0540ANCIENTHeraclesOmphale_Napoli

0540ANCIENTHeraclesOmphale_Napoli

ogcma HeraclesOmphale1.0000_Reid
Classical Sources:
Ion Omphale 15.248
Cratinus the Younger Omphale
Apollodorus Libr. 2.6.3
Diodorus Siculus Biblioteca 4.31.5-8
Nicochares Heracles as the Bride
Ovid Fasti 2.302-58
Ovid Heroides 9
Ovid Ars Amatoria 2.216-28
Hyginus, Fab. 32
Hyginus, Poet. Astron. 2.14

anonymous, "Heracles and Omphale," second half 1st-century AD, copy of an eclectic Roman creation, Museo Archeologico di Napoli, inv. 6406. [Misidentified on the museum lable as "Hercules and Omphalus".]

The queen of Lydia, Omphale, has purchased Heracles, whose enslavement thralldom to her will expiate his murder of Iole's brother Iphitus.

statuette

The figurative emasculation of Hercules and the empowerment of Omphale is depicted in the various objects held in their hands of the role-reversed pair: He holds a distaff and spool of yarn, she holds the club. Likewise she wears his Nemean Lionskin, while he is dressed for domestic work.

The scandalous role-reversal is treated thus in Ovid's Ars Amatoria 2.217-24: "The hero that eluded Juno's spite, / And every monster overcame in fight; / That pass'd so many bloody labours o'er, / And well deserv'd that heav'n whose weight he bore; / Amidst Ionian damsels carding stands, / And grasps the distaff in obedient hands; / In all commands the haughty dame obeys; / And who disdains to act like Hercules?" (Perseus site trans.)

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.