Is he sleeping?

AmphitryonYes, he is sleeping, a deadly sleepless sleep, having slain wife and children with the arrows of his twanging bow.

ChorusAh! mourn—

AmphitryonIndeed I do.

ChorusThe children’s death—

AmphitryonAh me!

ChorusAnd your own son’s doom.

AmphitryonAlas!

ChorusOld friend—

AmphitryonHush! hush! he is turning over, he is waking! Oh! let me hide myself, concealed beneath the roof.

ChorusCourage! darkness still holds your son’s eye.

AmphitryonOh beware! it is not that I shrink from leaving the light after my miseries, poor wretch! but if should he slay me, his father, then he will be devising mischief on mischief, and to the avenging curse will add a parent’s blood.

ChorusWell for you if you had died in that day, when, for your wife, you went forth to exact vengeance for her slain brothers by sacking the Taphians’ sea-beat town.

AmphitryonFly, fly, my aged friends, from before the palace, escape his waking fury. Or soon he will heap up fresh slaughter on the old, ranging wildly once more through the streets of Thebes.Chorus LeaderO Zeus, why have you shown such savage hate against your own son and plunged him in this sea of troubles?HeracleswakingAha! I am alive and breathing; and my eyes resume their function, opening on