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.
- 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;
- his kinsman’s kind intent and his children’s blood make him abashed.
- But I come to sympathize; uncover him.
- My son, remove that mantle
- from your eyes, throw it from you, show your face to the sun. As a counterweight, fighting along with my tears, I entreat you as a suppliant, as I grasp your beard, your knees, your hands, and let fall
- the tear from my old eyes. O my child! restrain your savage lion-like temper, for you are rushing forth on an unholy course of bloodshed, eager to join mischief to mischief, child.
- What! Enough! To you I call who are huddled there in your misery,
- show to your friends your face; for no darkness is black enough to hide your sad mischance. Why do you wave your hand at me, signifying murder? is it that I may not be polluted by speaking with you?
- If I share your misfortune, what is that to me? For once I had good fortune with you. I must refer to the time when you brought me safe from the dead to the light of life. I hate a friend whose gratitude grows old; one who is ready to enjoy his friends’ prosperity
- but unwilling to sail in the same ship with them when they are unfortunate. Arise, unveil your head, poor wretch! and look on me. The gallant soul endures such blows as heaven deals and does not refuse them.
- O Theseus, did you see this struggle with my children?
- I heard of it, and now I see the horrors you mean.
- Why then have you unveiled my head to the sun?
- Why have I? you, a mortal, can not pollute what is of the gods.
- Try to escape, luckless wretch, from my unholy taint.
- The avenging fiend does not go forth from friend to friend.
- For this I thank you; I do not regret the service I did you.
- While I, for kindness then received, now show my pity for you.
- Ah yes! I am piteous object, a murderer of my sons.
- I weep for you in your changed fortunes.
- Did you ever find another more afflicted?
- Your misfortunes reach from earth to heaven.
- Therefore I am resolved on death.
- Do you suppose the gods attend to your threats?
- The god has been remorseless to me; so I will be the same to the gods.
- Hush! lest your presumption add to your sufferings.
- My ship is freighted full with sorrow; there is no room to stow anything further.
- What will you do? Where is your fury drifting you?
- I will die and return to that world below from which I have just come.
- Such language is fit for any common fellow.
- Ah! yours is the advice of one outside sorrow.
- Are these indeed the words of Heracles, the much-enduring?
- Though never so much as this. Endurance must have a limit.
- Is this the benefactor and great friend to mortals?
- Mortals bring no help to me; no! Hera has her way.
- Never would Hellas allow you to die through sheer perversity.
- Hear me a moment, that I may enter the contest with arguments in answer to your admonitions; and I will unfold to you why life now as well as formerly has been unbearable to me. First I am the son of a man who incurred the guilt of blood, before he married my mother Alcmena,
- by slaying her aged father. Now when the foundation is badly laid at birth, it is necessary for the race to be cursed with woe; and Zeus, whoever this Zeus may be, begot me as an enemy to Hera; yet do not be vexed, old man;
- for you rather than Zeus I regard as my father. Then while I was being suckled, that bedfellow of Zeus foisted into my cradle fearsome snakes to cause my death. After I took on a cloak of youthful flesh,
- of all the toils I then endured what need to tell? what did I not destroy, whether lions, or triple-bodied Typhons, or giants or the battle against the hosts of four-legged Centaurs? or how when I had killed the hydra,
- that monster with a ring of heads with power to grow again, I passed through a herd of countless other toils besides and came to the dead to fetch to the light at the bidding of Eurystheus the three-headed hound, hell’s porter. Last, ah, woe is me! I have dared this labor,
- to crown the sorrows of my house with my children’s murder. I have come to this point of necessity; no longer may I dwell in Thebes, the city that I love; for suppose I stay, to what temple or gathering of friends shall I go? For mine is no curse that invites greetings.
- Shall I go to Argos? how can I, when I am an exile from my country? Well, is there a single other city I can rush to? Am I then to be looked at askance as a marked man, held by cruel stabbing tongues: Is not this the son of Zeus that once murdered children
- and wife? Plague take him from the land!
- Now to one who was once called happy, such changes are a grievous thing; though he who is always unfortunate feels no such pain, for sorrow is his birthright. This, I think, is the piteous pass I shall one day come to;
- for earth will cry out forbidding me to touch her, the sea and the river-springs will refuse me a crossing, and I shall become like Ixion who revolves in chains upon that wheel. And so this is best, that I should be seen by no one of the Hellenes,
- among whom in happier days I lived in bliss. What right have I to live? what profit can I have in the possession of a useless, impious life? So let that noble wife of Zeus dance, beating her foot in its shoe;
- for now has she worked her heart’s desire in utterly confounding the first of Hellas’ sons. Who would pray to such a goddess? Her jealousy of Zeus for his love of a woman has destroyed
- the benefactors of Hellas, guiltless though they were.
- This is the work of none other of the gods than the wife of Zeus; you are right in that surmise.
- I cannot counsel you . . . rather than to go on suffering. There is not a man alive that has wholly escaped misfortune’s taint,
- nor any god either, if what poets sing is true. Have they not intermarried in ways that law forbids? Have they not thrown fathers into ignominious chains to gain the sovereign power? Still they inhabit Olympus and brave the issue of their crimes.
- And yet what shall you say in your defence, if you, a child of man, take your fate excessively hard, while they, as gods, do not? No, then, leave Thebes in compliance with the law, and come with me to the city of Pallas. There, when I have purified you of your pollution,
- I will give you homes and the half of all I have. Yes, I will give you all those presents I received from the citizens for saving their fourteen children, when I slew the bull of Crete; for I have plots of land assigned me throughout the country; these shall henceforth
- be called after you by men, while you live; and at your death, when you have gone to Hades’ halls, the whole city of Athens shall exalt your honor with sacrifices and a monument of stone. For it is a noble crown of a good reputation
- for citizens to win from Hellas, by helping a man of worth. This is the return that I will make you for saving me, for now you are in need of friends. But when the gods honor a man, he has no need of friends; for the god’s aid, when he chooses to give it, is enough.
- No! this is quite beside the question of my troubles. For my part, I do not believe that the gods indulge in unholy unions; and as for putting bonds on hands, I have never thought that worthy of credit nor will I now be so persuaded, nor again that one god is naturally lord and master of another.
- For the deity, if he be really such, has no wants; these are miserable tales of the poets. But I, for all my piteous plight, reflected whether I should let myself be branded as a coward for giving up my life. For whoever does not withstand disasters
- will never be able to withstand even a man’s weapon. I will be steadfast in living; I will go to your city, with grateful thanks for all you offer me.
- But I have tasted of countless troubles, as is well known; never yet did I faint at any or shed a single tear; no, nor did I ever think
- that I should come to this, to let the tear-drop fall. But now, it seems, I must be fortune’s slave. Well, let it pass; my old father, you see me go forth to exile, and in me you see my own children’s murderer.
- Give them burial, and lay them out in death with the tribute of a tear, for the law forbids my doing so. Rest their heads upon their mother’s bosom and fold them in her arms, sad fellowship, which I, alas! unwittingly did slay. And when you have buried these dead,
- live on here still, in bitterness maybe, but still constrain your soul to share my sorrows. O children! he who begot you, your own father, has been your destroyer, and you have had no profit of my triumphs, all my restless toil to win for you by force
- a fair name, a glorious advantage from a father. You too, unhappy wife, this hand has slain, a poor return to make you for preserving the honor of my bed so safely, for all the weary watch you long have kept within my house. Alas for you, my wife, my sons! alas for me,
- how sad my lot, cut off from wife and child! Ah! these kisses, bitter-sweet! these weapons which it is pain to own! I am not sure whether to keep or let them go; dangling at my side they thus will say,
- With us you destroyed children and wife; we are your children’s slayers, and you keep us. Shall I carry them after that? what answer can I make? Yet, am I to strip myself of these weapons, the comrades of my glorious career in Hellas, and put myself in the power of my foes, to die a death of shame?
- No! I must not let them go, but keep them, though it grieves me. In one thing, Theseus, help my misery; come to Argos and help me to manage the conveyance of the wretched dog; lest, if I go all alone, my sorrow for my sons may do me some hurt.
- O land of Cadmus, and all you people of Thebes!
- cut off your hair, and mourn with me; go to my children’s burial, and with one dirge lament us all, the dead and me; for on all of us has Hera inflicted the same cruel blow of destruction.
- Rise, unhappy man! you have had your fill of tears.
- I cannot rise; my limbs are rooted here.
- Yes, even the strong are overthrown by misfortunes.
- Ah! Would I could become a stone upon this spot, oblivious of trouble.
- Peace! give your hand to a friend and helper.
- No, let me not wipe off the blood upon your robe.
- Wipe it off and spare not; I will not refuse you.
- Bereft of my own sons, I find you as a son to me.
- Throw your arm about my neck; I will be your guide.
- A pair of friends indeed, but one a man of sorrows. Ah! aged father, this is the kind of man to make a friend.
- Blessed in her sons, the country that gave him birth!
- Theseus, turn me back again to see my children.
- What for? Do you think to find a drug in this to soothe your soul?
- I long to do so, and would embrace my father.
- Here am I, my son; your wish is no less dear to me.
- Have you so short a memory for your troubles?
- All that I endured before was easier to bear than this.
- If anyone sees you play the woman, they will scoff.
- Have I by living grown so abject in your sight? It was not so once, I think.
- Yes, too much so; in your sickness you are not the glorious Heracles.
- What about you? What kind of hero were you when in trouble in the world below?
- I was worse than anyone as far as courage went.
- How then can you say of me, that I am abased by my troubles?
- Forward!
- Farewell, my aged father!
- Farewell to you, my son!
- Bury my children as I said.
- But who will bury me, my son?
- I will.
- When wil you come?
- After you have buried my children.
- How?
- I will fetch you from Thebes to Athens. But carry my children within, a grievous burden to the earth. And I, after ruining my house by deeds of shame, will follow as a little boat in the wake of Theseus, a total wreck.
- Whoever prefers wealth or might to the possession of good friends, thinks wrongly.
- With grief and many a bitter tear we go our way, robbed of all we prized most dearly.