Editing Omphale (section)

== Mythology ==

===Heracles and Omphale===
[[File:Fresco tondo depicting Omphale and Hercules.jpg|thumb|Heracles and Omphale, each wearing the other’s clothing, Roman fresco tondo, [[Pompeian Styles|Pompeian Fourth Style]] (45-79 AD), [[Naples National Archaeological Museum]], Italy]]In one of many Greek variations on the theme of penalty for "inadvertent" murder, for his murder of [[Iphitus of Oechalia|Iphitus]], the great [[Greek hero|hero]] [[Heracles]], whom the Romans identified as [[Hercules]], was, by the command of the [[Pythia|Delphic Oracle]] [[Xenoclea]], remanded as a slave to Omphale for the period of a year,<ref>Sophocles, ''[[The Trachiniae]]'' 69ff.</ref> the compensation to be paid to [[Eurytus of Oechalia|Eurytus]], who refused it. (According to [[Bibliotheca historica|Diodorus]], Iphitus' sons accepted it.<ref>[[Diodorus Siculus]], [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/4B*.html#31 4.31.6].</ref>)

The theme, inherently a comic inversion of sexual roles,<ref name="Locker">{{cite book | title=Artemisia Gentileschi: The Language of Painting | publisher=Yale | author=Locker, Jesse M. | year=2015 | pages=82 | isbn=978-0300185119}}</ref> is not fully illustrated in any surviving text from Classical Greece. Plutarch, in his life of [[Pericles]], 24, mentions lost comedies of [[Kratinos]] and [[Eupolis]], which alluded to the contemporary capacity of [[Aspasia]] in the household of Pericles,<ref>(Suhr 1953:251 note). There was also an ''Omphale Satyroi'' (a satyr-play) by the tragedian Ion (Snell, ''Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta'' Vol. 1, pp. 101ff.).</ref> and to [[Sophocles]] in ''[[The Trachiniae]]'' 
<ref name=Soph>{{cite book | author= Sophocles | title=The Trachiniae | year=1830 | url= https://archive.org/details/trachiniae00soph }}
252 He says he spent a year of thraldom there
slaving for the barbarian Omphale.</ref>
it was shameful for Heracles to serve an Oriental woman in this fashion,<ref>[[Lucian]] (''Dialogues of the Gods'') and [[Tertullian]] (''De pallio'' 4) both allude to the disgrace.</ref> but there are many late Hellenistic and Roman references in texts and art to Heracles being forced to do women's work and even wear women's clothing and hold a basket of wool while Omphale and her maidens did their spinning.<ref>{{ cite book|author=Lucian|title=Dialogues of the Gods|url=http://www.theoi.com/Text/LucianDialoguesGods1.html#15|chapter=15 Zeus, Asclepius and Heracles}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Tertullian|title=De Pallio|chapter=4.3|url=http://www.tertullian.org/articles/hunink_de_pallio.htm}}.</ref> Omphale even wore the skin of the [[Nemean Lion]] and carried Heracles' olive-wood club. No full early account survives to supplement the later vase-paintings.

[[Image:Mosaico Trabajos Hércules (M.A.N. Madrid) 13.jpg|thumb|left|Hercules and Omphale, detail of a Roman mosaic from [[Lliria, Spain|Llíria]] ([[Spain]]), third century.]]

But it was also during his stay in Lydia that Heracles captured the city of the Itones and enslaved them, killed [[Syleus (mythology)|Syleus]] who forced passersby to hoe his vineyard, and then captured the [[Cercopes]].

After some time, Omphale freed Heracles and took him as her husband. They travelled to the grove of [[Dionysus]] and planned to celebrate the rites of Bacchus at dawn. Heracles slept alone in a bed covered with the clothes of Omphale. The Greek god [[Pan (god)|Pan]] hoped to have his way with Omphale and crept naked into the bed of Heracles who threw Pan to the floor and laughed.<ref>''[[Fasti (poem)|Fasti]]'' 2.303-62.</ref><ref>[[Confessio Amantis]]5.6807-6960</ref>

===Sons of Heracles in Lydia===
[[Image:Dausch Omphale im Fell des Löwen 1.jpg|thumb|upright|''Omphale'', by [[Constantin Dausch]]]]

[[Diodorus Siculus]] (4.31.8) and [[Ovid]] in his ''Heroides'' (9.54) mention a son named [[Lamos (Cilicia)|Lamos]]. But ''[[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|Bibliotheca]]'' (2.7.8) gives the name of the son of Heracles and Omphale as [[Agelaus]], whom the family of [[Croesus]] was descended from.

[[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]] (2.21.3) gives yet another name, mentioning Tyrsenus, son of Heracles by "the Lydian woman", by whom Pausanias presumably means Omphale. This Tyrsenus supposedly first invented the trumpet, and Tyrsenus' son Hegeleus taught the [[Dorians]] with [[Temenus]] how to play the trumpet and first gave to [[Athena]] the surname ''Trumpet''.

The name ''Tyrsenus'' appears elsewhere as a variant of [[Tyrrhenus]], whom many accounts bring from Lydia to settle the Tyrsenoi/ Tyrrhenians/ [[Etruscans]] in [[Italy]]. [[Dionysius of Halicarnassus]] (1.28.1) cites a tradition that the supposed founder of the Etruscan settlements was Tyrrhenus, the son of Heracles by Omphale the Lydian, who drove the [[Pelasgians]] out of Italy from the cities north of the [[Tiber]] river. Dionysius gives this as an alternate to other versions of Tyrrhenus' ancestry.

[[Herodotus]] (1.7) refers to a Heraclid dynasty of kings who ruled Lydia, yet were perhaps not descended from Omphale, writing, "The Heraclids, descended from Heracles and the slave-girl of Iardanus...." Omphale as slave-girl seems odd. However, Diodorus Siculus relates that when Heracles was still Omphale's slave, before Omphale (daughter of Iardanus) set Heracles free and married him, Heracles fathered a son, Cleodaeus, on a slave-woman. This fits, though in Herodotus the son of Heracles and the slave-girl of Iardanus is named Alcaeus.

[[File:Terracotta figurine of Omphale from Nea Paphos, Cyprus-DSC09995.jpg|thumb|left|Terracotta figurine of Omphale, [[Paphos Archaeological Museum]], [[Cyprus]].]]

But according to the historian [[Xanthus (historian)|Xanthus of Lydia]] (5th century BC) as cited by [[Nicolaus of Damascus]], the Heraclid dynasty of Lydia traced their descent to a son of Heracles and Omphale named Tylon, and were called Tylonidai. It is known from coins that this Tylon was a native [[Anatolia]]n god equated with the Greek Heracles {{Citation needed|date=June 2020}}.

Herodotus asserts that the first of the Heraclids to reign in [[Sardis]] was Agron, the son of Ninus, son of Belus, son of Alcaeus, son of Heracles.<ref>{{harvnb | Herodotus | 1975 | p=43}}</ref> Later writers know a [[Ninus]] who is the primordial king of [[Assyria]], and they often call this Ninus son of Belus. Their Ninus is the legendary founder and eponym of the city of Ninus, referring to [[Ninevah]], while Belus, though sometimes treated as a human, is identified with the god [[Bel (god)|Bel]].

An earlier genealogy may have made Agron, as a legendary first king of an ancient dynasty, to be a son of the mythical Ninus, son of Belus, and stopped at that point. In the genealogy given by Herodotus, someone may have grafted the tradition of a Lydian son of Heracles at the top end of it, so that Ninus and Belus in the list now become descendants of Heracles, who just happen to bear the same names as the more famous Ninus and Belus.

That, at least, is the interpretation of later chronologists who also ignored Herodotus' statement that Agron was the first to be a king, and included Alcaeus, Belus, and Ninus in their [[List of kings of Lydia]].

As to how Agron gained the kingdom from the older dynasty descended from [[Lydus]] son of [[Atys of Lydia|Atys]], Herodotus only says that the Heraclids, "having been entrusted by these princes with the management of affairs, obtained the kingdom by an oracle."

[[Strabo]] (5.2.2) makes Atys father of Lydus, and [[Tyrrhenus]] to be one of the descendants of Heracles and Omphale. But all other accounts place Atys, Lydus, and Tyrrhenus brother of Lydus among the pre-Heraclid kings of Lydia.