Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/210

 tragedy is named from the Chorus. From the subject it might have been called ‘Dêanira or the Death of Heracles.’

The Centaur Nessus, in dying by the arrow of Heracles, which had been dipped in the venom of the Hydra, persuaded the bride Dêanira, whose beauty was the cause of his death, to keep some of the blood from the wound as a love-charm for her husband. Many years afterwards, when Heracles was returning from his last exploit of sacking Oechalia, in Euboea, he sent before him, by his herald Lichas, Iŏlè, the king’s daughter, whom he had espoused. Dêanira, when she had discovered this, commissioned Lichas when he returned to present his master with a robe, which she had anointed with the charm,—hoping by this means to regain her lord’s affection. But the poison of the Hydra did its work, and Heracles died in agony, Dêanira having already killed herself on ascertaining what she had done. The action takes place in Trachis, near the Maliac Gulf, where Heracles and Dêanira, by permission of Ceÿx, the king of the country, have been living in exile. At the close of the drama, Heracles, while yet alive, is carried towards his pyre on Mount Oeta.