I will return to you to consign you to the nether world. Exit Lycus. MegaraChildren, follow the footsteps of your hapless mother to your father’s house, where others possess his substance, though his name is still ours. Exit Megara with her children. AmphitryonO Zeus, in vain, it seems, did I get you to share my bride with me; in vain used we to call you partner in my son. After all you are less our friend than you pretended. Great god as you are, I, a mortal, surpass you in true worth. For I did not betray the children of Heracles; but you by stealth found your way to my bed, taking another’s wife without leave given, while to save your own friends you have no skill. Either you are a god of little sense, or else naturally unjust. Exit Amphitryon.

ChorusPhoebus is singing a dirge, after his happier strains, for Linus dead in his beauty, striking his lyre with key of gold; but I wish to sing a song of praise, a crown to all his toil, on the one who has gone to the gloom beneath the nether world, whether I am to call him son of Zeus or of Amphitryon. For the virtue of noble toils is a glory to the dead.

ChorusFirst he cleared the grove of Zeus of a lion, and put its skin upon his back, hiding his yellowauburn hair in its fearful gaping jaws.

ChorusAnd then one day with murderous bow he wounded