Samson

I would put this in the section for religious art if there was one, and I was religious

The biblical story of Samson is fascinating from a pagan perpective: Samson is at first compared to a young lion, he has a mane of dreadlocks, he is invincible (like Hercules). He kills a lion and later finds bees nesting in the carcase, inspiring his riddle "Out of the eater came forth meat, out of the strong something sweet to eat" the Philistines answer with another riddle "what is stronger than a lion and what is sweeter than honey". The answer can only be love. After his betrayal by Delilah, the Philistines literally make an ass of him, blinding him and chaining him to a mill wheel. Something they used to do to donkeys (blind animals walk in circles). Lions and donkeys are often connected in myth and literature. The Lion is the King of beasts and the donkey is the most humble. The Donkey and mill wheel are also a symbol of the revolving heavens, and the donkey represents Saturn which (as far as the ancients were concerned) sat at the edge of the solar system and turned the cosmic millstone.