Brewer's: Deianira

Wife of Hercules, and the inadvertent cause of his death. Nessos told her that anyone to whom she gave a shirt steeped in his blood, would love her with undying love; she gave it to her husband, and it caused him such agony that he burnt himself to death on a funeral pile. Deianira killed herself for grief.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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