Pictured above is another marble image of Hercules from the Capitoline Museums in Rome, not one modeled on any of the emperors this time, to commemorate the end of the Heraclids. Herodotus writes that the Candaules's queen lets Gyges into the royal bedchamber just as her husband did before her. She hands him a sword. Candaules enters. Gyges strikes. And so, after five centuries and twenty-two generations, the Heraclids die out. Gyges marries the queen and declares himself king. The people of Lydia are justifiably angry about the regicide, but the Oracle at Delphi approves Gyges's reign, while also warning that five generations down the line, this new royal dynasty will suffer a fall in recompense for the murder of Candaules. Herodotus points out that no one pays attention to the prophecy...until it comes true.
Meanwhile, along with the bloodline of Heracles, my ongoing recap of Hercules Unchained must also come to an end. When we last left off, Omphale, another Lydian queen with murder on her mind, was planning to kill Hercules and replace him with her new lover, Castor.
Having done some head scratching and soul searching, Hercules starts to regain his memories. He confronts Omphale and catches her kissing Castor. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Omphale kneels at Hercules's feet and swears that she loves him. She promises to let him leave peacefully with Laertes and the Greeks, but obviously this is another ruse.
Omphale sends her soldiers after Hercules and the Greeks. A battle ensues where Hercules demonstrates his great strength by tossing a statue down the staircase at the advancing enemies. The escaped Ulysses leads Hercules, Laertes, and the rest of the Greeks down through Omphale's underground cave of petrified corpses. Luckily, the cave opens up on the other side to the sea and the Greeks catch sight of their ship.
The Greeks strip down and swim to the ship, ready to partake of fresh adventures away from Lydia that I don't intend to recap here. Omphale watches their escape from her palace, tears streaming down her face. The queen is definitely not in a good place right now.
Omphale is devastated. Her army has been defeated. She has lost Hercules and all the other good looking Greek men. She's never been an emotionally stable person. There's a bubbling vat of corpse petrifying liquid nearby. Omphale takes a flying leap and that's the end of her. The movie still goes on for another twenty minutes. You can watch it on YouTube if you want to see the rest.
After all this, I still don't know who was the Lydian mother of Alcaeus, the first of the Heraclids. I'm pretty sure the mother isn't Omphale, she's no servant girl like the one described by Herodotus. Maybe Heracles is supposed to have dallied with some of her maidens during his time in Lydia? Herodotus does not give us any more information about this, although he will talk about other bloodlines descended from Heracles in later books of The Histories. For now the Heraclids of Lydia are no more and we must follow the new dynasty of kings from Gyges to Croesus.
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