The Shirt of Nessus

In Greek mythology, the Shirt of Nessus, Tunic of Nessus, Nessus-robe, or Nessus' shirt was the poisoned shirt that killed Heracles. It was once a popular reference in literature. In folkloristics, it is considered an instance of the "poison dress" motif.

Fearing that Heracles had taken a lover, his wife Deianeira gives him the "shirt" (actually a chiton), which was stained with the blood of the centaur Nessus. She had been tricked by the dying Nessus into believing it would serve as a potion to ensure her husband's faithfulness. In fact, it contained the venom of the Lernaean Hydra with which Heracles had poisoned the arrow he used to kill Nessus. When Heracles puts it on, the Hydra's venom begins to cook him alive, and to escape this unbearable pain he builds a funeral pyre and throws himself on it.

Metaphorically, it represents "a source of misfortune from which there is no escape; a fatal present; anything that wounds the susceptibilities" or a "destructive or expiatory force or influence".

During the anabaptist Münster Rebellion of 1534 a fifteen-year-old girl named Hille Feyken (or Feiken) attempted to deceive Münster’s Prince-Bishop Franz von Waldeck who had been commanding a protracted siege of the city. Her plan was to pretend to defect and entice the Bishop with information about the cities' defenses while giving him a handsome shirt soaked in poison. Before her plan could be carried out she was betrayed by another defector, who warned the bishop, and Feyken was tortured and then killed.

Major-General Henning von Tresckow, one of the primary conspirators in the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, famously referred to the "Robe of Nessus" following the realization that the assassination plot had failed and that he and others involved in the conspiracy would lose their lives as a result: "None of us can complain about our own deaths. Everyone who joined our circle put on the 'Robe of Nessus'."

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