Trachiniae
Also known as: Women of Trachis, The Trachiniae
Deianeira, fearing she has lost Heracles’ love, sends him a robe anointed with the blood of the centaur Nessus. The garment proves deadly, bringing agonizing death to Heracles and ruin to the house.
Description
Set in Trachis, the drama centers on Deianeira’s anxious fidelity and a fateful attempt to reclaim her husband, Heracles, after years of absence. A captive maiden, Iole, arrives with the herald Lichas, heightening Deianeira’s fear of displacement. Trusting the centaur Nessus’s supposed charm, she anoints a robe with his blood, unaware that Heracles’ Hydra-poisoned arrows had tainted it. When the robe is sent to Heracles at his sacrifice on Mount Cenaeum, it burns into his flesh. Lichas is slain in Heracles’ rage; Deianeira, realizing her unwitting role, dies by her own hand. Borne home in torment, Heracles commands his son Hyllus to marry Iole, sealing a grim reconciliation of lineage and prophecy.
Historiography
Preserved through the medieval manuscript tradition of Sophoclean plays, Trachiniae has an uncertain production date and has prompted debate over its structure and unity. Ancient reception is sparsely attested, but the play’s account of Heracles’ death influenced later treatments, notably in Latin literature. Modern scholarship emphasizes Deianeira’s centrality, choral lyricism, and the tragic misrecognition arising from oracular ambiguity and deceptive pharmaka.
Date Notes
Exact production date unknown; stylistic and historical arguments place the play in the mid-5th century BCE.
Symbols
Major Characters
- Deianeira
- Heracles
- Hyllus
- Lichas
- Iole
Myths
- Nessus’s Deception and the Poisoned Robe
- The Death and Apotheosis of Heracles
- Deianira’s Despair
Facts
- Setting: Trachis and Mount Cenaeum in Euboea.
- Chorus consists of women of Trachis allied with Deianeira.
- The fatal robe is smeared with Nessus’s blood contaminated by Hydra venom from Heracles’ arrows.
- Heracles is stricken while performing a sacrifice to Zeus at Cenaeum.
- Lichas, the herald, brings Iole and is killed by Heracles in a rage.
- Deianeira dies by her own hand upon learning the robe’s effect.
- Hyllus becomes the agent of the play’s final rites and future lineage.
- Heracles commands Hyllus to take Iole as wife, securing continuity after catastrophe.
- The play explores oracular ambiguity and tragic unintended harm (hamartia without malice).
- Dialogue is primarily iambic trimeter with varied choral lyric meters.
- Date of first performance is unknown; mid-5th century BCE is most likely.