Why would adhuc be used at the beginning of a situation?

Question

My knowledge of adhuc is that it is typically used in the context of some continuing action. For example, in the story of Perseus, it reads:

[Acrisius] autem ubi Perseum vīdit, magnō terrōre affectus est; nam propter ōrāculum istud nepōtem suum adhūc timēbat.

"However, when Acrisius saw Perseus, he was afflicted with a great fear; for on account of the oracle he still feared his nephew."

So, in this use we have a situation where stuff has been going on for a long time, and the uncle STILL fears his nephew. However, in the following passage (also from Fabules Faciles) adhuc seems to be used in some other way:

Herculēs, Alcmēnae fīlius, ōlim in Graeciā habitābat. Hic omnium hominum validissimus fuisse dīcitur. At Iūnō, rēgīna deōrum, Alcmēnam ōderat et Herculem adhūc īnfantem necāre voluit.

"Hercules, the son of Alcmena, once was living in Greece. This one was said to be the strongest of all men. But Juno, the queen of the gods, hated Alcmena and still (???) wanted to kill the baby Hercules.

So, in this context adhuc seems to make no sense. It is the beginning of the story, so still since what? Apparently adhuc is supposed to mean something else in this context, but I can't figure out what is meant by it.

Answer 1

I agree that it makes little sense for adhuc to modify the whole sentence ("she still wanted"), as her desire to kill Hercules was not mentioned before, let alone anything that would lead us to think it had by now subsided. My interpretation is that the adverb adhuc modifies the adjective infans:

Herculem infantem necare voluit.
She wanted to kill the very young Hercules.

Herculem adhuc infantem necare voluit.
She wanted to kill the still very young Hercules.
She wanted to kill Hercules, who was still a baby.
or perhaps even: She wanted to kill Hercules while he was still a baby.

Answer 2

Don't think of adhuc as "still" but as "up to/until here," or "up to/until now".

The goal of Steadman's commentary is to keep things very simple (it glosses adhuc as "still" with no alternatives). The formation of adhuc is ad + huc - to, toward + to here (in place or time).

Or perhaps you're dilemma is the tenses. First, we know that Juno hated Alcmena, not Hercules. So the hatred has been around a long time (oderat) and still (adhuc) exists at this point in the past when she wanted (voluit) to hurt Alcmena by killing baby Hercules.

You might also be interested to know that oderat is pluperfect but we translate it as perfect. It's "defective" because it doesn't mean "hated" but rather "had begun to hate (and then was hating)" so it's always one tense behind the other tenses in the sentence.