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.
- 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;