By the time Sophocles wrote this play, Herakles had become a widely worshipped cult figure. (As the son of Zeus and Alk-mene—the mortal wife of Amphytrion of Thebes—Herakles displayed his strength and resourcefulness at an early age: he strangled two snakes sent by Zeus’ revengeful goddess wife Hera to kill him in his cradle.) His reputation as a savior and benefactor of humankind swelled over centuries. Mythmakers invented countless improbable monsters and obstacles for him to overcome. But egomania and cruelty were also part of the legend. In Women of Trakhis, Sophocles undermines reverential accounts of the hero’s selfless service to his fellow Greeks by taking equal notice of his crimes and his brutal, deceitful, selfish acts. When Herakles finally appears, he is writhing in a robe smeared with clinging, burning, penetrating acid, yet Sophocles makes it difficult for an audience to feel sorry for him.

Deianeira is a shadowy or absent figure in the earliest versions of the Herakles myth. By making her the driving force in his play, Sophocles succeeds in dramatizing the destructive side of his culture’s fascination with hero cults and especially with Herakles himself. He creates in Deianeira one of the most sympathetic and realistic female characters in Greek drama, and presents a Herakles who, though blessed with immense strength and resourcefulness, is also egomaniacal and cruel.

As the play begins, Deianeira explains to the chorus of Trakhinian women how painful it is loving “the best” man alive. “People have a saying that goes way back,” she explains. “You don’t know your own life, / whether it’s good or evil—not / until it’s over. Mine I know now. / It’s unlucky and it’s harsh” (1–5). Deianeira has missed Herakles. She resents his latest fifteen-month absence. But until now—when she is confronted by Iole, an attractive and aristocratic captive whom Herakles has sent ahead to become his third wife—she has tolerated his sexual conquests and his neglect. Sophocles renders, with striking realism, Deianeira’s struggle to reconcile passion, devotion, and jealousy as she reacts to the girl’s sudden arrival at her house. Pondering how to deal with the threat posed by Iole, Deianeira remembers a “love charm” given her by Nessus, a centaur who was attempting to rape her when Herakles pierced his chest with a poison-soaked arrow. Dying, Nessus promised that the gore from his wound, if carefully preserved, could be used to keep Herakles “from seeing and loving” anyone but her. Deianeira, having saved the gore all these years, will now rub it into a robe and have a messenger take it to Herakles as a homecoming gift. In so doing, she inflicts on him a horrible, unquenchable agony. This epitome of warrior culture is rendered helpless at the hands of a “frail woman, / born with no male strength” (1192–93). “She beat me—only she,” says Herakles. “And didn’t even need a sword” (1094–95). When Deianeira hears from her son Hyllos what her love potion has done to her husband, whose passion she craves and fears, sh...