Women of Trachis
Sophoclesc. 450 BCESophocles wrote a tragedy where Heracles isn't brought down by a monster but by his wife's botched attempt to win his love back.
Read this if you…
- love Hercules as a character, (who doesn't?)
- loved the oedipus trilogy, and are now going for Sophocles deep cuts
- like ironic tragic climaxes
Skip this if you…
- haven't read oedipus trilogy to decide if you like sophocles
Why It Matters
Sophocles wrote a tragedy where Heracles isn't brought down by a monster but by his wife's botched attempt to win his love back. It's the least performed of his surviving plays and one of the most painful, a study of how good intentions cause damage you can't undo. Its blunt depiction of physical agony pushed at what Greek theater was willing to put onstage.
The 
Take
Solid play about wife of Hercules wanting him too bad. Not bad not bad. Poetic that her love was what was killing him
Where to go next
- The Odyssey by Homer. Women of Trachis built on it. - Sophocles built this tragedy on a shameful episode the *Odyssey* records — Heracles killing Iphitus, the guest he should have protected - That epic crime becomes the play's quiet engine; the *Women of Trachis* leans on Homer's account to set its irony cutting - Read the Odyssean passage first and you feel the trap Sophocles is springing
Depicted in Art
The centaur Nessus gallops across the river bearing Deianira off; her arms thrown back in panicked protest as her drapery billows behind.
Guido Reni, 1621
Mannerist tableau — Hercules grips the wounded centaur by the hair as Deianira stands beside them, the three bodies interlocked against an almost neutral ground.
Bartholomäus Spranger, 1582
Hercules, wracked by the poison, climbs his own funeral pyre on Mount Oeta and lifts his face to the sky as the flames begin.
Guido Reni, 1620
Hercules writhes alone against a black ground, clawing at the flaming shirt of Nessus that has fused to his skin; the centaur dies in the distance.
Francisco de Zurbarán, 1634
Black-figure scene on the neck of a funerary amphora — Herakles plants his foot on the kneeling centaur and grips his hair, sword drawn; names inscribed beside each figure.
-620
Nessus rears in mid-stride with Deianira twisting away from his grasp; Hercules is glimpsed across the river drawing his bow.
Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée, 1755
Recommended Editions
Hugh Lloyd-Jones
Harvard University Press · 1994
Lloyd-Jones's Loeb Sophocles, facing-page Greek. Deianira's terrible innocence and Heracles' poisoned-shirt death both land with the precision the play needs.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“The long unmeasured pulse of time moves everything. There is nothing hidden that it cannot bring to light, nothing once known that may not become unknown.”
“There is a saying among men, put forth of old, that thou canst not rightly judge whether a mortal's lot is good or evil, ere he die.”
More by Sophocles
- Antigone
441 BCE · Tragedy
- Ajax
c. 440 BCE · Tragedy
- Oedipus Rex
c. 429 BCE · Tragedy
- Electra
c. 410 BCE · Tragedy
- Philoctetes
409 BCE · Tragedy
- Oedipus at Colonus
401 BCE · Tragedy