Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Fearing to lose Heracles to Iole, Deianeira anointed a fine robe (or shirt) with the blood she had kept from Nessus’s wound, believing it a philtre of fidelity. She sealed the gift with instructions that it touch no fire or sun before Heracles put it on, and sent it by Lichas to Cenaeum, where Heracles was sacrificing to Zeus after the fall of Oechalia. Heracles put on the robe to sacrifice. As the heat of the altar and his body warmed the cloth, the Hydra venom woke. The garment clung and burned into his flesh. In agony he seized Lichas—who had only carried what he was given—and hurled him into the sea; the herald’s body was dashed on the rocks. Heracles, raving with pain, was brought by ship toward Trachis (or inland to the mainland shore). Hyllus, son of Heracles and Deianeira, reported the horror to his mother and cursed her as a murderer. Deianeira, understanding too late that Nessus had deceived her, went into the house and killed herself with a sword upon the marriage bed. Apollodorus notes the same chain—robe, agony, Deianeira’s hanging or suicide—in brief chronicle form. The poison that once tipped Heracles’s arrows against the Hydra’s kin now consumes the archer; the marriage won from Achelous ends in the wife’s despair and the husband’s living death on the road to Oeta.