Omphale
Encyclopedia
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, Omphale was a daughter of Iardanus
Iardanus
The River Iardanus or Iardanes denoted two small rivers in Antiquity, and previously a third, it would seem.A Iardanus in Elis is referred to in passing in Iliad , where Nestor remembers Pylians and Arcadians gathered in fight by the rapid river Celadon under the walls of Pheia, and round about...
, either a king of Lydia
Lydia
Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....
, or a river-god. Omphale was queen of the kingdom of Lydia
Lydia
Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....
in Asia Minor; according to Bibliotheke she was the wife of Tmolus
Tmolus
Tmolus was a King of Lydia and husband to Omphale. He is the eponymous namesake of Mount Tmolus , which lies in Lydia with the Lydian capital at its foot and Hypaepa on its southern slope...
, the oak-clad mountain king of Lydia; after he was gored to death by a bull
Bull
Bull usually refers to an uncastrated adult male bovine.Bull may also refer to:-Entertainment:* Bull , an original show on the TNT Network* "Bull" , an episode of television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation...
, she continued to reign on her own.
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...
provides the first appearance of the Omphale theme in literature, though Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
was aware of the episode. The Greeks did not recognize her as a goddess
Goddess
A goddess is a female deity. In some cultures goddesses are associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household. In other cultures, goddesses also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing....
: the undisputed etymological connection with omphalos
Omphalos
An omphalos is an ancient religious stone artifact, or baetylus. In Greek, the word omphalos means "navel" . According to the ancient Greeks, Zeus sent out two eagles to fly across the world to meet at its center, the "navel" of the world...
, the world-navel, has never been made clear. In her best-known myth, she is the master of the hero Heracles
Heracles
Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
during a year of required servitude, a scenario that offered writers and artists opportunities to explore gender roles and erotic themes.
Heracles and Omphale
In one of many Greek variations on the theme of penalty for "inadvertent" murder, for his murder of Iphitus, the great heroHero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
Heracles
Heracles
Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
, whom the Romans identified as Hercules
Hercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
, was, by the command of the Delphic Oracle
Pythia
The Pythia , commonly known as the Oracle of Delphi, was the priestess at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. The Pythia was widely credited for her prophecies inspired by Apollo. The Delphic oracle was established in the 8th century BC...
Xenoclea
Xenoclea
Xenoclea, who appears as a character in the legend of Hercules, was the Pythia, or priestess and oracle, of the temple of Apollo at Delphi.The Delphic oracle was a historical reality and was established in the 8th century BC.-In legend:...
, remanded as a slave to Omphale for the period of a year, the compensation to be paid to Eurytus
Eurytus
Eurytus, Erytus , or Eurytos is the name of eleven characters in Greek mythology, and of at least one historical figure.-King of Oechalia:...
, who refused it. The theme, inherently a comic inversion of gender roles, was not illustrated in Classical Greece. Plutarch, in his vita of Pericles
Pericles
Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars...
, 24, mentions lost comedies of Kratinos and Eupolis, which alluded to the contemporary capacity of Aspasia
Aspasia
Aspasia was a Milesian woman who was famous for her involvement with the Athenian statesman Pericles. Very little is known about the details of her life. She spent most of her adult life in Athens, and she may have influenced Pericles and Athenian politics...
in the household of Pericles. and to Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
in The Trachiniae it was shameful for Heracles to serve an Oriental woman in this fashion, 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, as Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
tells: Omphale even wore the skin of the Nemean Lion
Nemean Lion
The Nemean lion was a vicious monster in Greek mythology that lived at Nemea. It was eventually killed by Heracles. It could not be killed with mortal weapons because its golden fur was impervious to attack...
and carried Heracles' olive-wood club. Unfortunately no full early account survives, to supplement the later vase-paintings.
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Syleus
Syleus is a genus of harvestmen in the family Sclerosomatidae.-Species:* Syleus mysoreus Roewer, 1955* Syleus niger...
who forced passersby to hoe his vineyard, and captured the Cercopes
Cercopes
In Greek mythology, the Cercopes kerkos "tail") were mischievous forest creatures who lived in Thermopylae or on Euboea but roamed the world and might turn up anywhere mischief was afoot...
. He buried the body of Icarus
Icarus
-Space and astronomy:* Icarus , on the Moon* Icarus , a planetary science journal* 1566 Icarus, an asteroid* IKAROS, a interplanetary unmanned spacecraft...
and took part in the Calydonian Boar Hunt and the Argonautica.
After some time, Omphale freed Heracles and took him as her husband.
Omphale's name, connected with omphalos
Omphalos
An omphalos is an ancient religious stone artifact, or baetylus. In Greek, the word omphalos means "navel" . According to the ancient Greeks, Zeus sent out two eagles to fly across the world to meet at its center, the "navel" of the world...
, a Greek word meaning navel
Navel
The navel is a scar on the abdomen caused when the umbilical cord is removed from a newborn baby...
(or axis), may represent a significant Lydian earth goddess. Heracles's servitude, a mystical marriage, thus may represent the servitude of the sun to the axis of the celestial sphere, the spinners being Lydian versions of the Moirae
Moirae
The Moirae, Moerae or Moirai , in Greek mythology, were the white-robed incarnations of destiny . Their number became fixed at three...
. Most earth goddess religions contained a priesthood which wore women's clothing, was effeminate, or involved eunuchs. The priest of Heracles, curiously, also wore female clothing, and this myth may represent an attempt to explain the fact.
Sons of Heracles in Lydia
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...
(4.31.8) and Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
in his Heroides (9.54) mention a son named Lamos
Lamos
Lamos is a name variously applied in Greek mythology and in classical geographical writings.* Lamos, a small river on the summit of Mount Helicon according to Pausanias...
. But Apollodorus
Apollodorus
Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius the Stoic, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace...
(2.7.8) gives the name of the son of Heracles and Omphale as Agelaus
Agelaus
Agelaus or Agelaos is, in Greek mythology, the name of various individuals.#Agelaus, or Agelaos, son of Damastor was a suitor of Penelope, killed by Odysseus....
.
Pausanias
Pausanias (geographer)
Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...
(2.21.3) gives yet another name, mentioning Tyrsenus, son of Heracles by "the Lydian woman", by whom Pausanias presumably means Omphale. This Tyrsenus supposedly first invented the trumpet, and Tyrsenus' son Hegeleus taught the Dorians with Temenus
Temenus
In Greek mythology, Temenus was a son of Aristomachus and brother of Cresphontes and Aristodemus. He was a great-great-grandson of Heracles and helped lead the fifth and final attack on Mycenae in the Peloponnese. He became King of Argos. He was the father of Ceisus, Káranos, Phalces, Agraeus,...
how to play the trumpet and first gave to Athena
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
the surname Trumpet.
The name Tyrsenus appears elsewhere as a variant of Tyrrhenus
Tyrrhenus
In Etruscan mythology, Tyrrhenus was one of the founders of the Etruscan Federation of twelve cities, along with his brother Tarchon. Herodotus describes him as the saver of Etruscans, because he led them from Lydia to Etruria. His name was given to the Etruscan people by the Greek. The Romans...
, whom many accounts bring from Lydia to settle the Tyrsenoi/Tyrrhenians/Etruscans in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. Dionysius
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...
of Halicarnassus
Halicarnassus
Halicarnassus was an ancient Greek city at the site of modern Bodrum in Turkey. It was located in southwest Caria on a picturesque, advantageous site on the Ceramic Gulf. The city was famous for the tomb of Mausolus, the origin of the word mausoleum, built between 353 BC and 350 BC, and...
(1.28.1) cites a tradition that the supposed founder of the Etruscan settlements was Tyrrhenus, the son of Heracles by Omphale the Lydian, who drove the Pelasgians
Pelasgians
The name Pelasgians was used by some ancient Greek writers to refer to populations that were either the ancestors of the Greeks or who preceded the Greeks in Greece, "a hold-all term for any ancient, primitive and presumably indigenous people in the Greek world." In general, "Pelasgian" has come...
out of Italy from the cities north of the Tiber
Tiber
The Tiber is the third-longest river in Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Umbria and Lazio to the Tyrrhenian Sea. It drains a basin estimated at...
river. Dionysius gives this as an alternate to other versions of Tyrrhenus' ancestry.
Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
(1.7) refers to a Heraclid dynasty of kings who ruled Lydia, yet were perhaps not descended from Omphale, writing, "The Heraclides, descended from Heracles and the slave-girl of Iardanus...." Omphale as slave-girl seems odd. However, Diodorus Siculus relates that when Heracles was still Omphale's slave, before Omphale (daughter of Iardanus) set Heracles free and married him, Heracles fathered a son, Cleodaeus, on a slave-woman. This fits, though in Herodotus the son of Heracles and the slave-girl of Iardanus is named Alcaeus.
But according to the historian Xanthus of Lydia
Xanthus (historian)
Xanthus of Lydia was a native Lydian historian and logographer who, during the mid-fifth century BC, wrote texts on the history of Lydia known as Lydiaca . Xanthus also wrote occasionally about geology. It is believed that Xanthus was the earliest historian to have written a significant amount on...
(5th century BCE) as cited by Nicolaus of Damascus
Nicolaus of Damascus
Nicolaus of Damascus was a Greek historian and philosopher who lived during the Augustan age of the Roman Empire. His name is derived from that of his birthplace, Damascus. He was born around 64 BC....
, the Heraclid dynasty of Lydia traced their descent to a son of Heracles and Omphale named Tylon, and were called Tylonidai. We know from coins that this Tylon was a native Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
n god equated with the Greek Heracles.
Herodotus asserts that the first of the Heraclids to reign in Sardis
Sardis
Sardis or Sardes was an ancient city at the location of modern Sart in Turkey's Manisa Province...
was Agron, the son of Ninus, son of Belus, son of Agelaus, son of Heracles. But later writers know a Ninus
Ninus
Ninus , according to Greek historians writing in the Hellenistic period and later, was accepted as the eponymous founder of Nineveh , Ancient capital of Assyria, although he does not seem to represent any one personage known to modern history, and is more likely a conflation of several real and/or...
who is the primordial king of Assyria
Assyria
Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
, and they often call this Ninus son of Belus. Their Ninus is the legendary founder and eponym of the city of Ninus, referring to Ninevah, while Belus, though sometimes treated as a human, is identified with the god Bel.
An earlier genealogy may have made Agron, as a legendary first king of an ancient dynasty, to be a son of the mythical Ninus, son of Belus, and stopped at that point. In the genealogy given by Herodotus, someone may have grafted the tradition of a Lydian son of Heracles at the top end of it, so that Ninus and Belus in the list now become descendants of Heracles, who just happen to bear the same names as the more famous Ninus and Belus.
That, at least, is the interpretation of later chronographers who also ignored Herodotus' statement that Agron was the first to be a king, and included Alcaeus, Belus, and Ninus in their List of Kings of Lydia.
As to how Agron gained the kingdom from the older dynasty descended from Lydus
Lydus
Lydus was the third king of Maeonia in succession to his father Atys. He was the third and last king of the Atyad dynasty. According to Herodotus, Maeonia became known as Lydia after Lydus's reign.-See also:*List of Kings of Lydia...
son of Atys, Herodotus only says that the Heraclides, "having been entrusted by these princes with the management of affairs, obtained the kingdom by an oracle."
Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
(5.2.2) makes Atys father of Lydus, and Tyrrhenus
Tyrrhenus
In Etruscan mythology, Tyrrhenus was one of the founders of the Etruscan Federation of twelve cities, along with his brother Tarchon. Herodotus describes him as the saver of Etruscans, because he led them from Lydia to Etruria. His name was given to the Etruscan people by the Greek. The Romans...
to be one of the descendants of Heracles and Omphale. But all other accounts place Atys, Lydus, and Tyrrhenus brother of Lydus among the pre-Heraclid kings of Lydia.
In art
- One of the most famous symphonic poems in a mythological series composed by the French composer Camille Saint-SaënsCamille Saint-SaënsCharles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
in the 1870s is titled Le Rouet d'Omphale, or The Spinning Wheel Of Omphale, the rouet being a spinning wheel that the queen and her maidens used—in this version of the myth, it was Delphic ApolloApolloApollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
who condemned the hero to serve the Lydian queen disguised as a woman. In the 20th century, during the "Golden Age Of Radio," this symphonic poem gained wider public exposure when it was used as the theme music for The ShadowThe ShadowThe Shadow is a collection of serialized dramas, originally in pulp magazines, then on 1930s radio and then in a wide variety of media, that follow the exploits of the title character, a crime-fighting vigilante in the pulps, which carried over to the airwaves as a "wealthy, young man about town"...
. - Hercules und Omphale is a painting by the 16th century German painter Lucas Cranach the ElderLucas Cranach the ElderLucas Cranach the Elder , was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving...
. It features Hercules being dressed up as a woman by Omphale and two maids. Hercules is also spinning wool.
- Omphale is a tragédie lyrique by Jean-Baptiste Philibert Cardonne, premiered at the Palais-RoyalThéâtre du Palais-RoyalThe Théâtre du Palais-Royal is a 750 seat theatre at 38, rue Montpensier in Paris. In 1637 Cardinal Richelieu began work on a theatre on the east wing of the Palais-Royal building, to break the theatre monopoly of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and it was opened in 1641...
in ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, on 2 May 1769
- Hercule et Omphale is a short, sexually explicit poem by the French poet Guillaume ApollinaireGuillaume ApollinaireWilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
appearing in the erotic (and for many years forbidden) novel Les onze mille verges (The Eleven Thousand Penises).
- In August Strindberg's The Father (1887), the protagonist, Captain Adolf, likens his wife's mistreatment of him to Omphale's behavior toward Heracles. "Omphale!" He screams. "It's Queen Omphale herself! Now you play with Hercules' club while he spins your wool!"