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Living With Your Rabid Iolausian

A View From the Outside
(sort of)

2. What is an Iolausian?

An explanation.

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Television series come and go every year. In the United States in particular, each fall (i.e., autumn) brings forth a harvest of new shows, a goodly proportion of which disappear very quickly indeed. The result of this is that there's considerable pressure to think up ideas for new programmes every year. I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone came up with the idea of basing a series about the character of Hercules.

There were certain advantages to this concept. After all, most people have enough knowledge of Greek mythology to know the bare bones of the story of Hercules (or Heracles [1] as he was known in Greek myth). His father was Zeus, ruler of Olympus, and his mother was Alcmene, a mortal. In Greek myth, the child of a god by a mortal was known as a hero, and each hero acquired some special ability as a result of that unique [2] parentage. Heracles' special ability was a remarkable strength, and it is for this characteristic that Heracles is remembered today, albeit by the Roman name of Hercules rather than his own. In the days when fields were ploughed by horse or by steam, many pairs of horses or ploughing engines were named "Samson" and "Hercules", in the hope that they would acquire some of the strength of their legendary namesakes.

And so the scene was set for a fantasy series based on the concept of Hercules wandering through Ancient Greece, righting wrongs and resisting the attempts of the gods to meddle in the affairs of mortals. Greek mythology provides a rich source of monsters to be defeated, giving ample opportunity for plenty of computer-generated special effects. The series was made in New Zealand, mostly for financial reasons. A benefit of this is that New Zealand has some truly stunning scenery, and so what if it looks nothing like Greece!. The cast comprised primarily American actors in the major roles (for example, Kevin Sorbo as Hercules himself), with a supporting cast drawn from the New Zealand acting profession.

Every hero needs a sidekick. The role of the sidekick varies - it may be to get in to trouble and need rescuing by the hero. Or it may be the hero who gets into trouble, and needs help in escaping. The sidekick can watch the hero's back in combat, and can discuss the development of the story with the hero, and (by a remarkable coincidence) convey the relevant details to the eavesdropping viewer.

For Hercules, the producers supplied an occasional sidekick named Iolaus, portrayed by one of the members of the New Zealand acting profession I mentioned earlier: Michael Hurst.

While the casual observer might assume that it would be the headline star who would attract the entire fan following, this is by no means the case. Consider, for example Star Trek, in which the secondary (and in the early stories, some would argue, minor) character of Mr Spock gained a substantial fan following for his portrayer, Leonard Nimoy. In the case of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Ioalus brought Michael Hurst a following out of proportion to the initial prominence of his role (although subsequently Iolaus was brought more to the fore. Reaction to the popularity of the character, or necessary narrative development? Perhaps a little of each? Who can tell?)

Which brings us to the Internet. Just about anything gets discussed on the Internet, and it should be no surprise that, sooner or later, those fans of Michael Hurst / Iolaus who had Internet access would be setting up web sites, establishing Usenet newsgroups, and setting up mailing lists whereby they could discuss every aspect of their particular interest. It is this group of on-line fans of Michael Hurst who became known as Iolausians.

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Notes:

  1. Scholars differ on the subject of the "correct" transliteration of Greek to English. For example, the Greek letter kappa is often represented by the English letter c, in its hard form (as in cat or carpet). However, the English ccorreponds to the Greek gamma rather than to kappa, whose nearest equivalent in English is k. Therefore, the Greek name Herakles may be represented as either Heracles or Herakles.

    I intend to stay with "Heracles". This was the spelling used in the books on Greek mythology when I was at school, and I'm so familiar with this spelling that it's far too late now to change to "Herakles". [Click here to return to the main text]

  2. Well, maybe not that unique. Seducing mortals was something that Greek gods went in for in quite a big way, particularly Zeus. This caused a certain amount of annoyance to Hera, who was both Zeus' wife and his sister. [3] [Click here to return to the main text]

  3. Incest being something else that Greek gods went in for in quite a big way. [Click a link to return to Footnote 2 or the main text]

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Page created: 30 March 1998
Date of last update: 17 February 2002
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