News reached her that Heracles is alive and triumphant; Lichas was coming to give fuller details. Very soon he enters with a band of captive maidens, telling how his master had been kept in slavery in Lydia; shaking off the yoke, he had sacked and destroyed the city of Eurytus who had caused his captivity, the girls were Heracles' offering of the spoils to Deianeira. Filled with pity at their lot, she looked closely at them and was attracted by one of them, a silent girl of noble countenance. Lichas when questioned denied all knowledge of her identity and departed. When he had gone, the messenger desired private speech with Deianeira. Lichas had lied; the girl was Iole, daughter of Eurytus; it was for her sake that his master destroyed the city, for he loved the maid and intended to keep her in his home to be a rival to his wife. Lichas on coming out was confronted by the messenger, and attempted to dissemble, but Deianeira appealed to him thus:-- "Nay, deceive me not. Thou shalt not speak to a woman of evil heart, who knoweth not the ways of men, how that they by a law of their own being delight not always in the same thing. 'Tis a fool who standeth up to battle against Love who ruleth even gods as he will, and me too; then why not another such as I? Therefore if I revile my lord when taken with this plague, I am crazed indeed--or this woman is, who hath brought me no shame or sorrow. If my lord teacheth thee to lie, thy lesson is no good one; if thou art schooling thyself to falsehood in a desire to be kind to me, thou shalt prove unkind. Speak all the truth; it is an ignoble lot for a man of honour to be called false." Completely won by this appeal, Lichas confesses the truth.