Here is the charming story of how, in a fit of pique at the Pythia, the oracle at Delphi, Hercules tried to steal her tripod, and how his half-brother Apollo tried to stop him.

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN APOLLO AND HERCULES OVER THE TRIPOD


Apollo fighting Heracles as he steals the Delphic tripod. Attic black-figure oinochoe (wine-jug), c 525 BC, by the Taleides Painter, Louvre Museum, Paris.Photographer/Source Jastrow (2006) (from MLehanas)

Like many heroes and muscle men with a surplus of testosterone, Hercules often went over the top. Once, when driven by a violent rage, he murdered his friend Iphytus, for which he was stricken (by Apollo, probably) with a terrible disease. Seeking a cure, he went to Delphi to ask the Pythia what to do. But she was not able to answer him with an oracle. Outraged at what he took to be her refusal to help, Hercules started to tear the temple apart. Spotting the tripod, he seized it and started to run off with it, thinking to set up his own oracle.

But Apollo was not going to let anyone, not even a superman, carry off a prized tripod, let alone a tripod with the power to transmit oracles. So he began to wrestle with Hercules to wrest it from him. As they wrestled over the tripod, other gods came, including the women, not just to watch, but to join in. Artemis came to help her brother, and Athena came to help her hero. While their tug-of-war was going on, Zeus came by, and seeing his two sons fighting, decided to break up the fight. Taking up one of his thunderbolts, he hurled it between them. End of fight.


Apollo and Hercules struggling for possession of the tripod, with Artemis on the left helping her brother, and Athena, in the center, helping Hercules. Treasury of the Siphnians, east pediment, Delphi, ca 525 BC. Delphi Museum, photo by Maria Daniels.

After the brothers were separated, Apollo got back his tripod, and Hercules got his oracle. The oracle decreed he had to be sold into slavery for a year, and had to pay the money to Eurytus as compensation for the loss of his son.

HERCULES' DELIGHTFUL PUNISHMENT

Hermes, always ready to get in on a commercial transaction, brokered the sale of Hercules into slavery. He was sold to Omphale, the Queen of Lydia. All the gold from the sale was given to Eurytus as blood money for the murder of his son, but Eurytus refused to accept it.

A trio of Roman poets, Statius, Ovid and Fasti, embroidered the story of Hercules as Omphale's slave by depicting him dressed in women's clothes and doing needlework with the other ladies. According to Fasti, Faunas, a woodland satyr and follower of Pan and Dionysus, tried to rape Omphale. When he entered her bedchamber at night and lifted the silk nightie he took to be the queen's, he was amazed to feel a hairy bottom. Still, unfazed, as satyrs are wont to be, he tried to penetrate the sleeping form. That woke up Hercules, and he pushed Faunus off so hard the satyr couldn't get up. Torches were called for, so Hercules and Omphale could see the intruder. In the light, they laughed at the satyr's plight. So embarrassed was Faunus at being tricked by a nightie, afterwards he made all his followers come to his rites stark naked.

Such tales titillated the Romans, so it's no surprise to find at Pompeii this wall painting of Hercules in his dress (or undress) at the court of Omphale. And guess who's in charge of his club?



In the Renaissance, Ovid and his amorous tales were so popular that pictures of Hercules in drag before a naked Omphale were much in demand, as this 1585 piece of eye candy by Bartholome Spränger testifies. Here the switch of gender roles and costumes is complete.



As for Hercules, after three years of serving his mistress as handmaid, sex slave and lover, she finally freed him to return to the world of male heroics. A nice, and naughty, tale indeed.