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.
- I do not know, my daughter; I too am struck dumb.
- Is this he who they told us was beneath the earth?It is, unless some day-dream mocks our sight. What am I saying? What visions do these anxious eyes behold? Old man, this is no one other than your own son.
- Come here, my children, cling to your father’s robe, hurry, never loose your hold, for here is one to help you, not at all behind our savior Zeus.
- All hail! my house and gates of my home, how glad I am to emerge to the light and see you.
- Ah! what is this? I see my children before the house in the robes of death, with chaplets on their heads and my wife amid a throng of men, and my father weeping—what misfortune? Let me draw near to them and inquire;
- lady, what strange stroke of fate has fallen on the house?
- Dearest of all mankind to me!
- O ray of light appearing to your father!
- Are you safe and is your coming just in time to help your dear ones?
- What do you mean? What is this confusion I find on my arrival, father?
- We are being ruined; forgive me, old friend,
- if I have anticipated that to which you had a right to tell him; for women’s nature is perhaps more prone to grief than men’s and they are my children that were being led to death, which was my own lot too.
- Apollo! what a prelude to your story!
- My brothers are dead, and my old father.
- How so? what did he do? whose spear did he meet?
- Lycus, our new monarch, slew him.
- Did he meet him in fair fight, or was the land sick and weak?
- Yes, from faction; now he is master of the city of Cadmus with its seven gates.
- Why has panic fallen on you and my aged father?
- He meant to kill your father, me, and my children.