This superbly detailed sculpture perhaps adorned a piece of Roman furniture. It shows Herakles--favorite hero of the classical world--wearing the Nemean lion skin and clutching the golden apple of the Hesperides. These objects represent the first and last of his twelve labors, which in antiquity were metaphors of the struggles of life. In its depiction of a man at rest after heroic effort, it is a work of art full of quiet contemplation and a melancholy dignity which we can still appreciate after all these centuries.