0559ANCIENTHeraclesApples

Gilt bronze statue of Hercules with the Apples of the Hesperides, late 2nd-century AD, from the Theatre of Pompey, discovered 1864, now in Musei Vaticani, inv. 252

"... second-century rulers like Commodus ... attempted to boost their sacred charisma by masquerading as deities... A bust of Commodus [i.e. not THIS statue!] from Rome, dating to about 190, shows the emperor in the guise of Hercules — with a club and lion skin — having just completed his great labour of fetching the apples of the Hesperides, which he displays in his left hand. The cornucopiae beneath the imperial bust and the orb with its signs of the zodiac refer to the cosmic majesty and fruitful reign of this Hercules, while the kneeling Amazon is a defeated foe ... This kind of personal interpenetration of emperor and Olympian deity — so that one cannot know if it is Commodus dressed up as Hercules or Hercules embodied in Commodus — was relatively conservative beside the attempt by Elagabalus, the Syrian priest of Baal who reigned from 218 to 222, to subordinate the whole of Rome's pantheon to a foreign god." J. Elsner, Christian Triumph 202.