Abstract:
Greek myths are particularly susceptible to influence from the teller’s culture and their
details often change to address issues from contemporary society. The myth of Deianeira,
though often neglected due to greater interest in her more transgressive tragic peers,
provides fascinating insight into the conflict surrounding the appropriate wife and the
ideal marriage. The two most illustrious treatments of her myth are the Trachiniae,
written by Sophocles and the Heroides 9, written by Ovid. Sophocles focuses on
Deianeira’s struggle to remain a proper wife after Heracles has brought home the foreign
mistress Iole. This choice may have influenced by the Periclean funeral speech that
advocated silence as women’s glory and the citizenship laws that prevented children from
non-citizen wives to inherit. Ovid on the other hand used Deianeira as a mouthpiece to
denounce Hercules’s willful submission to his foreign mistresses and shameful crossdressing.
His criticism comes alongside Roman anxieties about effeminacy and the Julian
laws that penalized the childless and rewarded citizens with large families. This thesis
will track the ways in which contemporary culture changed the way the myth of
Deianeira was written.
