HeraclesOmphale2.0101

HeraclesOmphale2.0101_Greiner

Surrounded by women, the hero has wearied of the work they normally do, tying a fishing net. Omphale handles his work, while another attendant at the domesticated dozer's left teases with the thread. Playful children admire the skin of the Nemean Lion, no longer menacing. The maenadic woman with the cymbals may have been attempting to rouse the onetime hero from his snooze.

The scandalous role-reversal is also treated thus in Ovid's Ars Amatoria 2.217-24: "That hero who outlasted his step-mother's putting monsters in his way and gained heaven, which he earlier held on his own shoulders; people believe that he joined Ionian girls, that he grasped the distaff and carded slubby wool. / The hero of Tiryns obeyed the command of his mistress! Come, consider whether you wouldn't also endure what Heracles endured!" (RTM trans.)