For our monthly Herodotus discussions, my friend and I often paired the reading selection with some related cinematic viewing. Since the first half of Book 1 leans heavily into the Lydian saga, the ancestors of Croesus and his own doomed reign over Lydia, we started with Pietro Francisci's 1959 Italian film Ercole e la regina di Lidia (Hercules and the Queen of Lydia), better known as Hercules Unchained in the 1960 English language dub. This film was the second go around for American bodybuilder Steve Reeves in the role of Hercules, as he starred in the 1958 Le fatiche di Ercole (The Labors of Hercules), a film not included in the DVD box set of pelpum movies pictured above. The pepla were sword-and-sandal themed films produced in Italy during the 50s and 60s. The term comes from the Ancient Greek garment known as a peplos, a long draped robe, although both male and female characters in these films tend to wear much shorter tunics overall. If you are one of the many 21st century viewers who only do streaming, these films are typically public domain and can be found for free on YouTube.
As this section of Herodotus introduces us to Lydia, we will begin with the "Lydian" pre-credits sequence from Hercules Unchained, about two minutes of screen time. This is also about the rate that I have been covering Herodotus thus far, so it all works out.
We begin with soldiers carrying an unconscious man on a stretcher towards what appears to be a temple. The set designer seems to have modeled the structure on Hindu or Buddhist temples rather than the Greco-Roman style ruins typically found in that part of the world. Having traveled to both Turkey and India, I can say this does look more South Asian to me, but maybe they were just going for an exotic eastern fantasy. Either that or they had to reuse a set from some other film due to budgetary concerns. The dialogue later in the film refers to this place as "The Island of Lydia," so geographic accuracy must not have been a high priority for the screenwriter as well as the set designer. Maybe they thought Ancient Lydia was in Sri Lanka?
Inside the temple, a young man in one of those aforementioned short tunics approaches a mysterious woman, whose face remains unseen in this pre-credits sequence. Spoiler alert, this is the glamorous Omphale, Queen of Lydia, who we will be seeing more of in future posts.
The young man tells her, "They've arrived." She rises and descends a grand staircase, her diaphanous gown swishing about her. She lasciviously places her hands upon the man on the stretcher as the music swells in the background.
At a gesture from Omphale, the guards turn on the young man from earlier, who has been watching the proceedings. He screams, "No! No!" but they cut him down as Omphale continues to fondle her new acquisition. Clearly, she's trading up. I am reminded of the Eleusinian "King for a Year" in Mary Renault's historical novel The King Must Die, which I must also blog about sometime.
Fade to black and then the opening credits start. According to the titles, the story is "freely adapted" by Pietro Francisci from "The Greek myth of Hercules and Omphale, Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles, and The Seven Against Thebes of Aeschylus." So many sources for one screenplay, sort of like this blog!
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