Omphale. In Greek mythology, Omphale was queen of the kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor. She is best known for her relationship with Hercules. Omphale is frequently shown as a regal and powerful figure, reflecting her status as the queen of Lydia. She may be depicted wearing a crown, fine clothing, or other symbols of her position. She is often shown in the company of Hercules, with whom she had a complex and multifaceted relationship. In some versions of the myth, Omphale and Hercules traded clothes as a symbol of their temporary role reversal, with Hercules taking on feminine tasks and Omphale assuming more masculine pursuits. In art, this scene may be depicted as a playful or intimate moment between the two figures. Sometimes the queen is shown teaching Hercules the art of spinning wool, a traditionally feminine activity. She may be shown interacting with Hermes, who was said to have fallen in love with her. Some depictions of Omphale and Hercules emphasize the erotic or sensual aspects of their relationship, showing them in intimate or suggestive poses. These scenes often reflect the broader theme of love and desire in Greek and Roman mythology. Diodorus Siculus provides the first appearance of the Omphale theme in literature, though Aeschylus was aware of the episode. The Greeks did not recognize her as a goddess: the undisputed etymological connection with omphalos, the world-navel, has never been made clear. In her best-known myth, she is the mistress of the hero Heracles during a year of required servitude, a scenario that offered writers and artists opportunities to explore sexual roles and erotic themes. Omphale was the daughter of Iardanus, either a king of Lydia, or a river-god. According to Bibliotheke she was the wife of Tmolus, the oak-clad mountain king of Lydia; after he was gored to death by a bull, she continued to reign on her own. In one of many Greek variations on the theme of penalty for inadvertent murder, for his murder of Iphitus, the great hero Heracles, whom the Romans identified as Hercules, was, by the command of the Delphic Oracle Xenoclea, remanded as a slave to Omphale for the period of a year, the compensation to be paid to Eurytus, who refused it. The theme, inherently a comic inversion of sexual roles, is not fully illustrated in any surviving text from Classical Greece. Plutarch, in his vita of Pericles, 24, mentions lost comedies of Kratinos and Eupolis, which alluded to the contemporary capacity of Aspasia in the household of Pericles, and to Sophocles 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. Omphale even wore the skin of the Nemean Lion and carried Heracles' olive-wood club. No full early account survives to supplement the later vase-paintings. But it was also during his stay in Lydia that Heracles captured the city of the Itones and enslaved them, killed Syleus who forced passersby to hoe his vineyard, and captured the Cercopes. He buried the body of Icarus and took part in the Calydonian Boar Hunt and the Argonautica. After some time, Omphale freed Heracles and took him as her husband. They travelled to the grove of Dionysus and planned to celebrate the rites of Bacchus at dawn. Hercules slept alone in a bed covered with the clothes of Omphale. The Greek god Pan hoped to have his way with Omphale and crept naked into the bed of Hercules who threw Pan to the floor and laughed. Diodorus Siculus and Ovid in his Heroides mention a son named Lamos. But Bibliotheca gives the name of the son of Heracles and Omphale as Agelaus. Pausanias gives yet another name, mentioning Tyrsenus, son of Heracles by the Lydian woman, by whom Pausanias presumably means Omphale.