comes down imaginary genetics. Beowulf is a great man, but that's all that he is. He is fully human. Hercules is half human and half god.

Beowulf and the Iliad can be compared as epic poems about ancient times that develop themes related to heroism and social conflict, including war. Contrasting points include that Beowulf narrowly focuses on the hero of the title, while the Iliad incorporates the hero Achilles within a wide range of characters. This distinction also extends to the treatment of warriors’ behavior: the noble Beowulf is almost always shown in positive terms, while the Iliad offers more critical perspectives on human actions during war.

Another similarity is that both are set many centuries ago and have texts based on oral traditions that have undergone numerous revisions. Beowulf takes place in northern Europe, mainly contemporary Scandinavia, while the Iliad is set in Ilium, or Troy, in contemporary Turkey. A related contrasting point is that the authorship of the most widely known version of Beowulf remains uncertain, while the Greek Homer is generally considered as the author of the Iliad, although there is debate about whether he recorded it in writing.

In the epic poem Beowulf, Beowulf is the Geatish hero of the story, while Grendel is humankind's archenemy.

Beowulf, the story's protagonist, arrives to assist Hrothgar, King of the Danes, defeat the ferocious and murderous monster Grendel, who raids the mead hall until it sits empty for a very long time. Our hero arrives with a long list of victories in battle to his credit. He is a man with unshakable valor and integrity. He is self-sacrificing. His actions are guided (as are other heroes of the time) for glory and for God. Greeted by Hrothgar's wife, Beowulf explains what motivated him to come to the Danes' aid:

This was my thought, when my thanes and I
bent to the ocean and entered our boat,      
that I would work the will of your people    
fully, or fighting fall in death,                        
in fiend’s gripe fast. I am firm to do             
an earl’s brave deed, or end the days            
of this life of mine in the mead-hall here.

On the other hand, Grendel is a savage creature without honor or compassion for any human:

The monster of evil [Grendel]
Greedy and cruel tarried but little,              
Fell and frantic, and forced from their slumbers
Thirty of thanemen; thence he departed
Leaping and laughing, his lair to return to, 
With surfeit of slaughter sallying homeward.

The narrator reports that when Cain murdered his brother, Abel, God exiled him. Grendel is a descendant of Cain. As Cain was before him, Grendel is isolated from God and the friendship of others. Consequently, the creature finds the sounds of joy and camaraderie coming from Heorot loathsome, which causes him to begin his attacks.

While Beowulf is a brave, proven warrior, Grendel is a creature that fights for the pleasure of killing. Beowulf answers a higher calling in life, but Grendel is answerable to no one. He delights not in glory, but in devastation and suffering.

Beowulf and Hercules are classic mythical heroes: both have remarkable strength and serve as heroic ideals for their respective cultures. Beowulf is the epitome of the noble warrior and the generous, wise king appreciated by the Anglo-Saxons. Hercules has a life filled with hardships and challenges, but with his strength and perseverance he overcomes them, which made him appealing to the Greeks and Romans.

Tragic elements exist in both heroes as well. The aged Beowulf dies fighting a dragon threatening his people, an act which saves them from immediate extermination but makes them open to foreign invasion in his absence. Hercules dies wearing the poisoned Shirt of Nessus, made fatal by his second wife, Dejanira, who was jealous of her husband's infatuation with another woman. When he realizes his minutes are numbered, he lights himself on fire upon a pyre. While both men have tragic ends, their names live on in glory. Beowulf's people, though doomed to be overtaken by enemy tribes now that their strong ruler is dead, will keep his memory immortal through poem and song. Hercules, being a demigod, is half-mortal, half-divine, so only the mortal part of him perishes. His divine half is allowed a place as a star in the heavens.

The key difference between them is that Beowulf is allowed more agency in his tragic end. He chooses to go down fighting for the people he's duty-bound to protect. Hercules dies as a result of trickery and the jealousy of his wife. He faces this death nobly, however.

Both Beowulf and Hercules are arguably by origin divine heroes. On a more secular plane, they are both royal warriors. And of course they are the "heroes" or principal characters of their respective stories. Both are European in origin. More specifically, we can point out that stories of Hercules inspired Germanic listeners to acts of martial bravery and to heroic deeds during the Roman period, just as Beowulf's story inspired a later generation of Germanic warriors. Also like Beowulf, Hercules is said to have fought with monsters in caves. Hercules fights with the monster Cacus, while Beowulf encounters the deadly dragon. Perhaps the two heroes have a common Indo-European origin, and both heroes figure in royal genealogies of historical tribes, the one in Denmark, the other in Greece.