Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
Herakles’
*Trachis (tray-KEHS). City on a high plain northwest of Thermopylae in the central Greek region of Locris. More remote and less bustling than the earlier homes of Herakles (Thebes and Mycenae), Trachis is where Herakles had hoped to retire in relative solitude.
*River Evenos. River in central Greece; it is not shown on stage, but in the prologue Deianeira reenacts an incident that occurred at the river years earlier, when Herakles took her home as his bride and came to the river. There, the centaur Nessus offered to ferry Deianeira across then return for Herakles. Instead, Nessus tried to molest Deianeira in midstream, and Herakles shot him from the shore with his bow. Between the description of this incident and that of Herakles’ battle with a river god, images of rivers dominate this tragedy, pervading the mental, if not the physical setting.