Killing Hercules

Each chapter of this book offers a detailed account of the ways in which different cultures – the ancient Greek democracy, imperial Rome, early Christianity, the emergent vernacular cultures of late medieval and early modern Europe, the Enlightenment – have re-evaluated the story of Hercules and his wife and killer Deianira, in the light of their own attempts to come to terms with the phenomena of military and domestic violence. The study combines the close examination of texts, translations and visual images, but it is also about performance: it begins with Sophocles interrogating the cult of Hercules’ heroism and deification in his Trachiniae, and ends with Martin Crimp’s reworking of that play in 2004.