After Hercules and his friend Iolaus stopped a band of hoodlums from robbing an innkeeper, Hercules went home to his family. The horror that followed was over almost before it started. A huge ball of fire burst through his bedroom window and consumed his wife, Deianeira. In the next instant the fireball took Hercules' three young children. His step mother, Hera, was to blame. Consumed by hatred, Hercules set out on a path of destruction. But the beautiful slave girl Aegina helped Hercules overcome his grief and set him back on an honorable path.

An entire village was terrorized by a giant Cyclops, prompting a visit from Hercules. It was true that the Cyclops had tossed a traveling toga salesman into a tree and diverted the village's water supply to irrigate Hera's sacred vineyard. But Hercules learned that there were two sides to every conflict. It turned out the villagers had persecuted the cyclops for years. Hercules defeated the Cyclops in battle but spared its life, and the two became allies. Together, they repelled Hera's bloodthirsty henchman, and the Cyclops made peace with the villagers.

A group of traveling villagers arrive in the deserted town of Parthus, the only thing living there is a lone dog. One of the men of the group tells the others this is what they have been searching for and declare it their new home. Inside a temple, somebody steals a golden chalice. This of course angers Hera and she causes a storm to rage over the town. Hercules meanwhile is walking along a road near that town & finds shelter. Inside the building where he's staying, he encounters a blind seer who tells Hercules the storm is bad news. The following day Hercules continues on his way, accompanied by the seer. They arrive in the town, and Hercules discovers from Broteas that the town suffered some heavy damage due to the storm. The seer tells them that the town is cursed. Hercules introduces himself to the people. Later, the villagers tell him how they had to leave their previous home, Hercules gives the people some food. At night the seer goes into the temple where the chalice was kept and has a vision of a beautiful woman being given the chalice by Zeus. He also sees Hera exact her revenge on the villagers by turning them all to dust. Hercules wakes the next day to find the villagers about to sacrifice the food he had given them to Hera.

The episode begins with Hercules sitting in a local tavern listening as a satyr demands that an old man pay him for a bet of some kind that he lost. The old man insists he doesn't have the money, prompting the satyr to get physical. Hercules stops him, but then the satyr challenges the demigod. Hercules accepts, but instead of a fight he finds he has agreed to a drinking contest. As they drink, the viewer sees that the satyr is continually switching places with his twin brother, meaning he is only drinking half as much as Hercules, but Hercules is unaware of this fact. Eventually, however, the brothers get so drunk that they try to sit down at the same time. Hercules sees this and questions it, but they assure him there is only one of them and he is just drunk. Hercules accepts this, but vows to put them back together and slams them into one another, prompting them to flee as Hercules passes out.

ues on his neverending journey.

Ares thrived on conflict and bloodshed. Hercules did not share Ares' passion for killing, and when Ares tried to assemble an army of teenage boy-soldiers to do his bidding, Hercules knew he had to stop him. With help from the powerful blacksmith Atalanta and the young widow Janista, Hercules freed Janista's son Titus and his friend Ximenos from Ares' spell. Then he confronted a representation of Ares in his cave, and after a fierce battle, Hercules beheaded his bloodthirsty foe. Titus learned that the way of the true warrior is not to kill, but to destroy forces of evil.

In the town of Nespa, the winsome penelope was about to marry Marcus - much to the dismay of Nemis the Centaur. Nemis prayed to Hera for a way to win Penelope for himself, and she gave him a wicked cudgel. Hera's challenge to Nemis: kill Hercules. Nemis enlisted the aid of the centaurs Craesus and Deric, plus Deric's girlfriend, Lyla, who cunningly blinded Hercules. Nemis kidnapped Penelope, but Hercules used his sense of sound and touch as well as his wits, to even the odds in his fight against Nemis. Hercules prevailed, and Penelope was returned to Marcus.

Pride and arrogance are ugly traits ill befitting an honorable warrior. Yet Iolaus succumbed to pride as the two men made their way to Thrace. First Iolaus fought a taunting bunch of thugs and had to be rescued by Hercules. Then he took his own path toward Thrace, determined to beat his friend to the city. On the way he met Lydia and escaped several dangers, but Hera sent Nemesis to kill Iolaus for the sin of pride. Only when Iolaus committed a selfless act of friendship toward Hercules did he earn his own reprieve.

"The March to Freedom" is the eighth episode of the first season of the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Written by Adam Armus and Nora Kay Foster and directed by Harley Cokeliss, it first aired in the United States on March 6, 1995.

Hercules volunteers to help a woman show her new son to her husband, being kept as a slave. He and Iolaus arrange to be captured to free Gladius and all the other slaves.

A mystery drew Hercules and Iolaus to the city of Tantalus. There, the bodies of fallen warriors were disappearing from the battlefields. Hercules learned that Ares, the god of war, was to blame. After King Memnos' death, his son Daulin had assumed the throne, Daulin's sister Poena, had taken up arms against him. She believed Daulin had killed their father. Ares had created the entire situation merely to satisfy the appetite of his bloodthirsty hound, Graegus. After leashing the vicious beast, Hercules explained the truth to Daulin and poena, bringing an end to the family war.

Hercules was angry to learn that the warrior princess Xena was raiding villages to increase her power and territory. What Hercules didn't know until later was that Xena's lieutenant, Darphus, was the cruel and heartless one. When Xena spared the life of an infant, Darphus forced her to endure the Gauntlet, a series of trials in which she was punished by her own soldiers. Fleeing on her own, Xena challenged Hercules to a duel - and lost. But he spared her life, so she joined him in defending the village of Parthis from her former lieutenant.

"Unchained Heart" is the 13th episode and season finale of the first season of the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Written by John Schulian and directed by Bruce Seth Green, it first aired in the United States on May 8, 1995.