Hercules Furens

JUNO

Sister of the Thunderer — for this is the only name left to me — I have forsaken Jove, ever a stranger to me, and the temples of the high heaven, and, a widow, given up my place; driven from the sky, I have yielded it to harlots. Earth must be my dwelling now: the harlots hold the sky. Here, in the high quarter of the icy pole, the Bear, a lofty star, drives on the Argive fleets; here, where the day slips by in the warmth of spring, gleams the bearer of Tyrian Europa over the waves; there the Atlantides, wandering far and wide, rear up their swarm, a terror to ships and to the sea. On this side Orion menaces the gods with threatening sword, and golden Perseus has his stars; here shine the bright signs of the twin Tyndarids, and those at whose birth the drifting land stood still. Nor have Bacchus himself only, or Bacchus' mother, ascended to the gods: that no quarter might be free of disgrace, the heavens wear the garland of the Cnossian girl. But I lament old grievances too late . . . . . . one land alone, the dread and savage Theban earth, sown — ah! — with shameless brides, how often has it made me a stepmother! Though Alcmena climb, triumphant, and possess my place, and likewise her son seize the promised stars — he at whose birth the world spent a whole day and Phoebus, slow, shone forth from the eastern sea, bidden to hold his light sunk beneath the Ocean — not so shall my hatreds pass away; my violent soul shall drive on living rage, and savage grief, with peace banished, shall wage eternal wars.

What wars? Whatever the hostile earth brings forth of horror, whatever the sea or air has borne of terror, dire and pestilent, atrocious, wild, is broken and subdued. He rises above it, grows by his ills, and enjoys my anger; he turns my hatred to his own praise: while I lay too savage commands upon him, I have proved his father, I have made room for glory. Where the Sun brings back the day, and where he lays it down, where his near torch dyes both Ethiopias dark, his untamed valor is worshipped, and through all the world he is told of as a god. Now monsters fail me, and it is less labor for Hercules to do my bidding than for me to bid: gladly he takes up my commands. What savage decrees of a tyrant could harm that youth? Why, he carries for weapons the very things he feared and overthrew: he comes armed with the lion and the hydra. Nor are earth's bounds enough for him: behold, he has burst the threshold of infernal Jove and carries back to the upper world the spoils of the conquered king. It is too little to have returned: the law of the shades is undone. I saw it myself, I saw it — night scattered, the underworld broken open, and Dis subdued — he flaunting before his father the spoils stripped from his father's brother. Why does he not drag Pluto himself, bound and crushed in chains, who drew a lot equal to Jove's? Why not master captured Erebus and lay bare the Styx? The way back is opened from the lowest shades, and the rites of dreadful death lie exposed in the open. But he, fierce, the prison of the shades once broken, triumphs over me, and with proud hand leads the black dog through the cities of Argos. I saw the day grow faint at the sight of Cerberus, and the Sun grow pale; I too was seized with trembling, and gazing on the three necks of the conquered monster I feared what I had commanded. But I lament too trivial things: it is the heavens we must fear, lest he seize the highest realms who has conquered the lowest. He will snatch the scepter from his father. Nor will he come to the stars by a gentle road, as Bacchus did: he will seek his way through ruin, and will wish to reign in an empty world. He swells with the strength he has proved, and by bearing it has learned that the sky can be conquered by his own might. He set his head beneath the world, nor did the toil of the immense mass bend his shoulders, and the pole sat better on the neck of Hercules. His neck, unmoved, bore the stars and the sky and me bearing down. He seeks a road to the gods above.

Go on, my anger, go on, and crush him as he plots great things; close with him, tear him in pieces with your own hands. Why entrust such hatreds to another? Let the wild beasts withdraw, let Eurystheus rest, worn out with commanding. Loose the Titans who dared to break the empire of Jove, unbar the cavern of the Sicilian peak, let the Dorian land, trembling when the giant is shaken off, lift the buried neck of the terrible monster — but he has conquered such things. Do you seek the equal of Alcides? There is none but himself: let him now wage war against himself. Let the Eumenides be present, roused from the lowest depth of Tartarus; let their flaming hair scatter fire, let their savage hands wield viperous whips. Go now, proud one, seek the seats of the gods, despise what is human. Do you think, fierce one, that you have fled the Styx and the shades for good? Here I shall show you the underworld. I shall summon up the goddess of discord, hidden deep in dark gloom, beyond the prisons of the guilty, whom a vast cavern of an opposing mountain walls in; I shall lead her forth and drag from the lowest realm of Dis whatever is left behind: hateful Crime shall come, and fierce Impiety licking its own blood, and Error, and Frenzy ever armed against itself — this, this be the minister my grief shall use.

Begin, you handmaids of Dis, swiftly shake the burning pine, and let Megaera lead on the band bristling with serpents, and with mournful hand snatch a huge beam from the blazing pyre. To this work! Demand the penalty for the violated Styx. Smite his breast; let a fire fiercer than that which rages in the furnaces of Etna scorch his mind. That Alcides may be driven, his reason seized, struck with great frenzy, you must first go mad yourselves. Juno, why are you not yet raging? Me, me, sisters, first cast down from my own mind and whirl about, if I am preparing to do anything worthy of a stepmother. Let my prayers be changed: let him return and see his sons unharmed, I pray, let him come back strong of hand. I have found the day on which the hated valor of Hercules shall serve me. He has conquered me: let him conquer himself, and long to die returned from the lower world. Here let it profit me that he was begotten of Jove. I will stand, and that the shafts loosed from the sure bowstring may fly true, I will poise his hand, I will guide the weapons of the madman, at last I will favor Hercules in the fight — the crime once done, his father may admit those hands to heaven.

Now wars must be set in motion: day is brightening, and Titan, gleaming, rises with saffron dawn.

CHORUS

Now few and faint the stars are glimmering as the sky sinks low; vanquished night draws in her wandering fires with the light reborn, and the Morning Star marshals her shining band. The cold sign of the lofty pole, the seven-starred Bear of Arcas, turns its pole-beam and summons the light. Now Titan, borne aloft on his sea-blue horses, looks out from the heights of Oeta; now the thickets famed for Cadmean Bacchus, sprinkled with day, grow red, and Phoebus' sister flees, to return. Harsh toil arises and stirs every care and throws open all the houses.

The shepherd, sending forth his flock, crops his pasture in the chill white frost; in the open meadow, free, the young bull plays, his brow not yet broken by horns, and the unburdened mothers replenish their udders. The wanton kid, light on its uncertain course, strays through the soft grass. On the topmost bough the shrill Thracian rival hangs, and longs to spread her feathers to the new sun amid her complaining nestlings, and round about the mingled throng sounds with confused murmur, bearing witness to the day. The sailor, doubtful of his life, trusts his canvas to the winds, the breeze filling his slackened sails. Here one, hanging from worn rocks, sets out his deceiving hooks, or watches in suspense, his prize pressed in his right hand: he feels the line quiver with the captured fish.

These are the lot of men whose life is harmless, who have the tranquil peace of an innocent life and a home glad with its own small store; but boundless hopes and trembling fears wander through the cities. That man haunts, sleepless, the proud thresholds and unyielding doors of kings; this one, gaping after treasure, heaps up wealth with no end to it, blessed in name, yet poor amid his piled-up gold. That man, dazed, the people's favor and the mob, more shifting than the wave, lift up, swollen with empty breath; this one peddles in the rabid quarrels of the clamorous forum, basely letting out for hire his rage and his words. Few know untroubled rest — those who, mindful of swift time, hold the hours that will never return. While the fates allow, live in gladness: life hastens on at a quickened pace, and with each winged day the wheel of the headlong year turns round. The hard sisters spin out their tasks nor unwind again their own threads backward. Yet the race of men is borne along, uncertain of itself, to meet the rushing fates: of our own will we seek the Stygian waters. Too much, Alcides, with your brave heart you hasten to visit the sorrowful shades. At their set time the Fates arrive; none may delay when bidden, none postpone the written day: the urn receives the peoples it has summoned. Let glory hand one man to many lands, let chattering fame praise him through all cities and raise him level with the sky and stars; let another ride aloft in his chariot: let my own land shelter me in a hidden and safe home. To the slothful comes hoary old age, and in a lowly station, but secure, sits the humble fortune of a small house; high-spirited valor falls from on high. — But here comes Megara, mournful, with loosened hair, attended by her little flock, and slow with age walks the father of Alcides.

AMPHITRYON, MEGARA, LYCUS

AMPHITRYON: O mighty ruler of Olympus, arbiter of the world, set at last some limit to these heavy troubles, some end to our disaster. No day has ever shone secure for me: the end of one evil is the step to a coming one. The moment he returns, a new enemy is made ready; before he can reach his happy home, he is bidden to another war; nor is there any rest or any time of leisure, save while he is being commanded. From his very birth hostile Juno follows him: was any age exempt — even his infancy? He overcame monsters before he could know them: the twin snakes brought their crested heads against him, and the infant, crawling to meet them, gazed at the fiery eyes of the serpents with a calm and easy look; he bore their tight coils with untroubled face, and crushing their swollen throats with his tender hand he made a rehearsal for the hydra. The swift beast of Maenalus, bearing a head adorned with much gold, was caught in the chase; the great terror of Nemea, the lion, groaned, crushed in the arms of Hercules. Why tell of the dire stalls of the Bistonian herd, and the king given as fodder to his own beasts; of the bristling boar of Maenalus, wont to shake the woods of Arcadia on the dense ridges of Erymanthus; and the bull, no light terror to a hundred peoples? Among the far-off herds of the Hesperian land the threefold shepherd of the Tartesian shore was slain, and the spoil driven off from the utmost west; the cattle known to Cithaeron grazed by Ocean. Bidden to penetrate the regions of the summer sun and the scorched realms that the noonday sears, he split the mountains on either hand and, breaking the barrier, made a broad path for the Ocean's rushing in. After this, assailing the dwellings of the rich grove, he carried off the golden spoils from the watchful serpent; and what of fierce Lerna's monster, that manifold evil — did he not at last conquer it with fire and teach it to die? And the Stymphalian birds, wont to hide the day beneath their out-spread wings, he sought down from the very clouds. He was not conquered by the queen of the ever-husbandless bed, the widowed race of Thermodon; nor did the foul labor of Augeas' stable turn back those hands daring at every glorious deed. What good is all this? He is gone, and the world he defended lacks him. The sad earth has felt the author of its peace to be away: prosperous and successful crime is now called virtue; the good obey the guilty. Right lies in arms, fear oppresses the laws. Before my own eyes I saw the sons fall by a savage hand, defenders of their father's realm, and the king himself, the last stock of noble Cadmus, slain; I saw the royal crown of his head snatched away with the head. Who can weep enough for Thebes? Land fruitful of gods, what master do you tremble before? From whose fields and fertile bosom sprang a youth that stood with drawn swords, and whose walls Amphion, son of Jove, built, drawing the stones with tuneful strain; into whose city more than once the father of the gods came, leaving heaven — this land, which has received the gods, and made them, and (let it be lawful to say) perhaps shall make them, is pressed beneath a sordid yoke. Race of Cadmus, brood of Ophion, to what have you sunk? You tremble before a coward exile, one without lands of his own, oppressive to ours. He who pursues crime over land and sea and shatters savage scepters with a just hand now, absent, is a slave and bears what he forbids to be done, and an exile, Lycus, holds the Thebes of Hercules. But he shall not hold it: he will come and exact the penalty and suddenly rise to the stars; he will find a way or make one. Come, I pray, safe and returning, and at last come victorious to your conquered home.

MEGARA: Rise up, my husband, and with your hand break apart the scattered darkness; if there is no road back and the way is closed, return with the world split open, and whatever lies hidden, possessed by black night, send forth with you. As once you stood, headlong, when the ridges were sundered, seeking a path for the swift river, when, torn by a vast onset, Tempe lay open — struck by your breast, this mountain and that gave way, and over the broken barrier the Thessalian torrent ran by a new road: so now, seeking your parents, your children, your country, burst the bounds of things, carrying off with you whatever greedy time, through so many steps of years, has hidden away; restore it, and the peoples forgetful of themselves and afraid of the light drive before you. Unworthy of you are the spoils if you bring back only what was commanded. But I speak too boldly, ignorant of our fate: from where shall come to me that day on which I may embrace you and your right hand, nor mourn your slow returns, unmindful of me? To you, O leader of the gods, untamed bulls shall bring their hundred necks; to you, lord of the harvest, I will render secret rites; for you in silent faith silent Eleusis shall hurl her long torches. Then shall I believe the souls restored to my brothers and my father himself, flourishing, governing his own realms. But if some greater power holds you shut in, we follow: either by your safe return defend us all, or drag us all down with you. You will drag us down, and no god will raise the broken.

AMPHITRYON: O partner of our blood, keeping the marriage bed with chaste faith, and the sons of great-souled Hercules, conceive better thoughts and rouse your spirit. He will surely come, as he is wont from every labor — greater.

MEGARA: What the wretched too much desire they easily believe.

AMPHITRYON: Rather, what they too much fear they think can never be moved or removed: faith inclined by fear is always to the worse.

MEGARA: Sunk and buried, and crushed besides beneath the whole world, what road has he to the upper air?

AMPHITRYON: The same he had when he crossed the parched plain and the sands that surge like a troubled sea, and the strait twice receding and twice returning, and when, his ship abandoned, he was caught and stuck fast on the shallow shoals of the Syrtes, and, his vessel fixed, overcame the seas on foot.

MEGARA: Rarely does unjust fortune spare the greatest virtues; no one can long expose himself in safety to perils so frequent: the chance that often passes by sometime finds him out. But see, savage, bearing threats in his face, and as he is in spirit, so is he in his gait, shaking another's scepter in his hand — Lycus comes.

LYCUS: Ruling the rich domains of the Theban city, and all that the slanting Phocis girds with fertile soil, all that Ismenus waters, all that Cithaeron sees from its lofty peak, I do not possess the ancient rights of an ancestral house, a slothful heir; I have no noble forebears, no race renowned with high titles, but a bright valor: he who boasts of his lineage praises another's. Yet a scepter seized is held by a fearful hand; all safety lies in the sword: what you know you hold against your citizens' will, the drawn sword guards. In another's place a throne stands unsteady. But one thing can establish our power, joined with the royal torch and Megara's marriage-bed: my newness shall draw its color from her noble line. Indeed I do not think she will refuse and scorn my bed; but if, stubborn, she refuses with ungovernable mind, I am resolved to root out utterly the whole house of Hercules. Will envy and the people's talk weigh upon the deed? The first art of kingship is to be able . . . to bear envy. Let us make trial, then; chance has given us the place. For she herself, her head veiled in mourning dress, stands close by the guardian gods, and at her side clings the true sire of Alcides.

MEGARA: What new thing does that man prepare, the ruin and pest of our race? What is he attempting?

LYCUS: O you who draw an illustrious name from a royal stock, with patient ear receive my words a little while. If mortals were ever to bear eternal hatreds and the frenzy once begun should never depart from their minds, but the fortunate keep arms while the unfortunate make them ready, wars would leave nothing behind; then the field would lie waste with barren acres, the torch set to the roofs, and deep ash would bury the buried nations. To wish peace restored serves the victor's interest; for the conquered it is necessity. Come, share my kingdom; let us be joined in spirit. Take this pledge of faith: touch my right hand. Why do you stand silent with grim face?

MEGARA: That I should touch a hand sprinkled with my father's blood and the twin slaughter of my brothers? Sooner will the east put out its rising and the west bring back the day, sooner will there be sure peace between snows and flames, and Scylla join the Sicilian to the Ausonian shore, and sooner shall the fleeting Euripus, with its alternate tides, stand sluggish with its Euboean wave. You have taken from me my father, my kingdom, my brothers, my home, my native hearth — what is left beyond? One thing remains to me, dearer than brother and parent, than kingdom and home: my hatred of you — which I grieve to share in common with the people. How small a part of it is mine? Reign in your pride, bear lofty spirits: an avenging god follows the proud at their back. I know the Theban realms: why speak of the mothers who have suffered and dared their crimes? Why the double horror and confounded names of husband, son, and father? Why the twin camps of brothers? Why their twin pyres? Proud Tantalis stands rigid, a mother in her grief, and on Phrygian Sipylus the mournful stone weeps. Why, Cadmus himself, raising his grim crested head, measuring the Illyrian realms in his flight, left behind the long traces of his trailing body. These are the examples that await you: reign as you please, until the wonted fate of our kingdom calls you.

LYCUS: Come now, away with these frenzied, savage words, and learn from Alcides to suffer the commands of kings. Though I bear the seized scepter in a victorious right hand and rule all things without fear of the laws which arms overcome, I will say a few words for my cause. Your father fell in bloody war? Your brothers fell? Arms keep no measure; the rage of a drawn sword can be neither easily tempered nor restrained. War delights in blood. But he fought for his own kingdom, and we were driven by base greed? The outcome of war is asked, not the cause. But now let all memory perish: when the victor has laid down his arms, it befits the conquered too to lay aside their hatreds. We do not ask that you adore the king on bended knee: this very thing pleases me, that you take your ruin with a great spirit. You are a wife worthy of a king: let us join our beds.

MEGARA: An icy, bloodless trembling runs through my limbs. What crime has struck my ears? Indeed I did not shudder when, the peace broken, the warlike din of battle resounded round the walls; I bore all things undaunted. The marriage chamber — I tremble at it; now I seem to myself a captive. Let chains weigh down my body, and slow death be drawn out by long starvation: no force shall conquer my faith. I will die, Alcides, yours.

LYCUS: Does a husband sunk in hell give you such courage?

MEGARA: He touched the lower world, that he might reach the upper.

LYCUS: The weight of the boundless earth presses him down.

MEGARA: No weight shall press him down who bore the sky.

LYCUS: You will be compelled.

MEGARA: He who can be compelled knows not how to die.

LYCUS: Say rather what royal gift I may make ready for a new marriage.

MEGARA: Either your death or mine.

LYCUS: You shall die, madwoman.

MEGARA: I shall go to meet my husband.

LYCUS: Is a slave more worth to you than my scepter?

MEGARA: How many kings has that slave handed over to death!

LYCUS: Why then does he serve a king and endure the yoke?

MEGARA: Take away harsh commands: what then will valor be?

LYCUS: To be thrown to wild beasts and monsters — you call that valor?

MEGARA: It is valor's part to tame what all men dread.

LYCUS: The darkness of Tartarus presses down the boaster.

MEGARA: There is no soft road from earth to the stars.

LYCUS: From what father born does he hope for the homes of the gods?

AMPHITRYON: Pitiable wife of great Hercules, be still: it is my part to give back to Alcides his father and his true lineage. After so many memorable deeds of that mighty man, after all that Titan sees at his rising and his setting, pacified by his hand, after so many monsters subdued, after Phlegra sprinkled with impious blood, and the gods defended, is his father not yet clear? Then we lie when we say Jove: trust Juno's hatred.

LYCUS: Why do you do violence to Jove? A mortal race cannot be joined to heaven.

AMPHITRYON: That cause is common to many gods.

LYCUS: Were they slaves before they became gods?

AMPHITRYON: The Delian shepherded the flocks of Pherae.

LYCUS: But he did not wander, an exile, through all lands.

AMPHITRYON: One whom his fugitive mother bore in a wandering land?

LYCUS: Did Phoebus fear savage monsters or wild beasts?

AMPHITRYON: The serpent first stained Phoebus' arrows with blood.

LYCUS: You do not know what heavy ills he bore when small.

AMPHITRYON: The boy, cast from his mother's womb by the thunderbolt, soon stood next to his thunder-wielding father. And he who steers the stars, who shakes the clouds — did he not hide, an infant, in a cave of the Idaean rock? Such great births have their anxious price, and it has always cost much to be born a god.

LYCUS: Whomever you see wretched, know him to be a man.

AMPHITRYON: Whomever you see brave, you would not call wretched.

LYCUS: Shall we call him brave from whose shoulders the lion-skin slipped, made the gift of a girl, and his club, while his side gleamed, embroidered in Sidonian robe? Shall we call him brave whose bristling hair dripped with nard, who moved his hands, famed for their renown, to the unmanly sound of the timbrel, pressing his fierce brow with a barbarian turban?

AMPHITRYON: The tender Bacchus does not blush to have scattered his flowing locks, nor with soft hand to wave the light thyrsus, when with none too firm a step he trails his barbaric, gold-adorned robe: after many labors valor is wont to relax.

LYCUS: This the overthrown house of Eurytus confesses, and the flock of maidens crushed like cattle: this no Juno, no Eurystheus commands — these are his own deeds.

AMPHITRYON: You do not know all: his own deed it was that Eryx was broken by his own gauntlets, and Libyan Antaeus joined to Eryx, and that the hearths, dripping with the slaughter of guests, drank the just blood of Busiris; his own deed that, proof against wound and sword, Cycnus was forced to suffer death unwounded, and that not one Geryon was conquered by a single hand. You shall be among these — who yet by no defilement have wronged a marriage-bed.

LYCUS: What is lawful for Jove is lawful for a king: to Jove you gave a wife, to a king you shall give one; and, with you for her teacher, your daughter-in-law will learn this — nothing new — that even with her husband's approval she should follow the better man. But if, stubborn, she refuses to be joined in wedlock, even from her by force I will beget a noble offspring.

MEGARA: O shades of Creon, household gods of Labdacus, and impious marriage-torches of Oedipus, now grant to our wedlock the fate it is wont to bring. Now, now, you bloody brides of the Egyptian king, be present, your hands stained with much blood. One is lacking to the number of the Danaids: I will fill out the crime.

LYCUS: Since, stubborn, you refuse our wedlock and terrify your king, you shall learn what scepters can do. Embrace the altars: no god shall snatch you from me, not though, the world heaved aside, Alcides could ride, a victor, to the gods above. Pile up the woods! Let the temples, hurled upon their suppliants, blaze, and let one pyre, set alight beneath them, consume the wife and the whole flock.

AMPHITRYON: This gift I ask of you, sire of Alcides — that I may fall first, as it befits me to request.

LYCUS: He who bids all atone their punishment by death knows not how to be a tyrant. Impose diverse penalties: forbid the wretched to die, command the happy. I, while the pyre grows with timber to be burned, will worship with a votive offering the ruler of the seas.

AMPHITRYON: O highest power of the deities, O ruler and parent of the heavenly ones, at whose hurled bolts human things tremble, restrain the impious right hand of this savage king! Why do I pray to the gods in vain? Wherever you are, hear me, my son. Why do the temples, shaken by a sudden movement, suddenly totter? Why does the ground bellow? We are heard! It is, it is the sound of Hercules' tread.

CHORUS

O Fortune, envious of brave men, how unequally you deal out rewards to the good! Let Eurystheus reign in easy idleness; let the son of Alcmena through all wars harry with monsters the sky-bearing hand: let him cut off the fertile necks of the serpent, bring back the apples from the deceived sisters, when, set to guard rich fruit, the dragon shall have surrendered to sleep his ever-watchful eyes.

He entered the far-roaming homes of Scythia and the nations that are strangers in their fathers' seats, and trod the frozen back of the sea and the silent waters with their soundless shores. There the hard waters lack their waves, and where full sails would spread for ships, a path is worn by the unshorn Sarmatians; the sea stands still, changing with the turning year, now ready to bear the ship, now the horseman. There she who rules over husbandless nations, binding her flanks with a golden belt, stripped from her body the noble spoil, both the shield and the bindings of her snow-white breast, looking up at her conqueror with bended knee.

With what hope, driven headlong to the underworld, bold to go the roads from which none return, did you behold the realms of Sicilian Proserpine? There no seas rise with swelling waves under the south wind or the west; there the twin race of the Tyndarids, those stars, do not aid the frightened ships: the sea stands sluggish, languid with its slow eddy, and when pale Death with greedy teeth has brought countless nations to the shades, all those peoples cross with a single ferryman.

May you overcome, I pray, the laws of fierce Styx and the irrevocable distaffs of the Fates. Here he who rules over many peoples as king, when you came in war against Nestor's Pylos, joined battle with you with his pestilent hands, brandishing his weapon with its threefold point: he fled, wounded by a slight hurt, and the lord of death feared to die. Break fate with your hand: to the sad shades below let a view of the light lie open, and let the trackless threshold give easy roads to the upper world.

The gentle lords of the shades Orpheus could bend with his songs and humble prayer, while he sought back his Eurydice. The art that had drawn the woods and birds and rocks, that had given pause to rivers, at whose sound the wild beasts had stood still, soothes the underworld with unwonted strains and rings more clearly in those deaf places. The Thracian brides weep for Eurydice, the gods, hard to move with tears, weep too, and those who with brow too grim seek out crimes and shake out old offenders sit weeping for Eurydice, the judges. At last the arbiter of death says, "We are conquered; go forth to the upper world, yet on this condition given: you shall go behind the back of your husband, his companion, and you shall not look back upon your wife until bright day shall have shown forth the gods and the gate of Taenarus is at hand." But true love hates delay and brooks it not: while he hastened to behold his gift, he lost it.

That realm which could be conquered by song can be conquered too by strength.

HERCULES

O ruler of kindly light and glory of the sky, who, circling alternate spaces in your flaming car, lift your bright head over the wide lands, grant pardon, Phoebus, if your eyes have seen anything unlawful: bidden, I have brought up to the light the hidden things of the world. And you, arbiter and father of the gods above, screen your sight with your bolt opposed; and you, who rule the seas with your second scepter, seek the lowest waters. Whoever from on high looks down on things of earth, fearing to be defiled by the strange sight, let him turn away his gaze and lift his face to heaven, fleeing the portent: let only two behold this horror, he who brought it up and she who commanded it. For my punishments and my labors the earth is not enough for Juno's hatred: I have seen places forbidden to all, unknown to Phoebus, and those dark realms which the worse pole yielded to dire Jove; and, if the regions of the third lot had pleased me, I could have reigned: the chaos of eternal night, and something heavier than night, and the sad gods, and the Fates I saw, and, with death despised, returned. What else remains? I have seen and shown the underworld. Give me, if there is aught beyond. Too long, Juno, you suffer my hands to be idle: what do you bid me conquer? But why do hostile soldiers hold the temple and the threshold? Why does the terror of arms beset the sacred place?

AMPHITRYON, HERCULES, THESEUS

AMPHITRYON: Do my eyes deceive my prayers, or has that tamer of the world and glory of the Greeks left the silent house under its mournful cloud? Is it my son? My limbs grow numb with joy. O son, sure though late salvation of Thebes, do I hold you, brought forth into the air, or do I enjoy an empty shade, deceived? Is it you? I know your build and your shoulders, and that hand noble for its tall club.

HERCULES: Whence this squalor, father, and my wife clad in mourning? Whence are my sons covered with such foul filth? What disaster weighs upon my house?

AMPHITRYON: Your father-in-law is slain, Lycus has seized the kingdom, and seeks the death of your sons, your father, your wife.

HERCULES: O ungrateful land! Did no one come to the aid of the house of Hercules? Did the world I defended look on so great a crime? But why do I waste the day in complaint? Let the victim be slaughtered, let valor bear this mark, and let Lycus become the last enemy of Alcides. I am borne to drain the hated blood: Theseus, stay here, lest some sudden force assail us. Wars summon me. Defer your embrace, father, and you, my wife, defer it. Let Lycus announce to Dis that I have now returned.

THESEUS: Banish from your eyes that tearful look, queen, and you, your son being safe, check your falling tears. If I know Hercules, Lycus will pay the penalty owed to Creon. "He will pay" is too slow: he pays; this too is slow: he has paid.

AMPHITRYON: May the god who can prosper our prayer and stand by our weary fortunes. O companion of my great-souled son, magnanimous one, unfold the order of his deeds: how long the road that leads to the mournful shades, how the Tartarean dog bore the hard chains.

THESEUS: You force me to recall deeds dreadful even to a mind now at ease. Scarcely yet is my trust sure in the living air; my eyes' sight is numb, and my dull vision scarcely bears the unaccustomed day.

AMPHITRYON: Overcome, Theseus, whatever of fear still remains deep in your breast, nor cheat yourself of the best fruit of your labors: what was hard to suffer is sweet to remember. Tell of the dread events.

THESEUS: I pray to all the right order of the world, and to you who rule the spacious realm, and to her whom, snatched away, in vain her mother sought through Enna, that it may be lawful to speak with impunity of things hidden and covered by the earth. The Spartan land raises a noble ridge, where Taenarus presses the sea with dense woods; here the home of hated Dis opens its mouth, and a high cliff gapes, and with its vast cavern a huge chasm yawns with monstrous jaws and opens a broad road to all peoples. The way does not begin blind with darkness at first; a faint gleam of the light left behind, at the back, and a doubtful brightness of the stricken sun falls and mocks the sight: such light as the dim, mingled first or last hour of day is wont to give. Hence wide spaces stretch open in empty regions, into which all the human race sinks and passes. Nor is it labor to go: the road itself draws you down. As often the tide sweeps along reluctant ships, so the downward air urges, and greedy chaos, nor do the clinging shades ever allow the step to turn back. Within, in vast recesses, Lethe glides quiet over its placid shoal and takes away cares; and, that the power of returning might no more lie open, it winds the heavy stream in many bends: as wandering Maeander plays with its uncertain waters and yields to itself and presses on, doubtful whether to seek shore or source. The foul marsh of sluggish Cocytus lies there; here the vulture, there the death-bringing owl groans, and the sad omen of the ill-boding screech-owl sounds again. The black foliage of dark leaves bristles, over which the dull god of Sleep broods on the overhanging yew, and mournful Hunger lies with wasted jaws, and tardy Shame hides its conscious face. Fear and Dread, Death and gnashing Grief, and black Mourning follow, and trembling Disease, and War, girt with iron; and, hidden in the farthest part, helpless Old Age aids its step with a staff.

AMPHITRYON: Is there any land fruitful of Ceres or of Bacchus?

THESEUS: No meadows grow glad with green face, nor does the ripe grain wave in the gentle west wind; no wood there has fruit-bearing boughs: the barren waste of the deep ground lies foul, and the loathsome earth is torpid in eternal decay. The motionless air hangs heavy, and black night sits over the sluggish world: all things are horrid with grief, and the place of death is worse than death itself.

AMPHITRYON: And he who rules those dark regions with his scepter — in what seat set, does he govern the fleeting peoples?

THESEUS: There is a place in the dark recess of Tartarus, which thick gloom binds with heavy shadows. From one source two discordant streams flow forth; the one, like a quiet stream — by it the gods swear — bears down the sacred Styx with a silent flood; but the other is swept along with a vast roaring, fierce, and rolls rocks in its flood — impassable Acheron, not to be sailed back. The palace of Dis, facing them, is girt by a double channel, and the great house is screened by a shadowing grove. Here, in a vast cavern, hang the tyrant's portals: this is the road for the shades, this the gate of the realm; about it lies a plain, in which, sitting with a proud face, the dire majesty of the god sorts out the newly come souls. His brow is grim — yet it bears the likeness of his brothers and of so great a race: his face is that of Jove, but of Jove thundering. A great part of that fierce realm is the lord himself, whose aspect is feared by whatever is feared.

AMPHITRYON: Is the report true that in the underworld justice is rendered thus late, and that the guilty, forgetful of their crime, pay the penalties they owe? Who is that ruler of truth and arbiter of right?

THESEUS: Not one inquisitor, sitting on a high seat, allots his late judgments to the trembling accused. In one court Cnossian Minos is approached, in another Rhadamanthus; here the father-in-law of Thetis gives ear. What each has done, he suffers; the crime returns upon its author, and the guilty is crushed by his own example. I saw bloody captains shut in prison and the backs of ungovernable tyrants torn by a plebeian hand. But whoever, gently powerful, is lord of life yet keeps his hands harmless, and, merciful, rules a bloodless empire and spares the soul — he, having measured out a long span of a happy age, either seeks the sky or the glad and blessed regions of the Elysian grove, to be a judge. Keep clear of human blood, whoever you are that reign: your crimes are reckoned on a greater scale.

AMPHITRYON: Does a fixed place hold the guilty shut in? And, as report tells, do savage punishments tame the impious with perpetual chains?

THESEUS: Ixion is whirled, racked on the flying wheel; the great stone of Sisyphus sits on his neck; in the midst of a stream, with parched throat, the old man pursues the waters, the water laps his chin, and, having often deceived him, gives him hope again: the water dies in his mouth, the fruit forsakes his hunger. Tityos provides eternal feasts for the bird, and the Danaids bear in vain their full urns; the impious daughters of Cadmus wander raging, and the greedy bird affrights the table of Phineus.

AMPHITRYON: Now tell of my son's noble battle. Does he bring back the gift of his willing uncle, or a spoil?

THESEUS: A deadly rock overhangs the sluggish shoals. Where the waters are dazed, the sea grows numb and still. This stream a man tends, horrid in dress and aspect, and a squalid old man ferries the fearful shades. His unkempt beard hangs down, a knot gathers his ugly garment, his hollow cheeks gleam; the ferryman himself steers his craft with a long pole. Now, bringing his vessel empty of cargo to the shore, he was seeking back the shades; Alcides demands passage as the crowd gave way. Dire Charon cries out: "Where are you going, bold one? Halt your hurrying step!" The son of Alcmena, brooking no delay, masters the boatman, forced by his own pole, and climbs the boat. The skiff, that holds whole peoples, sank beneath one man: he sat, and the heavier craft drank in Lethe over each tottering side. Then the conquered monsters tremble, the fierce Centaurs and the Lapiths, fired for war by much wine; the Lernaean labor, plunging its fertile heads, sought the farthest recesses of the Stygian marsh. After this the home of greedy Dis appears: here the savage Stygian dog frightens the shades, which, shaking its three heads with a vast sound, guards the realm. Snakes lick the head foul with gore, vipers bristle on its mane, and a long serpent hisses in its twisted tail. Its rage matches its shape: as it felt the movement of feet, it raised its shaggy hair, its snake quivering, and with ear pricked up caught the sound that came, wont to perceive even the shades. When the son of Jove stood nearer, the dog crouched uncertain in its cave and felt a slight fear. Behold, with deep baying it terrifies the silent places; the threatening snake hisses over all its shoulders, and the crash of its dreadful voice, sent forth from its three mouths, frightens even the blessed shades. Then he himself loosed the fierce jaws from his left arm and held out the Cleonaean head, sheltering himself behind that huge covering, bearing in his victorious right hand the great club. Now this way and now that he whirls it with ceaseless blows, redoubling his strokes; tamed, the dog broke off its threats and, weary, lowered all its heads and gave up the whole cave. Each lord upon his throne was afraid, sitting, and bade him lead it away; me too, at Alcides' asking, he gave as a gift. Then, stroking the monster's heavy necks with his hand, he binds them with adamantine mesh; forgetful of itself, the sleepless guardian dog of the dark realm lays back its ears, timid and patient to be dragged, and, confessing its master, with lowered muzzle obedient, beats both its flanks with its serpent-bearing tail. But when it came to the shores of Taenarus, and the strange new gleam of unknown light struck its eyes, the conquered beast resumed its courage and, raging, shook its vast chains; it almost carried off the conqueror, dragged him bent backward, and moved his step. Then Alcides looked back, even to my hands; with our twin strengths each of us dragged the dog, raging with fury and attempting vain warfare, and brought it forth into the world. When it saw the bright day and beheld the clear spaces of the gleaming sky, it shut its eyes and drove out the hated day and turned its face backward, and with all its neck sought the earth; then it hid its head beneath the shadow of Hercules. But a dense crowd came with glad clamor, wearing laurel on their brows, and sang the deserved praises of great Hercules.

CHORUS

Eurystheus, born of a hastened birth, had bidden him pierce to the foundation of the world: this alone was lacking to the number of his labors, to despoil the king of the third lot. You dared to enter the dark approaches, the road by which one goes to the far-off shades, gloomy and to be feared for its black wood, yet thronged, with a great crowd attending.

As great a people as marches through the cities, eager for the games of a new theater; as great as rushes to the Elean Thunderer, when the fifth summer has brought back the rite; as great a throng, when the hour returns that bids the long night grow, and the Balance, desiring quiet sleep, holds the chariot of Phoebus level, flocks to the secret rites of Ceres, and the Attic initiates, leaving their homes, hasten swiftly to celebrate the night: so great a crowd is driven through the silent fields. Part walks slow with old age, sad and sated with long life; part still runs, of a better age: maidens not yet joined in wedlock, and youths whose locks are not yet laid aside, and the infant lately taught his mother's name. To these alone, that they might fear less, it is granted to relieve the night with a torch borne before; the rest go sadly through the gloom. What is your spirit, when, with the light removed, each man, in sorrow, has felt his head to be buried under the whole earth? There stands dense chaos and foul darkness and the evil color of night and the idle calm of a silent world and empty clouds. May late old age bring us thither: no one comes too late to the place from which, once he has come, he can never return. Why does it profit us to hasten the harsh fate? All this wandering throng on the wide lands will go to the shades and make sail on sluggish Cocytus. For you everything grows, all that the setting sun sees and all the rising: spare those who must come — for you, Death, we are made ready. Though you be slow, we hasten of ourselves: the first hour that gave us life plucks it away.

For Thebes a glad day is at hand. Touch the altars as suppliants, slay the fat victims; let brides, mingled with the men, lead the solemn dances; let the dwellers of the fertile field rest, the yoke laid aside. Peace is, by the hand of Hercules, between the Dawn and the Evening-star, and where the sun, holding the midpoint, denies shadows to bodies; whatever land is washed by the long compass of Tethys, the labor of Alcides has tamed. Borne across the shoals of Tartarus, he returns, the underworld pacified. Now no fear remains: nothing lies beyond the shades. Standing priest, cover with the people's loved garland your sacred hair.

HERCULES, THESEUS, AMPHITRYON, MEGARA

HERCULES: Routed by my victorious right hand, Lycus fell, striking the earth face down; then whoever had been a companion of the tyrant lay there, the companion of his punishment. Now, as victor, I will offer sacred rites to my father and to the gods above, and with slain victims will honor altars that have earned them. You, you I beseech, the partner and helper of my labors, warlike Pallas, in whose left hand the aegis rouses fierce threats with its petrifying face; let the tamer of Lycurgus and of the Red Sea be present, bearing his spear-point hidden in the green thyrsus, and the twin deity, Phoebus and Phoebus' sister: the sister fitter for arrows, Phoebus for the lyre; and whatever brother of mine dwells in heaven — a brother not from my stepmother — hither drive your rich flocks. Whatever the harvest of the woods, and whatever the Arabs gather of perfume from the trees, heap upon the altars; let the rich vapor pour forth. Let the poplar tree adorn my hair; let a branch of olive cover you with its native leaf, Theseus; my hand shall worship the Thunderer, you the founders of the city and the woodland caves of fierce Zethus. The noble Dirce of famous water and the household of the Tyrian, the stranger king, you shall honor. Give incense to the flames.

AMPHITRYON: My son, first purify your hands, dripping with bloody slaughter and an enemy's blood.

HERCULES: Would that I could pour out to the gods a libation of that hated head's blood: no more pleasing liquid could have stained the altars; no victim, larger or richer, can be slaughtered to Jove than an unjust king.

AMPHITRYON: Pray that your father may end your labors; let rest at last be granted, and quiet for the weary.

HERCULES: I myself will conceive prayers worthy of Jove and of me. Let heaven stand in its place, and earth and sea; let the eternal stars run their unhindered courses; let deep peace nourish the nations; let harmless toil keep all iron busy and swords lie hidden; let no violent tempest disturb the strait; let no fire leap forth from an angry Jove; let no river, fed by winter snow, sweep away the overturned fields. Let poisons cease; let no plant swell, heavy with hurtful juice; let no savage and cruel tyrants reign. If the earth is to bring forth any crime even now, let it hasten; and if it prepares any monster, let it be mine. — But what is this? Mid-day is girt with darkness. Phoebus moves with a dim face, without a cloud. Who drives the day backward and sends it to its rising? Whence does unknown night lift its black head? Whence do so many daytime stars fill the pole? Lo, my first labor, the Lion, gleams in no small part of heaven and burns all over with rage and makes ready to bite. Now it will snatch some star: huge and threatening it stands with gaping mouth and breathes out fire and, shaking its mane on its glowing neck, whatever heavy autumn and cold winter bring back in their icy space, it will leap across at one bound, and seek and break the neck of the spring Bull.

AMPHITRYON: What sudden evil is this? Why, my son, do you turn your fierce gaze this way and that, and with troubled vision see a false heaven?

HERCULES: The earth is tamed, the swollen seas have yielded, the infernal realms have felt my onset: heaven alone is untouched, a labor worthy of Alcides. I will be borne aloft to the high spaces of the world, let me seek the aether: my father promises the stars. What if he should deny them? Earth does not contain Hercules and at last gives me back to the gods above. See, of its own accord the whole company of the gods calls me and opens its gates, with one alone forbidding. Do you receive me and unbar the pole, or do I drag away the gate of the stubborn world? Is there still doubt? I will strip the chains from Saturn, and against the ungoverned rule of my impious father I will loose my grandsire; let the Titans prepare wars, with me to lead their fury; I will bear rocks with woods and snatch with my right hand ridges full of Centaurs. Now with a twin mountain I will make a path to the gods above: let Chiron see his Pelion under Ossa, and Olympus, set as a third step, shall reach to heaven — or be hurled there.

AMPHITRYON: Put far from you these monstrous thoughts; restrain the mad onset of a breast too little sound, yet great.

HERCULES: What is this? The pestilent Giants take up arms. Tityos has fled the shades and, bearing his torn and empty breast, how near to heaven he stood! Cithaeron totters, high Pallene trembles, and Tempe withers. This one snatched the ridges of Pindus, this one snatched Oeta, Mimas rages horribly. The flame-bearing Fury sounds with cracking whip, and ever nearer and nearer to my face she stretches the stakes scorched in funeral pyres; savage Tisiphone, her head walled in with serpents, after the dog was carried off has closed the empty gate, opposing her torch. But see, the offspring of my enemy king lies hidden, the abominable seed of Lycus: to your hated father this hand will now send you back. Let the swift bowstring shake out arrows: thus it is fitting that the shafts of Hercules be sped.

AMPHITRYON: Where has his blind frenzy hurled itself? He has bent the vast bow with the horns brought together and loosed his quiver; the arrow, sent with force, whistles — the dart fled through the middle of the neck, leaving the wound behind.

HERCULES: I will hunt out the rest of the brood and all their hiding-places. Why do I delay? A greater war awaits me at Mycenae, that the Cyclopean stones may be overthrown and fall by my hands. Let this way and that the door, its bar cast down, go, and let it break the posts; let the struck roof totter. The whole palace shines through: here I see, hidden, the son of the wicked father.

AMPHITRYON: See, with coaxing hands stretched to his knees, he begs with pitiful voice: an abominable crime, grievous and horrid to behold! His right hand seized the suppliant and, whirling him round twice and three times in his frenzy, hurled him; but the boy's head rang out, and the room is wet with the brains scattered abroad. But poor Megara, sheltering her little son in her bosom, like one frenzied, fled from her hiding-place.

HERCULES: Though you, a fugitive, hide in the Thunderer's bosom, this hand will seek you out and carry you off from wherever you are.

AMPHITRYON: Where do you go, wretched woman? What flight or hiding do you seek? There is no place of safety with Hercules for your foe. Embrace him rather, and with coaxing prayer try to soften him.

MEGARA: Spare me now, husband, I pray, recognize your Megara. This son gives back your face and bearing; you see how he stretches out his hands?

HERCULES: I hold my stepmother. Come, pay me the penalty, and free Jove, oppressed beneath a shameful yoke; but before the mother let this little monster die.

MEGARA: Where do you turn, madman? Will you shed your own blood?

AMPHITRYON: The terrified infant, before the wound, perished at his father's fiery face; fear has snatched away his breath. Now the heavy club is poised against the wife: he has shattered her bones, the head is gone from the trunk and is nowhere. Do you dare to look on this, too long-lived old age? If grief weighs on you, you have death ready: turn your breast to the weapons, or turn this way the club, smeared with the slaughter of our own, or remove the false parent, shameful to your name, lest he stand in the way of your glory. — Where do you fling yourself, old man, to meet death? Where do you go, madman? Flee and hide, and take away with you this one crime from the hands of Hercules.

HERCULES: It is well; the house of the shameful king is cut down. To you, consort of mighty Jove, I have slain this flock, dedicated to you; gladly I have paid my vows, worthy of you, and Argos shall give other victims.

AMPHITRYON: You have not yet made due offering, my son: complete the rite. Lo, the victim stands at the altars, awaits your hand, its neck bowed down; I offer myself, I run to meet you, I follow you: strike — what is this? My eyes' sight wanders and grief dims my vision. Or do I see the hands of Hercules trembling? His face falls into sleep and his weary neck totters, his head sunk down; his knee bent, now wholly he falls to the ground, like an ash-tree felled in the woods, or a mole about to give a harbor to the sea. Do you live, or has the same frenzy given you to death that sent your own to their deaths? It is sleep: his breath drives a steady, returning motion. Let there be time for rest, that in heavy sleep the conquered force of the disease may lighten his oppressed breast. Remove his weapons, servants, lest he seek them again in his frenzy.

CHORUS

Let the heaven mourn and the great father of the high heaven, and the fruitful earth and the wandering, shifting wave of the sea, and you above all, who through the lands and the tracts of the sea pour forth your rays and put the night to flight with your fair face, fervid Titan: Alcides has seen your setting and your rising alike with you, and has known both your dwellings.

Free his soul from such monsters, free it, you gods above, turn his mind aright to better things. And you, O Sleep, tamer of evils, rest of the soul, the better part of human life, O winged offspring of Astraea your mother, languid brother of harsh Death, mingling false with true, sure yet worst herald of the future, O father of things, haven of life, rest of the light and companion of night, who come alike to king and slave, who compel the human race, fearful of death, to learn the long night beforehand: gently and softly cherish the weary man, press him down, conquered by heavy torpor; let sleep bind his untamed limbs nor leave his grim breast before his mind takes up its former course.

See, stretched on the ground, in his fierce and savage heart he turns over dreams. (Not yet is the plague of so great an evil overcome, and, wont to entrust his weary head to the heavy club, with empty right hand he seeks its weight, tossing his arms with vain motion.) Nor has he yet driven out all the swell, but, as a wave troubled by a mighty south wind keeps its long tumult and still heaves when the wind has ceased. Drive off the mad billows of his soul, let piety and valor return to the man. Or rather let his mind be driven on by frenzied motion: let the blind error go on the way it began; only frenzy now can make you guiltless; next to pure hands is the lot of not knowing one's crime.

Now let his breast, struck by the palms of Hercules, resound, let his arms, wont to bear the world, beat with victorious hand; let the heaven hear his vast groans, let the queen of the black pole hear them, and Cerberus, fierce, who bears his neck bound in vast chains, lurking in the lowest cave. Let chaos resound with mournful clamor, and the wide-spreading wave of the deep, and the air, which, midway, had felt your shafts even so: breasts beset by such great evils are not to be struck with a light blow: let three realms sound with a single beat of grief.

And you, ornament and weapon of his neck, long hung there, brave arrows, and you heavy quivers, deal savage blows to his fierce back; let the strong oak-clubs strike his shoulders, and the mighty staff load his breast with hard knots: let arms lament such great sorrows.

Go, ill-fated brood, O boys, by the sad road of the famed labor, you who were not companions of your country's glory, avenging savage kings with your wounds, not taught in the Argive wrestling-school to bend brave with the gauntlet and brave with the hand — yet who already dared to poise with sure hand the light shaft sent from Scythian quivers and to pierce the deer, safe in their flight: go to the Stygian harbors, shades, go, innocent ones, whom on the first threshold of life crime crushed, and a father's frenzy. Go, visit the angry kings.

HERCULES, AMPHITRYON, THESEUS

HERCULES: What place is this, what region, what quarter of the world? Where am I? Beneath the rising of the sun, or beneath the pole of the icy Bear? Does the farthest land of the Hesperian sea set this bound to the Ocean? What air do I breathe? What ground lies beneath me, weary? Surely I have returned — but whence, prostrate before my home, do I see these bloody bodies? Has my mind not yet laid aside the infernal shapes? After my return, too, does the funeral crowd wander before my eyes? I am ashamed to confess it: I am afraid; I know not what great evil my soul, I know not how, forebodes. Where are you, father? Where is that spirited wife with her flock of sons? Why does my left side lack the lion's spoil? Whither has gone my covering, and the couch soft for Hercules' sleep? Where are my shafts? Where my bow? What man could strip my arms from me while I lived? Who carried off such great spoils, and who did not shudder at the very sleep of Hercules? I would gladly see my conqueror, gladly — rise up, valor — whom my father, leaving heaven, begot anew, in whose conception stood a night longer than my own. What horror do I behold? My sons lie slain by a bloody slaughter, my wife destroyed. What Lycus holds the kingdom, with Hercules returned? Whoever dwells in the lands of Ismenus, whoever in the Actaean fields, whoever inhabits the realms of Pelops of Dardanus, beaten by the twin sea, help me, point out the author of this savage disaster. Let my rage rush upon all: he is my foe, whoever does not show me my foe. Conqueror of Alcides, do you hide? Come forth, whether you avenge the savage chariots of the bloody Thracian, or the herd of Geryon, or the lords of Libya: there is no delay in fighting. Lo, I stand naked; even with my own arms you may attack me unarmed. Why do Theseus and my father flee my face? Why do they hide their own faces? Defer your weeping; tell me, all at once, who gave all my own to death. Why, father, are you silent? But you, Theseus, tell — yes, Theseus, by your faith. Each in silence covers his shamefaced face and secretly pours forth tears. In such great evils what is there to be ashamed of? Was it the ungovernable ruler of the Argive city? Was it the hostile band of dying Lycus that overwhelmed us with so great a disaster? By the glory of my deeds I beseech you, father, and by your name, ever a kindly divinity to me, tell: who has cut down my house? Whose prey have I lain?

AMPHITRYON: Let these evils pass thus in silence.

HERCULES: That I should be unavenged?

AMPHITRYON: Vengeance has often done harm.

HERCULES: Has any sluggish man endured such great evils?

AMPHITRYON: Whoever feared greater ones.

HERCULES: Can anything, father, be feared greater or heavier than these?

AMPHITRYON: How small a part is this, that you know, of your disaster?

HERCULES: Pity me, father; I stretch out suppliant hands. What is this? My hand recoils; here the crime lies. Whence this blood? What of that arrow, dripping with a boy's death? It has been dipped in Lernaean slaughter. Now I see they are my own shafts; I do not ask for the hand. Who could bend the bow, or what right hand draw the string that yields rightly only to me? I turn back to you: father, is this crime mine? They are silent — it is mine.

AMPHITRYON: The grief is yours there, the crime your stepmother's: this mischance is free of guilt.

HERCULES: Now from every quarter, father, in your wrath thunder, forgetful of me, avenge with your late hand at least my grandchildren. Let the star-bearing heaven resound and this pole and that hurl their flames; let the Caspian crags drag my bound body, and the greedy bird — why do Prometheus' rocks lie idle? Why does the sheer side of Caucasus lie idle, that feeds beasts and birds on its vast peak, bare of woods? Let those Symplegades, which press the Scythian sea on this side and on that, stretch out my hands fastened to the deep, and, when, the turn recalled, they shall come together upon themselves and squeeze toward heaven the sea between, the cliffs driven from either side, let me lie, the restless hindrance of the mountains. No, rather let me heap up a pile, gathering the wood, and burn my body, sprinkled with impious blood. So, so must it be done: I will give Hercules back to the underworld.

AMPHITRYON: His breast, not yet free of the stunned tumult, has changed its rage, and — what is frenzy's own — he rages against himself.

HERCULES: O dire places of the Furies, and prison of the underworld, and the region appointed to the guilty throng — if any exile lies hidden further than Erebus, unknown to Cerberus and to me, hide me there, earth; I will go to the farthest bound of Tartarus, to remain. O breast too savage! You children, scattered through all the house, who can weep for you fitly? This face, hardened by ills, knows not how to weep. Here give me my bow, here give me my arrows, here give me the vast club. For you, boy, I will break my shafts; for you I will snap our bows; and for your shades the heavy club shall burn; my own quiver, thick with Lernaean shafts, shall go upon your pyres: let the arms pay the penalty. You too, O murderous stepmother's hands, I will burn with my shafts.

AMPHITRYON: Who anywhere has given the name of crime to error?

HERCULES: Often a great error has held the place of crime.

AMPHITRYON: Now there is need of Hercules: bear this weight of evil.

HERCULES: Frenzy has not so quenched and extinguished shame that I should put to flight all peoples by my unholy sight. Arms, arms, Theseus, I demand — that what was stolen be given back to me quickly, if my mind is sound; give back the weapons to my hands. If the frenzy remains, father, withdraw: I will find the road to death.

AMPHITRYON: By the holy rites of our race, by the right of either name of mine — whether you call me your foster-father or your parent — and by these grey hairs revered by the pious, spare, I pray, a deserted old age and my weary years; the one support of a fallen house, the one light to me afflicted by ills, keep yourself for me. No fruit of your labors has come to me; always I have feared either the doubtful sea or monsters; whatever savage king rages in all the world, guilty against hands or altars, is feared by me: always I, the father of an absent son, seek the fruit of you, and your deeds, and your face.

HERCULES: Why I should keep my soul longer in this light, or linger, there is no reason: I have now lost all my goods, my mind, arms, fame, wife, sons, hands, even my frenzy. No one could heal a soul defiled: by death the crime must be cured.

AMPHITRYON: You will slay your father.

HERCULES: That I may not be able to, I will die.

AMPHITRYON: Before your father's eyes?

HERCULES: I have taught him to look on horror.

AMPHITRYON: Look rather on your deeds, to be remembered by all, and beg of yourself pardon for one crime.

HERCULES: Will he grant pardon to himself, who has granted it to none? What I did, I did praiseworthy, when commanded: this one thing is my own. Help me, father; whether piety moves you, or my sad fate, or the violated honor of my valor: bring out my arms; let my fortune be conquered by my right hand.

THESEUS: A father's prayers are indeed effective enough, but yet be moved also by my weeping. Rise up and burst through your adversity with your wonted onset. Now take up again your spirit, matched against no evil; now you must act with great valor: forbid Hercules to be angry.

HERCULES: If I live, I have done crimes; if I die, I have suffered them. I hasten to purge the earth. Long now there roams before me an impious monster, savage and cruel and unyielding, and fierce: come then, right hand, attempt to undertake a vast work, more than my twice-six labors. Sluggish, do you hold back, brave only against boys and frightened mothers? Unless my arms are given to me, I will either cut down all the wood of Thracian Pindus and the groves of Bacchus and the ridges of Cithaeron and burn them with me; or, with their houses and their lords, the whole roofs, with the temples of all the gods, of Thebes I will pull down upon my body and, the city overturned, be buried; and if the walls, hurled upon me, fall a light weight on my brave shoulders, and, covered by the seven gates, I am not enough oppressed, I will turn upon my own head the whole burden that sits in the middle of the world and parts the gods from us.

AMPHITRYON: I give back your arms.

HERCULES: That is a voice worthy of the father of Hercules. By this shaft, lo, my boy fell, slain —

AMPHITRYON: This weapon Juno sent by your hands.

HERCULES: This now will I use.

AMPHITRYON: See how wretchedly with fear my heart throbs, and strikes my anxious breast.

HERCULES: The arrow is fitted.

AMPHITRYON: See, now you will do a crime willing and knowing.

HERCULES: Tell me, what do you bid me do?

AMPHITRYON: We ask nothing: our grief is in safety. You alone can save my son for me, nor even you can take him away. I have escaped the greatest fear: you cannot make me wretched; you can make me happy. Decide thus, whatever you decide, that you know your cause and your fame stand on a narrow and doubtful edge: either you live, or you slay me. This light soul, weary with age and no less weary with ills, I hold on the edge of my lips. Does anyone give life to a father so slowly? I will bear no further delay: I will plunge the steel, pressed into my breast: here, here will lie the crime of a Hercules of sound mind.

HERCULES: Now spare me, father, spare me, now draw back your hand. Yield, my valor, endure your father's command. Let this labor too be added to the labors of Hercules: let me live. Raise my limbs, afflicted, from the ground, Theseus. The touch of a parent, contact with the pious, my guilty hand recoils from.

AMPHITRYON: This hand I embrace gladly, leaning on this I will go, pressing it to my sick breast I will drive off my sorrows.

HERCULES: What place shall I seek, a fugitive? Where shall I hide myself, or in what land bury myself? What Tanais, or what Nile, or what Tigris, violent with its Persian wave, or what fierce Rhine, or Tagus, flowing turbid with Iberian gold, will be able to wash my right hand? Though the icy Maeotis pour its northern sea over me, and all Tethys run over my hands, the deep guilt will cling. Into what lands, impious, will you withdraw? Will you seek the east or the west? Known everywhere, I have lost my place of exile. The world flees me, the stars drive their slanting courses crosswise; Titan himself looked on Cerberus with a kinder face. O faithful soul, Theseus, seek a far-off, hidden hiding-place; and since, ever an arbiter of another's crime, you love the guilty, render thanks for my services and a return for ours: I pray, give me back, brought up to the infernal shades, and set me, subjected to your chains: that place shall hide me — but that place too knows me.

THESEUS: Our land awaits you. There Gradivus restored his hand, freed of slaughter, to his arms: that land calls you, Alcides, which is wont to make even the gods above innocent.