The temple of Hercules is the second largest temple in Dodona (after the temple of Zeus). It was built in the years of King Pyrrhus, who wanted to stress his family connection to the great mythical hero. He claimed to be a descendant of Hercules through Lanassa, his great-granddaughter. She also connected Pyrrhus with another great hero, Achilles. That’s because she was the wife of Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, who came to Epirus in force at the end of the Trojan War, became master of the land and started the royal dynasty. With this “massaging” of the mythical past, Pyrrhus suddenly acquired an ancestry as glorious as that of Alexander the Great.