It's Hercules' lion skin ... but why the effeminate face? Meet Omphale, Queen of Lydia. Hercules was her slave for a year as punishment for killing Iphitus. It gave opportunity for comic gender reversal, with Omphale wearing the Nemean lion's skin and brandishing club, while Hercules is made to wear her clothes and hold her wool. Eventually she freed him, after he'd captured a city, hunted the Calydonean Boar and done all the usual heroic deeds. Of course they married. My coin is an electrum hekte from Ionia, c. 387-326 BC, Bodenstedt 107. I love these little electrum coins, and I love a good classical myth. Omphale was sometimes depicted on Lydian provincials. This one, from Wildwinds, is from the reign of Antoninus Pius (SNG Copenhagen 222-223). There's a remarkable Roman statue in the Vatican that seems to be a portrait in the guise of Omphale, from around 200 AD. She is sending a message about her power as well as her beauty. The story also inspired some great renaissance and baroque painting, including Cranach, Rubens and the weird and wonderful Prague court artist Bartolomaus Spranger. I'm delighted to have bagged my own modest image of this fascinating legend.
I like that coin quite a bit and almost bid on it . It’s a wonderful example of the type, and a great “story coin”. Congrats!
It is an interesting coin. I know that the priest of Herakles' cult at Kos also had to wear feminine attire, and that the earliest cult statue of Acheloios in Greece is wearing a female dress.
