Heracles
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng2
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Amphitryon
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Is sitting as a suppliant on the altar’s hallowed steps—
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Lycus
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Imploring them quite uselessly to save her life.
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Amphitryon
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And calling on her dead husband, in vain.
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Lycus
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He is nowhere near, and he certainly will never come.
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Amphitryon
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No, unless perhaps a god should raise him from the dead.
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Lycus
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Go to her and bring her from the palace.
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Amphitryon
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By doing so I should become an accomplice in her murder.
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Lycus
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Since you have this scruple, I, who have left fear behind, will myself bring out the mother and her children. Follow me, servants,
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that we may joyfully put an end to this delay of our work.
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Amphitryon
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Then go your way along the path of fate; for what remains, maybe another will provide. Expect for your evil deeds to find some trouble yourself. Ah! my aged friends, he is marching fairly to his doom; soon will he lie entangled in the snare
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of the sword, thinking to slay his neighbors, the villain! I will go, to see him fall dead; for the sight of a foe being slain and paying the penalty of his misdeeds affords pleasurable feelings.
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Chorus
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Evil has changed sides; he who was once a mighty king is now turning his life backward into the road to Hades. Hail to you! Justice and heavenly retribution.
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At last have you reached the goal where your death will pay the penalty, for your insults against your betters.
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Joy makes my tears burst forth. He has come back—
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which I never once thought in my heart would happen—the prince of the land.
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Come, old friends, let us look within to see if someone has met the fate I hope.
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Lycus
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Ah me! ah me!
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Chorus
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Ha! how sweet to hear that opening note of his within the house; death is not far off him now. The prince cries out, wailing a prelude of death.
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Lycus
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O kingdom of Cadmus, I am perishing by treachery!
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Chorus
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You were yourself for making others perish; endure your retribution; it is only the penalty of your own deeds you are paying.
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Who was he, only a mortal, that aimed his silly saying at the blessed gods of heaven with impious blasphemy, maintaining that they are weaklings after all?
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Old friends, our godless foe is now no more.
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The house is still; let us turn to the dance.
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Yes, for fortune smiles upon my friends as I desire.
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Chorus
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—Ha! see there, my old comrades! is the same wild panic fallen on us all; what phantom is this I see hovering over the house?
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—Fly, fly, bestir your tardy steps! begone! away!
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—O savior prince, avert calamity from me!
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Iris
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Courage, old men! she, whom you see, is Madness, daughter of Night, and I am Iris, the handmaid of the gods. We have not come to do your city any hurt,
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but our warfare is against the house of one man only, against him whom they call the son of Zeus and Alcmena. For until he had finished all his grievous labors, Destiny was preserving him, nor would father Zeus ever suffer me or Hera to harm him.
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But now that he has accomplished the labors of Eurystheus, Hera wishes to brand him with the guilt of shedding kindred blood by slaying his own children, and I wish it also. Come then, unwed maid, child of black Night, harden your heart relentlessly,
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send forth frenzy upon this man, confound his mind even to the slaying of his children, drive him, goad him wildly on his mad career, shake out the sails of death, that when he has conveyed over Acheron’s ferry that fair group of children by his own murderous hand,
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he may learn to know how fiercely against him the wrath of Hera burns and may also experience mine; otherwise, if he should escape punishment, the gods will become as nothing, while man’s power will grow.
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Madness
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Of noble parents was I born, the daughter of Night, sprung from the blood of Ouranos;
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and these prerogatives I hold, not to use them in anger against friends, nor do I have any joy in visiting the homes of men; and I wish to counsel Hera, before I see her make a mistake, and you too, if you will hearken to my words. This man, against whose house you are sending me, has made himself a name alike in heaven
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and earth; for, after taming pathless wilds and raging sea, he by his single might raised up again the honors of the gods when sinking before man’s impiety; . . . wherefore I counsel you, do not wish him dire mishaps.
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Iris
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Spare us your advice on Hera’s and my schemes.
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Madness
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I seek to turn your steps into the best path instead of into this one of evil.
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Iris
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It was not to practice self-control that the wife of Zeus sent you here.
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Madness
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I call the sun-god to witness that here I am acting against my will; but if indeed I must at once serve you and Hera
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and follow you in full cry as hounds follow the huntsman, then I will go; neither ocean with its fiercely groaning waves, nor the earthquake, nor the thunderbolt with blast of agony shall be like the headlong rush I will make into the breast of Heracles; through his roof will I burst my way and swoop upon his house,
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after first slaying his children; nor shall their murderer know that he is killing the children he begot, till he is released from my madness. Behold him! see how even now he is wildly tossing his head at the outset, and rolling his eyes fiercely from side to side without a word; nor can he control his panting breath, like a fearful bull in act to charge; he bellows,
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calling on the goddesses of nether hell. Soon will I rouse you to yet wilder dancing and pipe a note of terror in your ear. Soar away, O Iris, to Olympus on your honored course; while I unseen will steal into the halls of Heracles.
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Chorus
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Alas alas! lament; the son of Zeus, flower of your city, is being cut down. Woe to you, Hellas! that will cast from you your benefactor, and destroy him as he dances in the shrill frenzy of Madness.
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She is mounted on her chariot, the queen of sorrow and sighing, and is goading on her steeds, as if for outrage, the Gorgon child of Night, with a hundred hissing serpent-heads, Madness of the flashing eyes.
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Soon has the god changed his good fortune; soon will his children breathe their last, slain by a father’s hand.
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Amphitryon
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Ah me! alas!
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Chorus
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O Zeus, unjust Vengeance, mad, relentless, will soon give your childless son
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up to misery.
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Chorus
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The dance begins without the cymbals’ crash, with no glad waving of the wine-god’s staff—
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Amphitryon
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Woe to these halls!
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Chorus
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Toward bloodshed,
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and not to pour libations of Dionysus’ grape.
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Amphitryon
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O children, make haste to fly!
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Ah, yes! he is hunting the children down. Never will Madness lead her revel rout in vain.
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Amphitryon
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Ah misery!
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Chorus
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Ah me! how I lament that aged father, that mother too that bore his children in vain.
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Look! look!
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A tempest rocks the house; the roof is falling with it.
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Heracles
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Oh, oh! what are you doing, Pallas, child of Zeus, to the house? You are sending hell’s confusion against the halls, as once you did on Enceladus.
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Messenger
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O white-haired old men!
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address to me?
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Messenger
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The children are dead.
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Messenger
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Ah weep! for here is cause for weeping.
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cruel parents’ hands!
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Messenger
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No words can utter more than we have suffered.
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Chorus
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How came the ruin you reveal, the ruin that must be lamented, from a father to his children? Tell me how these heaven-sent woes
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came rushing on the house; say how the children met their sad mischance.
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Messenger
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Victims to purify the house were stationed before the altar of Zeus, for Heracles had slain and cast from his halls the king of the land.
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There stood his group of lovely children, with his father and Megara; and already the basket was being passed round the altar, and we were keeping holy silence. But just as Alcmena’s son was bringing the torch in his right hand to dip it in the holy water,
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he stopped without a word. And as their father lingered, his children looked at him; he was no longer himself; his eyes were rolling; he was quite distraught; his eyeballs were bloodshot, and foam was oozing down his bearded cheek.
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He spoke with a madman’s laugh: Father, why should I offer the purifying flame before I have slain Eurystheus, and have the toil twice over? It is the work of my unaided arm to settle these things well; as soon as I have brought the head of Eurystheus here,
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I will cleanse my hands for those already slain. Spill the water, cast the baskets from your hands. Ho! give me now my bow and club! To Mycenae will I go; I must take crow-bars and pick-axes, for I will shatter again
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with iron levers those city-walls which the Cyclopes squared with red plumb-line and mason’s tools.
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Then he set out, and though he had no chariot there, he thought he had, and was for mounting to its seat, and using a goad as though his fingers really held one.
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A twofold feeling filled his servants’ breasts, amusement and fear at once; and one looking to his neighbor said: Is our master making sport for us, or is he mad? But he was pacing to and fro in his house; and, rushing into the men’s chamber, he said he had reached the city of Nisus;
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and going into the house, he threw himself upon the floor, as he was, and made ready to feast. But after waiting a brief space he began saying he was on his way to the plains amid the valleys of the Isthmus; and then stripping himself of his mantle,
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he fell to competing with no one, and he proclaimed himself victor with his own voice, calling on no one to listen. Next, fancy carrying him to Mycenae, he was uttering fearful threats against Eurystheus. Meantime his father caught him by his stalwart arm, and thus addressed him:
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My son, what do you mean by this? What strange doings are these? Can it be that the blood of your late victims has driven you frantic? But he, supposing it was the father of Eurystheus striving in abject supplication to touch his hand: thrust him aside, and then against his own children aimed his bow
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and made ready his quiver, thinking to slay the sons of Eurystheus. And they in wild fright darted here and there, one to his hapless mother’s skirts, another to the shadow of a pillar, while a third cowered beneath the altar like a bird.
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Then cried their mother: O you who begot them, what are you doing? do you mean to slay your children? Likewise his aged father and all the gathered servants cried aloud. But he, hunting the child round and round the column, in dreadful circles, and coming face to face with him shot him to the heart; and he fell upon his back,
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sprinkling the stone pillars with blood as he gasped out his life. Then Heracles shouted in triumph and boasted loud: Here lies one of Eurystheus’ brood dead at my feet, atoning for his father’s hatred. Then he aimed his bow against a second, who had crouched
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at the altar’s foot thinking to escape unseen. But before he fired, the poor child threw himself at his father’s knees, and, flinging his hand to reach his beard or neck, cried: Oh! hear me, dearest father, do not kill me! I am your child, your own; it is no son of Eurystheus you will slay.
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But that other, with savage Gorgon-scowl, as the child now stood in range of his baleful archery, smote him on the head, as a smith strikes his molten iron, bringing down his club upon the fair-haired boy, and crushed the bones. The second caught,
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away he goes to add a third victim to the other two. But before he could, the poor mother caught up her child and carried him within the house and shut the doors. But he, as though he really were at the Cyclopean walls, prized open the doors with levers, and, hurling down their posts,
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with one shaft laid low his wife and child. Then in wild gallop he starts to slay his aged father; but there came a phantom, as it seemed to us on-lookers, of Pallas, with plumed helm, brandishing a spear; and she hurled a rock against the breast of Heracles,
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which held him from his frenzied thirst for blood and plunged him into sleep; to the ground he fell, striking his back against a column that had fallen on the floor shattered in two when the roof fell in.
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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
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I do not know any mortal more miserable than he. Exit messenger.
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Chorus
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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,
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has outrun those former horrors . . . for the unhappy son of Zeus.
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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.
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Alas! What groans or wails, what funeral dirge, or dance of death am I to raise?
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Ah, ah! see, the bolted doors
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of the lofty palace are being rolled apart.
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Ah me! see the wretched children lying before their unhappy father, who is sunk in dreadful slumber after shedding their blood.
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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.
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Chorus Leader
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But he, the aged father, like mother-bird wailing
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her unfledged brood, comes hastening here with halting steps on his bitter journey.
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Amphitryon
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Softly, softly! you aged sons of Thebes, let him sleep on and forget his sorrows.
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Chorus
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For you, old friend, I weep and mourn, for the children too and that victorious chief.