Lord Raglan, in The Hero (1936) has classified the parallel life-patterns of the mythical hero of tradition into twenty-two archetypal incidents, as noted below. The higher a particular hero scores, the closer he is to the UR-archetype of the sacred hero-king of prehistoric religious ritual; a historical hero is likely to share rather few of the mythical characteristics. Let your favorite hero take the Lord Raglan Challenge! The Scale The hero's mother is a royal virgin. His father is a king and often a near relative of the mother, but the circumstances of his conception are unusual, and he is also reputed to be the son of a god at birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or maternal grandfather, to kill him, but He is spirited away, and reared by foster-parents in a far country. We are told nothing of his childhood, but on reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future kingdom. After a victory over the king and or giant, dragon, or wild beast he marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor and becomes king. For a time he reigns uneventfully and prescribes laws but later loses favor with the gods and or his people and is driven from from the throne and the city after which He meets with a mysterious death often at the top of a hill. His children, if any, do not succeed him. His body is not buried, but nevertheless he has one or more holy sepulchres. Undoubtedly historical personages always score lower than six, although Alexander the Great might be said to exceed that figure with a possible score of seven, depending on how one interprets some aspects of his life history. (Speaking of Alexanders, it might be interesting to see how much our little bundle of joy scores later on in life.) Generally, anyone scoring over seven or eight might be based on a historical person, but the higher on the scale, the less likely it is. High Scores Club Oedipus scores 21 Theseus scores 20 Moses scores 20 King Arthur scores 19 Jesus of Nazareth scores 19 Dionysus scores 19 Romulus scores 18 Perseus scores 18 Hercules scores 17 Llew Llaw Gyffes scores 17 Bellerophon scores 16 Gilgamesh scores 15 Jason scores 15 Mwindo scores 14 Robin Hood scores 13 Pelops scores 13 James T. Kirk scores 13 Sigurd scores 11. - Simon Bar Kochba scores 5 (bar Kokhba was the historical Jewish "Messiah" and the last king of Israel from 132 CE to 135 CE) From here