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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2007804, member: 19463&quot;]In popular mythology we hear of&nbsp; only one lion: Nemean.&nbsp; Digging deeper, I find mention of a lion of Cithaeron killed previously and used as a protective garment by Hercules.&nbsp; How are we to tell if a snapshot of Hercules is before or after he killed the Nemean if he had other lion garments?&nbsp; Its beyond me.&nbsp; On coins we see depictions of the killing of the Nemean as the first of the labors but the other eleven are more rarely shown.&nbsp; I&#039;m not sure you can get a full set.&nbsp; I have only one labor: the Nemean as shown on a Republican denarius and diobols of Taras.&nbsp;&nbsp; We see many coins with Hercules standing around but few actually laboring.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]361092[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>The Nemean has a hide impervious to arrows and knives.&nbsp; To skin it, Hercules had to use one of the lion&#039;s own claws.&nbsp; On these coin, Hercules appears nude while wrestling.&nbsp; I assume he was not wearing a lesser lionskin that day and would expect he would later prefer the bulletproof one so consider it reasonable to assume all feline items shown on the coins are the Nemean lion unless you can find a picture of him wrestling the Nemean while wearing a lionskin.&nbsp; I did but it is Indian and not on a coin. </p><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemean_lion#mediaviewer/File:Met,_gandhara,_hercules_and_the_nemean_lion,_1st_century.JPG" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemean_lion#mediaviewer/File:Met,_gandhara,_hercules_and_the_nemean_lion,_1st_century.JPG" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemean_lion#mediaviewer/File:Met,_gandhara,_hercules_and_the_nemean_lion,_1st_century.JPG</a></p><p>&nbsp;A panther would turn him into a Dionysos impersonator.&nbsp; Do we need to take care not to take the details of our myths too seriously?&nbsp; Yes, we do.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]361093[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]361094[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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