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.
- 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.