and fears what will happen next when he returns; he'll be like a god on earth, powerful enough to defy the gods. To neutralize his powers, she sends Iris (Strife) and Lyssa (Madness) to instill in him a bacchic fury. In a scene too gruesome to be staged, Hercules murders his family, one by one. If The Bacchae was the first horror film, Herakles was the first slasher film. Hercules regains his wits afterwards, but it's too late. There can be no redemption for someone who commits such a terrible crime. All of his powers are now useless: Hercules' great fame all over the world will now carry the news of his crime, and no one could be expected to give him the chance to earn his redemption. Hera's sabotage of Hercules as a champion of men is ruthless, and apparently, foolproof. However, before Hercules captured Cerberus, he also rescued his friend. Theseus had gone to Tartarus to reclaim Persephone from Hades as a bride for another, fulfilling an oath he made even though he thought it was impossible to carry out. He was tricked into sitting in the Chair of Forgetfulness, unable to move and unable to remember why he should leave. Hercules broke his chains ("Unchained Heart"!) and restored his memory, giving him back his home. Arriving now to find Hercules burying his weapons and preparing for death, Theseus returns the favor of friendship, offering him a refuge to cleanse his blood-guilt, along with a share of the treasure he won from the Minotaur. Hercules doesn't feel he deserves such mercy, but Theseus won't take no for an answer:
One more important reference must be looked at before we move on: in Herakles, when Hercules buries his weapons, he's preparing for suicide. Is that what Xena does here? It's a long-debated question among fans, and if we rely solely on Herakles as the source of inspiration, then we must conclude yes. That would mean that in the series finale, when Xena once again buries her weapons, coming full circle before facing certain doom in battle, she ends the series with an act of suicide. I don't think that's the case, and we see why when we consider the other major inspiration for this scene: Romania's oldest and most famous ballad, the Mioritza. In it, a shepherd is told by one of his sheep that he will be met on the road by robbers and killed. The shepherd decides to face his fate, and instructs his sheep to bury the tools of his trade with him, but don't tell anyone about the murder. Instead...
"The most profound message of the ballad lies in the shepherd's will to change the meaning of his destiny, to transmute his misfortune into a moment in the cosmic liturgy, by transfiguring his death into 'mystical nuptials, by summoning the Sun and Moon to attend him, and projecting himself among the stars, the waters, and the mountains..."03 If this quote's meaning sounds familiar to you, it should: we've already heard it on Hercules and the Maze of the Minotaur, when the Minotaur says he doesn't want to die as a monster. We heard it in the final scene of Herakles, and we'll hear it again in many different ways, all the way until the very last episode of Xena, even including hapless Akemi, Xena's long lost love, when she writes: "Yesterday, the moon took lodging on my sleeve. Today, I have hope for even the brokenhearted stars." The religious historian I quoted above is Mircea Eliade, a Romanian author who studied the connecting experiences of religions around the world. Author of a popular look at religious symbolism, The Sacred and the Profane, he's religious history's equivalent to Robert Graves, his contemporary. The connections he wrote about are unique, at least in popular literature, and we can easily spot them in the television shows that Renaissance Pictures produced during this period. There's absolutely no doubting my mind that Eliade provided much of the inspiration for Xena and Hercules, from the beginning, and that his essay on the Mioritza influenced the staging of Sins of the Past (Xena show runner R.J. Stewart has said that Xena does contemplate suicide in Sins of the Past, however I am not sure he is aware of this source: its appearance began on Hercules, before R.J. joined the show). It would be used later on, in season three of "Hercules," for his wedding to Serena, which was one of the show's more beautiful, and odd, moments. I'll quote from the ceremony below, which ends with a showering of stars from the ghosts of Hercules' family above:
 According to Eliade, ancient Thrace was the crossroads for virtually every religious idea in Eurasia, and the use of the Mioritza in Xena and Hercules shouldn't surprise us after we learn from Eliade that its symbolism is descended from the Orphic rites of the Thracians. This isn't the only sign of Orpheus in this first episode of Xena. The theme music is Bulgarian, and the music of this region is associated with the ancient Orphic traditions of Greater Thrace; Rob Tapert has been a fan of this musical genre since the '80s, and composer Joe LoDuca thought it would be appropriate to associate it with the Amazons at the beginning, in Hercules and the Amazon Women. We'll hear one in particular, as Xena ends her exile, riding home to warn her home village of an impending raid. We'll see the women of the village working in the fields gathering bundles of plant stalks, singing a Balkan threshing song, "Glede ma glede". There is a deeper symbolism here to be found in The Greek Myths. In the chapter dealing with Linus, brother of Orpheus and a singer of Dionysus's praise, Graves explains: men are not admitted to the flax harvest; "the women who beat the flax, called Bechlerinnen, chase and surround any stranger who blunders into their midst. They make him lie down, step over him, tie his hands and feet, wrap him in tow, scour his face and hands with prickly flax-waste, rub him against the rough bark of a felled tree, and finally roll him downhill...Near Salzburg, the Bechlerinnen untrouser the trespasser themselves, and threaten to castrate him; after his flight, they purify the place by burning twigs and clashing sickles together."05 Graves goes on: "Little is known of what goes on in the spinning rooms, the women being so secretive; except that they chant a dirge called the Flachses Qual ("Flax's Torment"), or Leinen Klage ("Linen Lament"). It seems likely, then, that at the flax-harvest women used to catch, sexually assault, and dismember a man who represented the flax-spirit; but since this was also the fate of Orpheus, who protested against human sacrifice and sexual orgies, Linus has been described as his brother." In other words, this scene establishes Amphipolis as a spirit of strong female defiance; they resist trespassers with a bacchic fury. Just as Xena defended her hometown years before, so the women before her, including her mother. Xena's return is ambiguous to them: they associate her with the fast-approaching warlord Draco, and not as one of them. Even after she repels Draco's assault, the men of the village are still wary of her, but the women, in the person of her mother, recognize her as one of them. In season five, we'll see her mother standing up against another female warlord, Athena, who threatens to destroy the town if she can't take Xena's baby. Like Xena in Sins of the Past, Athena in Battle For Amphipolis is not considered one of them, but a representative of an Olympian male agenda. Cyrene, Xena's mother, defies her with an impromptu chant of the anthem of Amphipolis, "Glede ma glede," a sign that the patriarchal goddess of Olympus will not pass without suffering the Orphic punishment of the town's women. References to Euripides can be found in a comedic subplot as Gabrielle and Xena head towards Amphipolis. Xena encounters a cyclops, which we will recognize throughout the series as a sign of one of two things: either a satyr play reference, or a Ulysses-related metaphor for blindness. Here it's a satyr play: the giant is a blustering fool, having been already blinded by Xena (which establishes her Ulysses-inspired backstory), and he's looking for human flesh. Xena suggests he hire himself out as a village protector, eating sheep graciously tossed to him instead of people. This reminds us of the line in The Cyclops, when Silenus the goat-man warns the cyclops: "...they'd sell you for somebody's heavy labor, or maybe it was to make you do their millwork somewhere..." "They" refers to Ulysses and his men, and it's no wonder the cyclops here is wary of such well-meaning advice--as with the wily Ulysses, he doesn't trust the wily Xena, who already wounded him once. Gabrielle follows in both Xena's and Ulysses' footsteps: she walks right into his cage! Again, we remember these lines from The Cyclops:
Gabrielle's confrontation continues as she banters with the giant: "She'd never let a man get close enough to do her...at least, not that kind of 'do her.'" This double-entendre is found in the original Cyclops, "It's far too long since I enjoyed a man," the cyclops bellows, as Silenus interprets this several ways, and the goat-man later shouts: "Ah, womankind! I say let all of them go down...and preferably on me!" Ribald dialogue like this on Xena and Hercules is a sign that we're in satyr-play territory, and we'll often see related borrowings in these scenes. Later on, Gabrielle tries to follow Xena on foot, and tries to hitch a ride with a wagon driver. She attempts to charm him with her rendition of the Oedipus myth, but she doesn't get the desired results:
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