Deianira

In Greek mythology, wife of Heracles, who won her in combat against the river god Achelous; and mother of his sons, considered ancestors of the Dorian Greeks. She killed Heracles by accident, giving him poison instead of an aphrodisiac, and in her grief committed suicide. Her story is dramatized in Sophocles' Women of Trachis.

In one tradition, Heracles' death was caused by Deianira and the centaur Nessus, who carried travellers across the Rver Evenus. Nessus tried to abduct Deianira, but the hero shot him with an arrow dipped in the hydra's poisonous blood. Before he died, Nessus advised Deianira to save his blood as it would restore Heracles' love if he strayed. Some time later, unsure of her husband's fidelity, Deianira sent him a shirt dipped in the lethal blood; the cloth ate away at Heracles' flesh and could not be removed.

Deianira was the daughter of Oeneus, king of Calydon, and sister of Meleager, organizer of the heroic Calydonian Boar hunt.