Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/127

THE GREEK HEROES 113 was now told by the oracle that he could be ransomed from his guilt only by a three years' servitude. 145. Hermes therefore sold him to Omphale, who was in later times commonly regarded as queen of the Lydians and as ancestress of the Lydian kings ; probably, however, she is only the eponymous heroine of a city Omphalium, which is believed to have existed in early times on the border between Thessaly and Epirus. For in her service he scourged the Itonians, i.e., of course, the inhabitants of the Thessalian Itonus, where he also fought with the mighty Cycnus. He punished likewise the sly thieves, whose home was near Thermopylae, the Cercopes, and also Syleus (< robber') on Pelion. But Lamios (or La- mus), the son of Hercules and Omphale, is merely the eponym of the city Lamia, situated not far north of Trachis. Perhaps it was not till after the home of the legend was transferred to Lydia that the poetic addition to the story was made that Hercules clothed himself as a maidservant and worked with the distaff, while Omphale adorned herself with his lion's skin and his club. 146. Directly connected with these legends, and, as their field of action is in the neighboring Aetolia, prob- ably allied in origin, is Hercules's wooing of Deianira (' husband-destroyer '). She was .the daughter of king Oeneus in Calydon, a country abounding in vines, where, to gain possession of her, Hercules (probably as the repre- sentative of civilization) was forced to fight with the wild river god Achelotis. The latter appears sometimes as a natural river, again as a bull, and still again as a man with a bull's head. Not until Hercules breaks off one of his horns does he acknowledge himself conquered, and offers, in order to recover it, to give in exchange the horn of