LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Heracles: Lions
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Heracles trapped the lion in a cave near Nemea. Since all the weapons were ineffective against the lion, Heracles decided to tackle the beast, unarmed. After an intense struggle, Heracles strangled the lion with his bare hand. Heracles skinned the lion and used the pelt or hide as a cloak.
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A number of Greek rulers claimed descent from Heracles as a symbol of their power; these included the Macedonian royal family, whose most notable member was Alexander the Great. The cult of Heracles may have been the first foreign cult to be introduced to Rome; he was particularly popular with merchants, because of the amount of travel involved in his labours. Dogs were excluded from his sanctuary at Rome; maybe he had seen enough of them with Cerberus. In the later Roman Empire a number of emperors identified with Hercules and had themselves represented in statuary with his attributes — most notably Commodus, who issued a commemorative medal showing himself wearing Hercules' lion-skin, with the inscription ‘To the Roman Hercules’.
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According to some, these birds were not regular birds, but men-eating birds, and they deny that Heracles 1 killed them; he only drove them away, they say. Some birds called Stymphalian were said to live in the Arabian desert and believed to be as savage against humans as lions or leopards. They were able to pierce armours of bronze or iron, and wound or kill men with their beaks, or by shooting their feathers at them as if they were arrows.
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Athena instructed Heracles how to remove the skin from the Nemean Lion, by using the lion's own claws to cut through its thick hide. The lion's hide became Heracles' signature garment, along with the olive-wood club he used in the battle. Athena ... assisted Heracles on a few other labors.
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