Sentenced by the Oracle to a year as Queen Omphale’s slave, Heracles was stripped of the lion skin and the club, dressed by the women of the Lydian court and handed a distaff to spin with, while the queen wore the skin and carried the club herself. Howard Oakley follows the scene from a third-century mosaic at Llíria, where it sits among the Twelve Labours, through Cranach’s smirking ladies, Spranger, Rubens and Goya — and notes how early the story acquired its bedroom appendix involving Pan.