Heracles
Euripides
Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. II. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1891.
- Then we rallied from our flight, and with the old man’s aid bound him fast with knotted cords to the pillar, so that on his awakening he might do no further mischief. So there he sleeps, poor wretch! a sleep that is not blessed, having murdered wife and children; no, for my part
- I do not know any mortal more miserable than he. Exit messenger.
- That murder wrought by the daughters of Danaus, which the rock of Argos keeps, was once the most famous and notorious in Hellas; but this has surpassed,
- has outrun those former horrors . . . for the unhappy son of Zeus.
- I could tell of the murder done by Procne, mother of an only child, offered to the Muses; but you had three children, wretched parent, and all of them have you in your frenzy slain.
- Alas! What groans or wails, what funeral dirge, or dance of death am I to raise?
- Ah, ah! see, the bolted doors
- of the lofty palace are being rolled apart.
- Ah me! see the wretched children lying before their unhappy father, who is sunk in dreadful slumber after shedding their blood.
- Round him are bonds and cords, made fast with many knots about the body of Heracles, and lashed to the stone columns of his house.
- But he, the aged father, like mother-bird wailing
- her unfledged brood, comes hastening here with halting steps on his bitter journey.
- Softly, softly! you aged sons of Thebes, let him sleep on and forget his sorrows.
- For you, old friend, I weep and mourn, for the children too and that victorious chief.
- Stand further off, make no noise nor outcry, do not rouse him from his calm
- deep slumber.
- O horrible! all this blood—
- Hush, hush! you will be my ruin.
- That he has spilled is rising up against him.
- Gently raise your dirge of woe, old friends;
- or he will wake, and, bursting his bonds, destroy the city, rend his father, and dash his house to pieces.
- I cannot, cannot—
- Hush! let me note his breathing;
- come, let me put my ear close.
- Is he sleeping?
- Yes, he is sleeping, a deadly sleepless sleep, having slain wife and children with the arrows of his twanging bow.
- Ah! mourn—
- Indeed I do.
- The children’s death—
- Ah me!
- And your own son’s doom.
- Alas!
- Old friend—
- Hush! hush! he is turning over, he is waking! Oh!
- let me hide myself, concealed beneath the roof.
- Courage! darkness still holds your son’s eye.
- Oh 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.
- Well 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.
- Fly, 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.
- O Zeus, why have you shown such savage hate against your own son and plunged him in this sea of troubles?
- Aha! I am alive and breathing; and my eyes resume their function, opening on
- the sky and earth and the sun’s darting beam; but how my senses reel! in what strange turmoil am I plunged! my fevered breath in quick spasmodic gasps escapes my lungs. How now? why am I lying here, my brawny chest and arms made fast with cables like a ship,
- beside a half-shattered piece of masonry, with corpses for my neighbors; while over the floor my bow and arrows are scattered, that once like trusty squires to my arm
- both kept me safe and were kept safe by me? Surely I have not come a second time to Hades’ halls, having just returned from there for Eurystheus? To Hades? From where? No, I do not see Sisyphus with his stone, or Pluto, or his queen, Demeter’s child.
- Surely I am distraught; where am I, so helpless? Ho, there! which of my friends is near or far to cure me in my perplexity? For I have no clear knowledge of things once familiar.
- My aged friends, shall I approach the scene of my sorrow?
- Yes, and let me go with you, not desert you in your trouble.
- Father, why do you weep and veil your eyes, standing far from your beloved son?
- My child! mine still, for all your misery.
- Why, what is there so sad in my case that you weep?
- That which might make any of the gods weep, if he were to learn it.
- A bold assertion that, but you are not yet explaining what has happened.
- Your own eyes see that, if by this time you are restored to your senses.
- Fill in your sketch if any change awaits my life.
- I will explain, if you are no longer mad as a fiend of hell.
- Oh! what suspicions these dark hints of yours again excite!
- I am still doubtful whether you are in your sober senses.
- I have no recollection of being mad.
- Am I to loose my son, old friends, or what shall I do?
- Loose me, yes, and say who bound me; for I feel shame at this.
- Rest content with what you know of your woes; the rest forego.
- No. for is silence sufficient to learn what I wish?
- O Zeus, do you behold these deeds proceeding from the throne of Hera?
- What! have I suffered something from her enmity?
- A truce to the goddess! attend to your own troubles.
- I am undone; you will tell me some mischance.
- See here the corpses of your children.
- O horror! what sight is here? ah me!
- My son, against your children you have waged unnatural war.
- War! what do you mean? who killed these?
- You and your bow and some god, whoever is to blame.
- What are you saying? what have I done? Speak, father, you messenger of evil!
- You were insane; it is a sad explanation you are asking.
- Was it I that slew my wife also?
- Your own unaided arm has done all this.
- Alas! a cloud of mourning wraps me round.
- For this reason I lament your fate.
- Did I dash my house to pieces in my frenzy?
- I know nothing but this, that you are utterly undone.
- Where did the madness seize me? where did it destroy me?
- When you were purifying yourself with fire at the altar.
- Ah me! why do I spare my own life when I have become the murderer of my dear children? Shall I not hasten to leap from some sheer rock, or aim the sword against my heart
- and avenge my children’s blood, or burn my body, which she drove mad, in the fire and so avert from my life the infamy which now awaits me?
- But here I see Theseus coming to check my deadly counsels, my kinsman and friend.
- Now shall I stand revealed, and the dearest of my friends will see the pollution I have incurred by my children’s murder. Ah, woe is me! what am I to do? Where can I find freedom from my sorrows? shall I take wings or plunge beneath the earth? Come, let me veil my head in darkness;
- for I am ashamed of the evil I have done, and, since for these I have incurred fresh blood-guiltiness, I do not want to harm the innocent.
- I have come, and others with me, young warriors from the land of Athens, encamped at present by the streams of Asopus,
- to bring an allied army to your son, old friend. For a rumour reached the city of the Erechtheidae, that Lycus had usurped the scepter of this land and had become your enemy even to battle. Wherefore I came making recompense for the former kindness of Heracles
- in saving me from the world below, if you have any need of such aid as I or my allies can give, old man.
- Ha! why this heap of dead upon the floor? Surely I have not delayed too long and come too late to check a revolution? Who slew these children?
- whose wife is this I see? Boys do not go to battle; no, it must be some other strange mischance I here discover.
- O king, whose home is that olive-clad hill!
- Why this piteous prelude in addressing me?
- The gods have afflicted us with grievous suffering.
- Whose are these children, over whom you weep?
- My own son’s children, woe is him! he was their father and butcher both, hardening his heart to the bloody deed.
- Hush! good words only!
- I would I could obey!
- What dreadful words!
- Fortune has spread her wings, and we are ruined, ruined.
- What do you mean? what has he done?
- Slain them in a wild fit of frenzy
- with arrows dipped in the venom of the hundred-headed hydra.
- This is Hera’s work; but who lies there among the dead, old man?
- My son, my own enduring son, that marched with gods to Phlegra’s plain, there to battle with giants and slay them, warrior that he was.
- Ah, ah! whose fortune was ever so cursed as his?
- Never will you find another mortal that has suffered more or been driven harder.
- Why does he veil his head, poor wretch, in his robe?
- He is ashamed to meet your eye;