Characters
- Deianeira — wife at Trachis whose household Iole will enter (forward glance)
- Eurytus — king of Oechalia; earlier refused Iole; slain in the sack
- Heracles — sacks Oechalia; kills Eurytus and sons; takes Iole
- Iole — daughter of Eurytus; captive of Heracles; cause of Deianeira’s jealousy
- Iphitus — murdered son whose death belongs to the earlier quarrel (background)
- Megara — earlier wife cited in Eurytus’s original refusal (background)
- Sons of Eurytus — killed with their father (Iphitus already dead from 030)
Places
- Argos — earlier scene of Iphitus’s murder (background)
- Oechalia — city of Eurytus; sacked by Heracles (location variously Euboea, Messenia, or Thessaly in ancient debate)
- Trachis — destination of the captive Iole and of Heracles’s return (forward glance)
Themes
Narrative
Long before, Eurytus of Oechalia had offered his daughter Iole to whoever beat him and his sons at archery, then refused Heracles the prize for fear of another Megara-like disaster. Iphitus’s later murder at Tiryns had left that wound open. After the Lydian servitude, the Trojan sack, and marriage to Deianeira, Heracles returned in arms against Oechalia.
He took the city, killed Eurytus and his remaining sons, and carried off Iole as his captive. Apollodorus places this conquest among the last mortal campaigns, immediately before the Trachis catastrophe: Heracles sends Iole ahead or brings her into the orbit of Deianeira’s household, and the presence of the younger woman becomes the spark for the poisoned robe.
The Apollodorean line is spare and chronicle-like: refusal, delayed revenge, sack, captive. It does not stage Deianeira’s psychology; that belongs to Sophocles. Together the two versions give both the military fact and the tragic meaning of Iole’s arrival.