Editing Omphale (section)

===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>