A Hero's Welcome: Homecoming and Transition in the Trachiniae

Abstract

The nostos ("homecoming") of Heracles in Sophocles' Trachiniae figures as the triumphal return of a victorious athlete. Under ideal circumstances, nostos culminates in the joyous remarriage of husband and wife, but in Trachiniae, reversals that befall Heracles and Deianeira transform the hero's triumphant nostos into a spectacle of death. While the failed nostos motif heralds disaster and effects a decisively bleak atmosphere throughout the play's much-discussed ending, it also nods toward a more positive tradition concerning Heracles' end, since both vase-painting and early poetic accounts portray Heracles' apotheosis-featuring marriage to Hebe and reception into Zeus's household-as a homecoming.