Nomos 20

IONIA. Phokaia. Circa 387-326 BC. Hekte (Electrum, 10.5 mm, 2.57 g). Head of the Lydian queen, Omphale to left, with her hair rolled over her forehead and with a pendant earring, but also wearing the lion's skin headdress of Herakles, and with his club on the far side of her neck; below truncation, small seal swimming to left (here mostly off the flan). Rev. Quadripartite incuse square. Bodenstedt Group 107d/α. Boston 1917. SNG Copenhagen 1029. SNG von Aulock 2133. A remarkably attractive example, very probably the finest known. Good extremely fine.

The story of Herakles and Omphale is quite complicated: when Herakles went mad and, in a frenzy, murdered his friend Iphitus, he was ordered by the Delphic Oracle to atone for his act by being the slave of the Lydian queen Omphale. She was not only the daughter of king Iardanus of Lydia, but was also the wife of the Lydian king Tmolus; at the time of Herakles' arrival she was a widow, Tmolus having been gored to death by a bull. In any case, what happened is that Omphale began wearing Herakles' lion's skin and carrying his club, while he had to wear women's clothing and help with spinning and other "women's" work! As one would expect, in due course Omphale decided to marry Herakles, thus, apparently giving rise to the Heraclid dynasty of Lydian rulers. This kind of tale, with Herakles "in drag" was thought rather comical by the Greeks: there is a famous painting from Pompeii that shows the two of them embracing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphale#/media/File:Affresco_romano_-_eracle_ed_onfale_-_area_vesuviana.jpg); much later Lucas Cranach the Elder did a painting of Herakles being dressed as a woman by Omphale and her maids, Saint-Saëns created a tone-poem about Omphale's spinning wheel, and Apollinaire wrote an erotic poem about the tale of Omphale and Herakles.