Thus, just as the magic-working boy was superseded by the man of might, so also does the true magical hero disappear from mythology. The saga, then, differs from the märchen-myth in the character of its hero. The Hercules saga itself, however, is an illustration of the fact that the former may have no connection whatsoever with historical events, any more than has the latter. Moreover, the earliest sagas, particularly, not infrequently still remind one of the märchen in that they are obviously a composite of several narratives. Of this fact also, the saga of Hercules offers a conspicuous example. The deeds of the hero appear to have but an accidental connection with one another. True, later sagas represent these deeds as adventures which the hero undertook at the command of King Eurystheus of Mycene. But even here we obviously have only a loose sort of framework which was at some later period imposed upon the original tales in order to bind the cycle together as a whole. It is not improbable that these various sagas of a hero who vanquished monsters, rendered lands habitable, and performed other deeds, originated independently of one another. Not only may their places of origin have been different, but their narratives may have had their settings in different localities. Possibly, therefore, it was not until later that the sagas were combined to portray the character of a single individual, who thus became exalted into the national hero. But, though the hero saga resembles the märchen in the fact that it grows by the agglutination of diverse legendary materials, it differs from it in the possession of a characteristic which is typical of this stage of development. That which binds together the separate elements of the hero saga is a unitary thought, generally associated with great cultural changes or with historical events.