Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Heracles sought marriage with Deianeira, daughter of Oeneus of Calydon (or, in some notices, of Dionysus). The river-god Achelous was already a suitor. He could appear as a bull, as a serpent, or as a man with a bull’s head, and Deianeira dreaded him. Heracles challenged him for the girl. They wrestled. Achelous shifted shapes; Heracles held him through serpent and bull until, seizing a horn of the bull-form, he broke it off. The river-god conceded defeat and recovered his horn in exchange for the hand of Deianeira—or, in the cornucopia tradition transmitted later, the Naiads filled the broken horn with fruit and it became the horn of plenty. Heracles took Deianeira as his wife. Sophocles’ Deianeira, speaking in old age, remembers the contest as the terror from which Heracles saved her: a suitor who came in three shapes, and a mortal hero who won her by force of arms beside the river. The marriage binds Heracles to the Calydonian house and sets the stage for the journey that will meet Nessus at the Evenus.