Hercules in a lion hat holds a bat

The pelt of the Nemean lion and the heavy club are the two infallible attributes of Heracles in Greek art. The first labour assigned by Eurystheus was to kill the lion whose hide no weapon could pierce; Heracles strangled the beast and thereafter wore its skin as armour, the head as helmet — a piece of iconography stable from the seventh century BCE archaic vases all the way to the marble Farnese Hercules of the Roman Imperial period.