Hercules Oetaeus

HERCULES

Father of the gods, before whose hurled bolt both houses of Phoebus feel the lightning's power, reign now untroubled: I have won you peace through every land that Nereus forbids to stretch. There is no need to thunder; the treacherous kings lie low, the savage tyrants; I have broken whatever was left for your bolt. Yet to me, father, is heaven still denied? Surely everywhere I have proved myself worthy of Jove, and my stepmother has borne witness that you are my father. Why then do you weave delays? Am I a thing to fear? Will not Atlas, with the sky laid on him, be able to bear Hercules besides? Why deny me the stars, father, why? Death has at least released me back to you; every evil that earth bore, that sea, air, and the underworld brought forth, has yielded: no lion roams the Arcadian towns, the Stymphalian bird is struck down, no beast haunts Maenalus; the slain serpent has strewn its golden grove, the hydra has laid down its strength, and the herds of the host fattened on the blood of strangers by the Hebrus I broke, and dragged the spoils of the Thermodontian foe. I have seen the realm of the silent dead and not only returned, but the trembling day looked upon black Cerberus, and he upon the sun. No Libyan Antaeus draws breath again; before his own altars fell Busiris; Geryon was scattered by one hand, and the bull, the horror of a hundred peoples, dread. Whatever the hostile earth brought forth has perished and been laid low by my right hand: it was not granted me to serve angry gods. If the world denies me beasts, give now, stepmother, give back to the son his father, or, since I am brave, the stars; I do not ask you to show the way: only allow me, father; I shall find a path. Or if you fear that earth may conceive new beasts, let whatever evil there is make haste, while earth holds Hercules and sees him; for who shall assail those evils, or who, again, through the Argive cities shall be worthy of Juno's hatred? I have brought my praises into safety; no land is silent of me: the cold race of the Scythian Bear has felt me, the Indian set beneath the Sun, the Libyan beneath the Crab. You, bright Titan, I call to witness: I have met you wherever you blaze, nor could the light keep pace with my triumphs; I passed beyond the changes of the sun, and within my bounds the daylight stood still. Nature gave way, the earth failed in my stride: she wearied first. Night and the farthest chaos rushed upon me; thence I returned to this world, whence no one comes back. I bore the threats of Ocean, nor could any storm shake the vessel I pressed. What fraction of me is Perseus? Now the empty sky cannot suffice for the hatred of your bride; and the earth dreads to conceive whatever beasts I might subdue, nor does it find new monsters. Beasts are denied me: Hercules has now begun to stand in the place of a monster; for how great the evils I have broken, how many crimes, unarmed! Whatever savage thing stood against me my hands alone laid low; neither as a youth did I fear the beasts, nor as an infant; whatever is commanded is light, nor has any idle day dawned upon me. O how great were the monsters that no king ever set me, untrained! Valor pressed upon me, worse than Juno; but what does it profit me to have made a race that knows no fear? The gods have no peace: the whole purged earth sees in the sky whatever it once feared; Juno has carried up the beasts. The slain Crab circles the burning zone, and is borne as a star of Libya and nourishes the harvests; the Lion hands over the fleeting year to Astraea, and he, tossing the fiery mane upon his neck, dries the dripping south wind and snatches the rain-clouds. Behold, now every beast has invaded heaven and gone before me: a victor, from the earth I gaze upon my own labors; the stars to portents first and to beasts has Juno given, that she might make heaven a thing for me to dread. Though she scatter the world and make the sky worse than the earth, worse than the Styx in her anger, a place will be given to Alcides. If, after the beasts, after the wars, after the Stygian hound, I have not yet earned the stars, let Sicilian Pelorus touch the Hesperian shore, and there will be one land at last; thence I will drive the seas away. If you bid them join, let the Isthmus unite the waters, and over the joined main let new Attic ships be borne by a new road. Let the world be changed, let the Hister run in new valleys, and the Tanais take new ways. Grant, grant me, Jupiter, the gods at least to guard: from that quarter you may take away your bolt, which I shall guard; whether you bid me guard the icy pole, or guard the burning region, believe the gods on this side safe and secure. Paean earned the Cirrhaean temples and the home of heaven by slaying a serpent: O how often Python lies within the hydra! Bacchus and Perseus have already brought themselves among the gods: but how small a tract of the world is the conquered east, or how small a beast the Gorgon? What son has earned the stars by his own praises, born of you and a stepmother? I seek the heaven I bore. But you, companion of Hercules' toil, Lichas, bear word of the triumph, the conquered home of Eurytus and the laid-low kingdom; you, drive off the cattle quickly where, lifting its temples, the headland of Cenaean Jove looks out, dreadful to the south wind, on the Euboean sea.

CHORUS

He is equal to the gods for whom day and fortune were equal alike. Death has its likeness when life is slowly dragged out amid groaning. Whoever has set beneath his feet the greedy fates and the boat of the last river, will not give captive arms to chains nor come as a noble offering in the procession: never is he wretched for whom it is easy to die. If the raft should betray him in the middle of the sea, when the African wind has driven out the North, or the Eurus the Zephyr, when they divide the sea, he does not gather the fragments of his shattered ship, that he may hope for shore amid the open water: he who can give back his life at once alone will be unable to suffer shipwreck. But us a shameful leanness and tears hold fast, and hair filthy with our fathers' dust. Us no devouring flame, no crash has overwhelmed: the fortunate you follow, Death; the wretched you flee. We stand, and for our homeland—alas, no room for harvests, but for forests will be given, and the temples, fallen, will become squalid huts; already the chill Dolops will lead his flocks here, where, buried, lies warm the ash that survives of leveled Oechalia; in that place the poor Thessalian shepherd, piping untaught songs on his reed, will sing of our times with a mournful strain; and while the god draws together the few ages, it will be asked where our homeland was. Happy I dwelt by no barren hearths, nor on the lean acres of Thessalian soil: I am summoned to Trachis, the stiffened rocks and thickets bristling on parched ridges, a grove scarcely pleasing to the mountain-roving flock. But if a better lot calls any handmaids, either the winged Inachus will carry them away, or they will dwell in the Dircaean walls, where flows Ismenos, languid with a thin divinity— here the mother of swelling Hercules had wed. False is the tale of the twin nights, when the upper air held the stars longer and Lucifer exchanged his turns with Hesperus and the slower Delian forbade the Sun: what crag of Scythia, what stone begot you? Did fierce Rhodope bear you, a wild Titan, you the sheer-cut Athos, you the savage Caspian, which offered you her striped breasts? Your limbs are pierced by no wounds: the blunt iron feels you, the steel grows duller; upon the naked body the sword is shattered and the stone springs back, and he scorns the fates and provokes death with his unconquered frame. The spear-points could not pierce him, nor the bow drawn with the Scythian reed, nor the weapons the cold Sarmatian bears, nor he who, set beneath the sun-bearing tract, aims his wounds at his neighbor the Nabataean, the Parthian surer with his Cnossian shots. With his body he thrust down the walls of Oechalia; nothing has power to stand against him; what he prepares to conquer is already conquered—how small a part fell by his wound? For destiny too unkindly the harsher face was bared, and it is enough to have seen the threats of Hercules. What vast Briareus, what swollen Gyas, when he stood upon the Thessalian rampart and thrust his viper-hands into heaven, stiffened at this face? Great compensations lie open for great disasters; no evil remains: we have seen Hercules angry, wretched as we are.

IOLE

But I, unhappy, do not lament the temples fallen with their gods, nor the scattered hearths, fathers burned mingled with their sons, gods with men, temples with tombs; I make no complaint of a common woe: elsewhere does fortune call my tears, to weep other ruins do the fates bid me. What shall I first lament? What last shall I bewail? It pleases me to weep for all things alike, nor has Earth given me breasts enough that I might sound blows worthy of these fates. Make me, you gods above, the weeping rock of Sipylus, or set me on the banks of Eridanus, where the grieving wood of Phaethon's sisters resounds in sorrow; or add me to the Sicilian rocks, where I may mourn the fates as the Thessalian Siren, or lift me into the Edonian forests, as the Daulian bird is wont to weep her son beneath the Ismarian shade; fit a shape to my tears, and let rugged Trachis resound with my woes. Myrrha looks to her Cyprian tears, the wife laments her stolen Ceyx, the daughter of Tantalus has outlived herself; Philomela flees her own face and the mournful Attic bird cries out her son: why do my arms not yet take on the wings of a bird? Happy, happy, when my home, the wood, shall bear me, and sitting, a bird, in my father's field, I shall recount my fall in a plaintive murmur, and fame shall tell of winged Iole. I saw, I saw the pitiable fates of my parent, when, struck by the death-dealing club, he lay strewn through the whole hall: ah, if the fates had granted a tomb, how often, father, would you have had to be sought? Could I look upon your slaying, your cheeks not yet clothed with soft down nor with strong blood, Toxeus? Why do I complain of your fates, my parents, whom an even-handed death has borne to safety? My own fortune asks tears of me. Now, now a captive, I shall gather my mistress' distaff and spindles. Cruel beauty, alas, and a form that shall give birth to death for me, for you alone has my whole house fallen, while my father refuses me to Alcides and fears to be the father-in-law of Hercules. But now let her mistress' roof be sought.

CHORUS

Why look back, distracted, on the bright kingdom of your parent and upon your own falls? Let the former fortune flee your sight; happy is whoever has learned to bear both servant and king and can change his looks to suit. He takes from evils their strength and their weight who has borne his lot with a level mind.

NURSE, DEIANIRA, LICHAS, MUTE

O how bloody a fury goads on women, when one house has lain open to mistress and wife! Scylla and Charybdis, whirling the Sicilian straits, are less to be feared; no beast is not better. For when the splendor of the captive mistress shone again and Iole flashed forth, like a cloudless day or as a bright star glitters on clear nights, Hercules' wife stood like one in frenzy, glaring grim; as a tigress lying beneath an Armenian crag, heavy with young, leaps up when the foe is sighted, or as a Maenad, bidden to shake the thyrsus and bearing within her the god Lyaeus, uncertain where to carry her steps, hesitated a while; through the house of Hercules, thunderstruck she is borne; the whole house is scarcely enough: she runs, she wanders, she halts; into her face all her grief came forth; to the very bottom of her breast nothing is left; weeping follows on her threats. Nor does one bearing endure, nor does she rage content with one expression: now her cheeks burn, pallor drives out the redness, and grief wanders through all her forms: she complains, implores, groans. The doors have sounded: behold, with headlong step, with confused mouth she brings forth the secrets of her mind.

DEIANIRA

Whatever part of the heavenly seat you tread, wife of the Thunderer, send against Alcides a beast that may suffice for me. If any serpent, vaster than the whole marsh, stirs its fruitful head, ignorant of being conquered, if any thing has surpassed the beasts, monstrous, dread, horrible, at sight of which Hercules would turn away his eyes, let it come forth from some vast cave; or if beasts are denied, this soul of mine, I pray, turn into some such thing: whatever evil I can become with this mind of mine, grant me an image equal to my grief: my breast does not hold its threats. Why do you ransack the bays of the farthest earth and overturn the world? Why ask Dis for evils? In this breast you will find all the beasts that he might fear; take this weapon for your hatred: let me be the stepmother, you can destroy Alcides: guide my hands wherever you will; why do you delay, goddess? Use me in my frenzy! What unspeakable deed do you bid done? I have found it—why do you cling back? Now you may cease: this wrath is enough.

NURSE

Restrain, my child, the surge of a mind too little sound, and tame the flames; curb your grief, show yourself the wife of Hercules.

DEIANIRA

Shall the captive Iole give brothers to my sons, and a daughter-in-law from a slave-girl to Jove? Shall flame and torrent run a course together, and the dry She-Bear drink of the dark-blue sea? I will not go unavenged: though you have borne the heaven and the whole world owes its peace to you. There is something worse than the hydra: the grief of an angered wife. What fire so great rages up to heaven of blazing Aetna? Whatever was conquered by you, this spirit will conquer. Shall a captive snatch away my marriage-bed? Until now I feared the monsters; now there is no evil: the plagues have ceased, into the place of a beast has come a hated mistress. O highest ruler of the gods and bright Titan, I was the wife only of a Hercules who feared; the vows I offered to the powers above have gone to the captive; for a mistress I was fortunate. For her, O you gods above, you heard my prayers; for her he returns unharmed. O grief content with no penalty, seek out frightful punishments, unthought-of, unspeakable; teach Juno what hatred can do: she does not know how to be angry enough. For me you waged your wars, for my sake the wandering Achelous stained his waters with his own blood, when he became a sluggish serpent, when, the serpent laid aside, he bent the threats of a savage bull, and in one foe you conquered a thousand beasts. Now I am displeasing; a captive is preferred to me. She shall not be preferred: the day that is to be the last of our wedded bed, this shall be the last of your life. What is this? My spirit draws back and lays down its threats; already my anger fails. Why grow faint, wretched grief? You lose your frenzy, the loyalty of a silent wife you give me back again.—Why forbid the flames to be fed? Why, frail thing, the fires? Keep this fury for me, let us go as equals; there will be no need of vows: a stepmother will be at hand to guide our hands even unsummoned.

NURSE

What crime do you prepare, madwoman? Will you slay your husband, whose first and last day have known his praises, and whose fame, raised to heaven, holds the lands set beneath it? The land of the Greeks will rise against this house, and the house of your father-in-law first, and the Aetolian race will all be laid low; even now stones and torches will be borne against you; the whole earth will defend its avenger: how many penalties will you pay alone? Believe that you can flee the lands and the human race: the father of Alcides bears the bolt; even now, behold, see the threatening torches go through heaven, and the day thundering with the hurled bolt. Death itself, too, which you think safe, fear: there rules the uncle of your Alcides. Wherever you go, wretched woman, kindred gods you will see there.

DEIANIRA

That a great crime is committed I myself confess, but grief commands it be committed.

NURSE

You will die.

DEIANIRA

I shall die, surely, the wife of Hercules clothed in glory; nor shall any day, when night is dispelled, mark me a widow, nor shall a captive mistress take my marriage-bed; sooner shall day be born from the west, sooner shall the icy pole stain the Indians or Phoebus the Scythians with his warm wheel, than the Thessalian brides shall see me abandoned; with my blood I shall quench the wedding torches. Either let him perish, or let him slay me; among the crushed beasts let him add his wife; among the labors of Hercules let him reckon me too: dying, at least I shall embrace the bed of Alcides with my own body. It pleases me to go, to go to the shades as the bride of Hercules, but not unavenged: if Iole has conceived anything from our Hercules, with my own hands I shall tear it out first, and through the very torches I shall fall upon the mistress. Let him, hostile, strike me down as a victim on the wedding day, so that I may sink down upon Iole's lifeless body. Happy lies whoever crushes those he hates.

NURSE

Why do you yourself feed the flames and willingly cherish a vast grief? Wretched woman, why fear what is empty? He loved Iole: when, to be sure, her father stood firm and he sought the king's daughter; into a slave-girl's place the princess has now fallen: love has lost its strength, and her unhappy state has drawn much from it. Forbidden things are loved, whatever is permitted falls away.

DEIANIRA

A worse fortune inflames love the more: he loves even this very thing, that she lacks her father's home, that her hair lies bare of gold and gem; in his pity perhaps he loves her very sufferings; this is habitual with Hercules: he loves captives.

NURSE

The beloved sister of Dardanian Priam, surely, was given over as a slave; add how many wives before, how many maidens he loved: he wandered, roving. The Arcadian maid, surely, while she wove the dances of Pallas, Auge, suffered violence and fell, and Hercules keeps no mark of that love. Why should I recount the others? The Thespiades, surely, are free, and for them Alcides burned with a brief flame. A guest of Tmolus, he caressed the Lydian bride and, captive to love, sat at the light distaffs, twisting the moist thread with a fierce hand. That neck, surely, laid aside the spoil of the beast and pressed its hair with a turban, and he stood a slave, his bristling locks soft with Sabaean myrrh. Everywhere he burned, but burned with a light flame.

DEIANIRA

Lovers are wont to cling fast after their wandering fires.

NURSE

Will he prefer a slave-girl, a foe's daughter, to you?

DEIANIRA

As the tall forest holds its blossoming green when the first warmth first clothes the bare grove, but when Boreas has driven out the loosened south winds and savage winter has shaken down all its leaves, you behold the grove unsightly with bare trunks: so our beauty, running its long journey, loses something always and shines less, nor is it that old beauty. Whatever in us was once sought after has fallen, or totters all together. Age, more aged, has snatched it away with hurried step, and motherhood has stolen much of it from me. You see how the slave-girl does not lose her deep loveliness? Her adornments have wholly gone, and squalor settles on her; yet through her very sufferings her beauty shines, and chance and heavy fate have taken nothing from her but her kingdom; this is the fear in my breast. Nurse, it troubles me; this dread snatches away my sleep. I was a wife famous among all peoples, and our marriage with envious vow all brides desired, and what mind asked anything of any gods? Among the Argive brides I was the measure of their vow. What father-in-law equal to Jove, nurse, shall I have? What husband under this heaven shall be given to me? Though Eurystheus himself, who commands Alcides, should join me with his torches, it is less. To have been bereft of a reigning king's bed is light: deep has she fallen who lacks a husband, Hercules.

NURSE

The birth of a child often reconciles the hearts of spouses.

DEIANIRA

This very birth, perhaps, shall divide our bed.

NURSE

That slave-girl, meanwhile, is dragged as a gift to you.

DEIANIRA

This man whom you see going, glorious, through the cities and bearing the tawny spoils of the beast upon his back, who gives kingdoms to the wretched and snatches them from the lofty, his rough hand burdened with the vast club, whose triumphs the farthest Seres sing and whoever else lies in the world's compass— he is fickle, nor does the glory of renown spur him on; he wanders through the world, not that he may be made equal to Jove nor go great through the Argive cities: what he may love he seeks; he aims at maidens' chambers. If any is denied, she is snatched; he rages upon peoples, seeks brides through ruins, and his unrestrained vice is called valor. Famous Oechalia has fallen, and one Titan, one day saw it standing and falling; the cause of his warring is love. So often will a father fear for his daughter before Hercules as he denies her; he is a foe as often as a father-in-law refuses to be made: if he is not made a son-in-law, he strikes. After this, why do I keep these hands of mine guiltless, until he feign madness and with savage hand draw the bow and crush me and my son? Thus does Alcides drive out his wives; these are his divorces; and he cannot be made guilty: that to the lands the cause of his crimes might seem his own, he has made the stepmother so. Why are you stupefied, sluggish fury? The crime must be seized: carry it through while the hand is hot.

NURSE

Will you slay your husband?

DEIANIRA

Of my mistress, surely.

NURSE

But the offspring of Jove,

DEIANIRA

Yes, and sprung from Alcmena.

NURSE

With the sword?

DEIANIRA

With the sword.

NURSE

If you cannot?

DEIANIRA

I shall slay him by guile.

NURSE

What madness is this?

DEIANIRA

The one my husband teaches.

NURSE

Will you slay this man, whom not even a stepmother could?

DEIANIRA

Those whom the wrath of heaven crushes, it makes wretched: human wrath makes none.

NURSE

Spare him, pitiable woman, and fear.

DEIANIRA

He has scorned all things who first scorned death; it pleases me to go upon the sword.

NURSE

Greater, my child, is your grief than the offense; let the hatred match the guilt. Why do you set savage measures for moderate wrongs? As you are harmed, so grieve.

DEIANIRA

Do you believe a mistress a light evil to a wife? Whatever feeds your grief, count that too much.

NURSE

Has the love of bright Alcides fled from you?

DEIANIRA

It has not fled, nurse; it remains and deeply settles, fixed in my marrow, believe me; but a great grief is love grown angry.

NURSE

Brides, as a rule, by magic arts, with prayers mingled in, bind their marriages. I have bidden the grove grow green in the midst of cold and the hurled bolt stand still; I have shaken the sea when the wind ceased, and unrolled the troubled deep, and the dry earth has opened with new springs; the rocks have had motion. I have flung open the gates and the shades of Dis, and at my prayer I have bidden the ghosts to speak. The infernal hound was silent; midnight saw the sun, and day the night: sea, earth, heaven, and Tartarus serve me, and nothing keeps its laws against my spells: we will bend him; my songs will find a way.

DEIANIRA

What herbs Pontus breeds, or what the Thessalian Pindus nourishes beneath its crag: where shall I find an evil to which he would yield? Though by a magic charm to earth the Moon descend, her stars deserted, and winter see the harvests, and the fleeing bolt, by song caught and held, stand still, and, the turn reversed, the midmost day grow hot with stars forced together: it will not bend him.

NURSE

Love has conquered even the gods.

DEIANIRA

By one, perhaps, he will be conquered and yield as spoil, and Love will become the highest labor of Alcides.— But by every power of heaven I beseech you, by this fear of mine: whatever secret I prepare, hide it deep within and press it down in silent faith.

NURSE

What is this that you ask to be kept secret?

DEIANIRA

They are not weapons, not arms, not threatening fire.

NURSE

I confess I can furnish silent faith, if it lack crime: meanwhile, such faith is crime.

DEIANIRA

Look around, come now, lest anyone seize on the secret, and let your gaze go searching into every part.

NURSE

See, the place is safe and free of every witness.

DEIANIRA

There is, in a remote spot of the royal seat, a silent cave guarding our secret. That place receives not the first suns, nor the late ones, when Titan, bearing the day, sinks his weary yoke in the reddening Ocean. There the pledge of Hercules' love lies hidden. Nurse, I will confess: the author of the evil is Nessus, whom pregnant Nephele bore to the Thessalian chief, where trembling Pindus thrusts its head among the stars and beyond the clouds drawn-up Othrys stands rigid. For when, subdued by the club of rough Hercules, Achelous, ready to be given into all shapes, at last, all the beasts run through, lay open and humbly submitted his head beneath a single horn, while the victor Alcides held me as his wife and was making for Argos, by chance, wandering through the fields, Euenus, bearing his deep flood into the sea, was now, turbid, almost up among the treetops. Nessus, wont to cross the swirl by its fords, demanded payment; and bearing me now on his back where the spine, leaving off the horse, joins on the man, he was breaking the very threats of the swollen river. Now fierce Nessus had come out of all the waters, and Alcides still wandered in the mid-ford, cleaving the rapacious swirl with his vast stride; but he, when he saw Alcides far off, 'You shall be my prey,' he said, 'and my wife; he is held back by the waters'; and clasping me, bearing me on, he quickened his pace: the waters do not hold Hercules: 'Faithless ferryman,' he said, 'though the Ganges and the Hister go with valleys joined together, I shall conquer both; I shall overtake your flight with my shaft.' The bow outran his words; then, bearing a long wound, the reed held back his clinging flight and fixed death in him. He, now seeking the daylight, caught in his right hand the foul matter flowing from the wound and gave it to us, set into his own hoof, which by chance he had torn off, ripped away by his savage hand. Then, dying, he added words: 'This,' he said, 'the witches have said, can fix love fast by an evil charm; this learned Mycale taught the Thessalian brides, for among all the witches whom the Moon follows when she leaves her stars, you shall give garments smeared with this very foul matter,' he said, 'if a hated mistress shall take your marriage-bed and your fickle husband shall give the high-thundering father another daughter-in-law. Let no light look upon this, let darkness alone, far removed, cover this: thus the potent blood will keep its strength.' Rest seized his words and sleep brought death to his wearied limbs. You, whom my faith admits to my secrets, go, that, set to give the poison into the shining garment, it may reach his mind through his limbs, and, silently passing, enter his marrow.

NURSE

Quickly will I do your bidding, my child; do you call upon the unconquered god, who from a tender hand sends sure shafts.

DEIANIRA

You I beseech, whom the world and the gods above fear, and the sea, and he who shakes the Aetnaean bolt, you, the winged boy dreaded even by your savage mother: aim a swift dart with sure hand, not one of the light arrows: from the heavier number, I pray, draw forth one which your hands have not yet sent against anyone; there is need of no light shaft, that Hercules may be able to love. Bend your rigid hands and make ready your bow with the horns joined. Now, now draw forth the arrow with which once you sought rough Jove; the god, his bolt cast aside, when his brow swelled on a sudden, and, a bull, the bearer of the Assyrian girl, clove the raging sea; send love, let it conquer all examples: let him learn to love his wife. If any torches the beauty of Iole has burned into the heart of Hercules, quench them all; let him drink in my form. You have often tamed the lightning-wielding Jove, you him who bears the dark sceptre of the black pole, the leader of a greater throng and lord of the Styx, and you, O god, harsher than an angry stepmother, take this triumph alone, and conquer Hercules.

NURSE

The poison is brought out; the very robe that wearied on Pallas' distaff the whole hand of the handmaids. Now let the venom be heaped on, and let the garment of Hercules drink in the plague; with prayers I will heighten the evil. At the very moment busy Lichas meets us: the dire poison must be hidden, lest the guile lie open.

DEIANIRA

O name faithful always to kings, which proud houses never possess, Lichas, take these garments, which our hand has woven, while, wandering, he is borne through the world and, conquered by wine, holds the Lydian bride in his fierce lap, while he demands Iole; but perhaps a rugged heart by deserving may be cut; deserts have conquered the wicked. Bid that my husband not put on the garments before he feeds the flames with incense and appeases the gods, his white hair girt with stiffened poplar. I myself will bear my steps into the royal household and with prayers will worship the mother of rough Love. You, whom I led out as companions from my father's hearths, women of Calydon, mourn a lot to be wept.

CHORUS

We weep, daughter of Oeneus, for your fortunes, we, the throng of your companions through your earliest years, we weep, revered one, for your uncertain marriage-bed. We were wont with you to beat the ford of Achelous, when, the spring now over, he laid down his swollen waters and, slender, crept on with even step nor rolled the headlong stream when yellow Lycormas had broken loose its spring; we were wont to go to the altars of Pallas and to celebrate the maidenly dances. We were wont with you to bear the Cadmean rites laid up in chests, when, the star of winter now driven off, the third summer calls forth the sun and Attic Eleusis, granted to the corn-bearing goddess, shuts in her initiates. Now too, whatever fortune you fear, take us, faithful companions, to your fates: for rare is faith where now a better fortune falls to ruin. You, whoever you are who hold the sceptre, though all the common throng in your hall beat at a hundred thresholds alike: though you go thronged with so many peoples, among so many peoples there is scarce one faith. The Fury holds the gilded threshold, and when the great doors lie open, frauds enter and cautious deceits and the hidden sword; and when, into the peoples, you prepare to go forth, envy is your companion: as often as Dawn drives away the night, so often believe that a king is born. Few worship kings, not kingdoms: the splendor of the hall stirs the more; this man longs, nearest the king himself, to go famous through the broad cities: glory burns his wretched breast; this man longs to fill his hunger with treasures, nor yet does all the tract of the gem-bearing Hister suffice, nor does all Lydia conquer his thirst, nor the land set beneath the Zephyr that is amazed to see bright Tagus shine with its golden stream; nor though all Hebrus should serve him and rich Hydaspes join his fields, and within its own bounds he should watch the Ganges run with all its flood: for the greedy, for the greedy, nature is too little. This man worships kings and the homes of kings, not that the curved plowman, pressing the share, may never cease, ever, or a thousand husbandmen cut the fields: he wishes only for wealth he may hoard. This man worships kings, that he may trample all and ruin some and relieve none: only to do harm does he long to be powerful. Rare is one who is happy and at once an old man: how small a part die at the time of fate? Those whom Cynthia saw happy, the rising day has seen wretched. The turf, softer than Tyrian purple, is wont to bring untroubled sleeps; golden roofs break repose, and the purple draws out wakeful nights. O if the breasts of the rich lay open! What great fears does lofty fortune drive within! The Bruttian wave, when the Corus beats the strait, is gentler; the poor man bears an untroubled breast. He holds cups of spreading beechwood, but he holds them not with trembling hand; he plucks easy and cheap foods, but does not look back on drawn swords: blood is mingled with golden cups. A wife wed to a modest husband does not bear, bright with the well-set necklace, the gifts of the reddening sea, nor does the stone gathered in the Eastern wave drag down her gem-bearing ears, nor, soft in the Sidonian cauldron, does the wool drink dipped-again redness, nor with Maeonian needle does she pick out what the Ser, set beneath the eastern winds of Phoebus, gathers from the eastern trees. Any herbs have dyed her distaffs which untaught hands have spun: but she cherishes no doubtful marriage-bed. The Fury with her dire torch pursues those whose day the peoples have honored, nor does the poor man hold himself happy unless he sees the happy fallen. Whoever shuns the middle path never runs on a steady track: while one sought to give a single day and the boy stood on his father's car nor ran down the accustomed road, but, seeking with the flames of Phoebus unknown stars, his wheel astray, he ruined the world together with himself. While he cut the middle path of heaven, Daedalus kept the pleasing shores and gave a name to no sea; but while Icarus dares to outdo the true birds and the boy looks down on his father's wings and flies nearest to Phoebus himself, he gave a name to an unknown sea: great things are ill paid for by ruin. Let another be called happy and great; let no throng call me powerful. Let my slender vessel skim the shores, nor let a great breeze bid my skiffs cleave the middle sea: Fortune passes by the safe bays and seeks the ships in the mid-deep, whose topsails strike the clouds. But why, terrified, with frightened face, like a Maenad wounded by Bacchus, does the queen bear her step into our midst? What fortune whirls you again? Pitiable woman, tell us: though you yourself deny it, your face speaks whatever you hide.

DEIANIRA, NURSE

A wandering tremor runs through my shaken limbs, my hair stands up bristling, dread still stands in my stricken soul, and my astonished heart leaps and the frightened liver throbs in my trembling veins, as the sea, broken by the south wind, still swells even now, although the day grows calm with the languid winds: so my mind is still tormented though the fear is shaken off. When once the god has begun to crush the fortunate, he presses on; such ends do great things have.

NURSE

What fortune, so violent, whirls you, pitiable woman?

DEIANIRA

When the robe was sent, smeared with Nessus' foul matter, and grieving I brought my step into my chamber, I know not what my spirit feared—does it plot a fraud? It pleases me to make trial. Dire Nessus warned that his savage blood be shown neither to suns nor flames: this very caution forewarned that there was fraud. And by chance, his radiance sprinkled with no cloud, the burning Titan was loosing the fiery day. Even now fear scarcely suffers me to loose my lips. Trembling, I cast into the middle of the sun's fires the wool with which the robe had been dipped and the garment smeared; the cast-off fleece bristles and loses its hair and, warmed by the rays, scarcely even is—I speak a portent. As Eurus melts the snows, or the warm Notus, which bright Mimas loses at the first spring, and as Leucas, set against them, breaks the rolling waves on the Ionian sea, and the weary swell foams on the very shore, or as incense sprinkled on the warm hearths of the gods grows loose, so all the fleece grows faint and loses its hairs. And while I marvel at these things, the cause of my marveling perishes; nay, the very earth heaves with foaming motions, and whatever was touched by that foulness totters. . . . and swelling in silence . . . it shakes the head . . .

HYLLUS, DEIANIRA

Go, flee, seek if anything lies further open in lands, sea, stars, Ocean, the underworld, beyond the labors of Alcides; flee, mother.

DEIANIRA

My spirit forebodes I know not what great evil.

HYLLUS

Seek the kingdom of triumph, the temple of Juno: these lie open for you, all shrines barred.

DEIANIRA

Tell what fortune, though I am guiltless, crushes me.

HYLLUS

That glory of the world and its only safeguard, whom the fates had given to the lands in the place of Jove, O mother, is gone: his limbs and the frame of Hercules some plague, I know not what, devours; he who tamed the beasts, he, he, the victor, is conquered, mourns, grieves. Why ask further?

DEIANIRA

The wretched are quick to hear their own miseries; speak, in what state now stands our house? O home, wretched home! Now widowed, now driven out, now I shall be borne overwhelmed.

HYLLUS

You do not mourn alone. Hercules lies, to be wept by the whole world; and do not, mother, believe your fates your own: now the whole race makes outcry. This grief, behold, which you bewail, all bewail; a woe common to all lands you suffer. You have seized the grief first: first, not alone, pitiable woman, you mourn Hercules.

DEIANIRA

Yet how near to death—tell me, tell me, I beg, does Alcides lie?

HYLLUS

Death flees from him, conquered, who once in his own kingdom was conquered, nor do the fates dare to admit so vast an outrage; trembling, perhaps, Clotho herself has flung from her hand the distaffs and fears to carry through the fates of Hercules. O day, unspeakable day! Is this how that great Alcides shall meet his end?

DEIANIRA

To the fates and the shades and to the worse pole do you say he goes before? Or can I be the first to seize on death? Speak, if he has not yet fallen.

HYLLUS

The Euboean land, swelling with its vast peak, is beaten on every side: Caphereus cleaves the Phrixean sea; this flank serves the south wind; but where it suffers the threats of the snowy North, the unstable Euripus turns its wandering waters and rolls seven courses and brings back as many, until weary Titan plunges his yoke in the Ocean. Here, on a lofty crag, which many a cloud strikes, the aged temple of Cenaean Jove shines. When at the altars all the votive flock had stood and the whole grove had groaned with gilded bulls, he stripped off the lion's spoil, foul with gore, and laid down the weight of his club, and from his shoulders heavy with the quiver eased them; then, shining in your robe, his bristling hair bound round with white poplar, he kindled the altars: 'Receive these,' he said, 'O father not false to the harvests, and let the holy fire shine bright with abundant incense, which, worshiping Phoebus, the rich Arab gathers from his Sabaean boughs. Land and heaven and sea are at peace,' he said, 'all the beasts subdued, I have returned victor: lay down your bolt.' A groan, in the midst of his prayers, fell from him as he too was stunned; then he fills the heaven with a horrid cry: as a bull, fleeing, the axe driven in, bearing the wound and the shaft, fills the trembling shrines with vast bellowing, or as the bolt thunders, sent down upon the world, so he strikes the stars and the sea with his groan, and vast Chalcis resounded, and all the Cyclades took up his cries; hence the rocks of Caphereus, hence every grove gives back the cries of Hercules. We see him weeping; the crowd thinks the old madness has returned; then the servants seek flight. But he, turning his face with its fiery glare, follows them all out and seeks Lichas. Embracing the altars with a trembling hand, Lichas spent his death in fear and left a small part of himself for punishment; and while he held the dying corpse in his hand: 'By this hand, this,' he said, 'shall I be borne, O fates, conquered? Has Lichas conquered Hercules? Behold another disaster: Hercules slays Lichas. Let my deeds be stained: let this be my last labor.' Hurled to the stars he is borne, and sprinkles the clouds with his wandering blood; so up to heaven leaps the reed seen sent from a Getic hand or which the Cydonian shoots: yet lower will fly even the shafts. His trunk falls into the sea, his head onto the rocks: one man lies in two places. 'Stand back,' he said, 'no frenzy has stolen my mind; heavier than frenzy, heavier than wrath, is this evil: it pleases me to rage upon myself.' He scarcely names the plague and rages: he himself rends his own limbs apart and tears his members, plucking them with his vast hand. He seeks to strip off his garments: this alone, I saw, Hercules could not do; yet, trying to drag it, he dragged his limbs too: the robe is part of the body of the rough man, part of it itself: the plague mingles with his skin. Nor does the cause of the dire disaster lie open in the midst, yet there is a cause; and scarce able to bear the evil, now, languid, he presses the earth with face downturned, now he calls for water: the water does not conquer the evil; he seeks the wave-sounding shores and reaches the sea: a friendly hand holds him back as he wanders. O bitter lot! We were the equals of Alcides. Now a ship bears him from the Euboean shore, and the gentle south wind carries the weight of Hercules; his spirit forsakes his limbs, night presses on his eyes.

DEIANIRA

Why, my soul, do you delay? Why are you stunned? The crime is done. Jupiter demands back his son, Juno her rival. He must be given back to the world: what you can, give back, show: let the sword be driven through my limbs. Thus, thus must it be done. Does so light a hand demand so great a penalty? Destroy, father-in-law, with your bolts your guilty daughter-in-law. Nor let my hand be armed with a light shaft: let that bolt leap from the pole with which, had Alcides not been born your son, you would have burned the hydra: strike me as an unwonted plague and rather as an evil that an angry stepmother would send. Send forth such a shaft as was once sent against the wandering Phaethon: in Hercules alone, I myself, have ruined the peoples too. Why ask the gods for a shaft? Now spare your father-in-law: let it shame me to wish the death of Alcides' wife: this hand shall serve my vow, let it be sought from me; seize the iron, quickly. Why the iron, then? Whatever draws to death is weapon enough: I shall be borne from the airy crag. This, this, which first demands the new-born day, let Oeta be chosen; it pleases me to send my body from here; let the sheer cliff cleave it and let every rock bear a part of me; let my torn hands hang and the whole flank of the rugged mountain grow red. A single death is light—light? But it can be drawn out. You do not know how to choose, my soul, on what weapon to fall; would that the sword of Hercules, would that it were fixed in my chamber: it is fitting to die upon that iron. Is it enough for us to perish by a single hand? Come together, nations; let the world hurl stones and measureless torches; let no hand now hold back, seize the weapons; I have taken away your avenger: unpunished now will savage kings wield their sceptres, unpunished now will untamed evil be born; the altars, wont to behold a victim, will be sought again, a victim like to the worshiper: I have made a path for crimes, I, who set myself against tyrants, kings, monsters, beasts, and the savage gods, the avenger snatched away. Do you delay, partner of the Thunderer? Do you not, imitating your brother, scatter the torch and send the bolt snatched from Jove and ruin me yourself? Your famous glory is snatched away, your vast triumph: that your rival, Juno, should be seized first by death—

HYLLUS

Why drag down a shaken house? Of error is all of this, whatever it is, the guilt. He is not guilty whoever is guilty not of his own will.

DEIANIRA

Whoever pardons fate and spares himself has deserved to err: it pleases me to be condemned by death.

HYLLUS

Whoever seeks to die wishes to seem guilty.

DEIANIRA

Death alone makes the guiltless, deceived, innocent.

HYLLUS

Fleeing the Titan—

DEIANIRA

The Titan himself flees me.

HYLLUS

Will you leave life?

DEIANIRA

Wretched life, that I may follow Alcides.

HYLLUS

He still lives and draws the heavenly air.

DEIANIRA

When Hercules could be conquered, from that he began to die.

HYLLUS

You follow your husband.

DEIANIRA

Chaste wives are wont to go before.

HYLLUS

Will you leave your son and break off your fates?

DEIANIRA

Whomever a son buries has lived long enough.

HYLLUS

If you condemn yourself, you charge yourself, wretched, with crime.

DEIANIRA

No guilty one inflicts punishment on himself.

HYLLUS

Life has been remitted to many whose error, not their hand, was guilty; who condemns his own fates?

DEIANIRA

Whoever has been allotted unjust fates.

HYLLUS

This very man, surely, laid low Megara pierced with his own arrows, and the offspring of his children, fixing the Lernaean shafts with his frenzied hand; thrice made a parricide, yet he pardoned himself, not his frenzy: at the Cinyphian spring his crime beneath the Libyan sky he wiped away and washed his right hand. Whither, wretched woman, do you go? Why condemn your hands?

DEIANIRA

The conquered Alcides condemns my hands: it pleases me to punish the crime.

HYLLUS

If I know Hercules, he will come, perhaps, victor over the bloody evil, and the broken grief will yield to your Alcides.

DEIANIRA

The venom has eaten his limbs, as the report of the hydra goes; a measureless plague has carried off my husband's members.

HYLLUS

Do you declare that the venom of a serpent slain by him cannot be conquered, who bore the living evil? He crushed the hydra, holding it with fixed tooth in the mid-marsh, the victor, overwhelmed by the poured-out venom in his limbs: shall the blood of Nessus crush him, who conquered the very hands of rough Nessus?

DEIANIRA

In vain is he held who has resolved to die. He has lived enough whoever has fallen with Alcides: therefore I am resolved to flee the light.

NURSE

Behold, by these aged locks I, a suppliant, beseech you, and by this breast almost a mother's: lay down the swollen threats of your wounded heart and cast off the dread resolve of a dire death.

DEIANIRA

Whoever, by chance, dissuades a wretch from dying is cruel; sometimes death is a penalty, but often a gift; to many it has been a pardon.

NURSE

Defend at least your hand, unhappy woman, and let him know the deed was of fraud, not of his wife.

DEIANIRA

I shall be defended there: the powers below will absolve the accused, by myself I am condemned; let Pluto purge these hands. I shall stand before your banks, forgetful, Lethe, and a sad shade shall receive my husband. But you who turn the kingdom of the blackening pole, make ready a labor (whatever crimes anyone has dared, this error surpasses: Juno dared not snatch Hercules from the lands)—make ready a frightful punishment. Let the neck of Sisyphus rest, and let his stone press my shoulders; let the stream of Tagus flee me and the deceitful wave cheat my thirst; I have deserved to give my hands to your whirlings, O wheel, whoever you are that torture the Thessalian king; let the greedy vulture dig hither and thither at my entrails; one place stands empty among the Danaids: I will fill that turn. Loose your bonds, ghosts; receive me as a companion to you, Phasian wife: this right hand is worse, worse than either of your crimes, whether as a guilty mother or a dread sister; add me as a companion to your crimes, Thracian wife; your daughter, Althaea, mother, receive; now know me as your true offspring—yet what so great have your hands carried off? Close Elysium to me, whatever faithful wives hold the groves of the sacred wood; if any has sprinkled her hands with her husband's gore, and, unmindful of the chaste torch, a bloodstained daughter of Belus has stood with drawn sword, let her recognize and praise her own hands in mine; into this throng of wives it pleases me to depart; but that throng too will flee such dire hands, unconquered husband; my soul is guiltless, my hand is guilty. O mind too credulous, O treacherous Nessus and the guile of the half-beast! Wishing to take from the mistress, I took from myself. Withdraw, Titan, and you, life, who hold the wretched fawning in the light: a light bereft of Hercules is cheap. I will exact punishment from you and give back life. Or do I draw out my fates and keep my death, husband, for your hands? Is there any valor left, and have armed hands the strength to bend the bow and shoot the shaft? Or do the arms grow slack, and with languid hand does the bow not obey you? If you can give death, spirited husband, I await your right hand. Let death be deferred: break me as you broke guiltless Lichas. Scatter me into other cities, and into an unknown world send me forth: ruin me as you did the outrage of Arcadia and whatever else withstood you: from those, yet, husband, you returned.

HYLLUS

Spare yourself now, mother, I beg, pardon the fates; error is free of guilt.

DEIANIRA

If true piety, Hyllus, is to be sought by you, now slay your mother—why does your trembling hand quiver? Why turn your face aside? This crime will be piety. Do you, coward, hesitate? She, she snatched Hercules from you, this right hand slew him, to whom you owe a father and a Thunderer for grandfather. A greater glory I took away than I gave in the light, if the deed is unknown to you, learn it from your mother; whether it pleases you to plunge the sword into my throat, or it delights you to fall upon your mother's womb, your mother will offer you an undismayed spirit; not so great a crime will be done by you: by your right hand I shall be laid low, but by my own mind. Son of Alcides, do you fear? So will you carry out no commands nor break the evils, recalling your father? Make ready an undismayed right hand. See, my breast lies open, full of sorrows: strike. I remit the crime; the Eumenides themselves will spare your right hand—the sound of scourges has cracked. Who is that one, twisting her hair with quivering snake, shaking black wings from her squalid temples? Why do you pursue me, dire one, with a blazing torch, Megaera? Do you demand punishment for Alcides? I will give it. Already, dire one, do the judges of the underworld sit? They sit; I see the prison's doors unbarred. Who is that one, now an old man, who bears the huge stone upon his worn shoulders? Behold, now the conquered rock seeks to slip back? Who is shaken upon a wheel? Here, behold, dread Tisiphone has stood, pale, demanding the cause; spare me your scourges, I pray, Megaera, spare me, hold back the Stygian torches: it is a crime of love—but what is this? The earth totters and the hall has cracked, its roof shaken loose—threatening, whence is that gathering? On my face the whole world rushes down; hence and hence the peoples roar and the whole world demands its avenger. Now spare me, cities; whither shall I drive my headlong flight? Death alone will be given as a harbor for my sorrows. I call to witness the flaming wheel of bright Phoebus and call the gods above to witness: still on earth I leave Hercules, I about to die.

HYLLUS

She has fled, thunderstruck, ah me. The mother's part is now played out: she is resolved to die; now ours remains, to take away the impulse of her death. O wretched piety: if you forbid my mother to die, you are wicked toward your father; if you let her die, still you sin against your mother—crime presses here and there. Yet she must be restrained, that I may truly snatch away the crime.

CHORUS

True is that which the holy Orpheus sang beneath the ridges of Thracian Rhodope, fitting the Pierian lyre, Orpheus, offspring of Calliope: that nothing becomes eternal. At his measures stood still the crash of the rapid torrent, and the water, forgetting to follow its flight, lost its rush; and while there is a halt to the rivers, the Getae, the farthest Bistones, think the Hebrus has failed. The wood brought the bird, and the forest came, sitting beside him; or if any flies through the air, hearing the wandering songs, the bird, failing, falls; Athos breaks off its crags, bearing the Centaurs along the way, and stood beside Rhodope, its snow loosened by the songs; and the Dryad, fleeing her own oak, hastens to the bard; to your songs come the beasts with their very lairs, and beside the fearless flock the Marmaric lion sat, nor do the does tremble at the wolves and the serpent flees its lair. Nay, through the Taenarian gates, when he went to the silent ghosts, striking his mournful lyre, he conquered Tartarus with his tearful song and the sad gods of Erebus, nor did he fear the Stygian lakes sworn by the gods above. The unsteady wheel stood still, languid, its whirling conquered, the liver of Tityos grew again, while with song he held the birds; and the relentless stone and the rock could follow the bard; then for the first time the Phrygian old man, forgetful, with the waters standing still, shook off his raging thirst nor set his hands to the apples. Heard too was the ferryman, of the infernal water's flood, he came with no rowing. So when Orpheus was conquering the powers below utterly with his song, the goddesses fill again the consumed distaffs of Eurydice! But while, forgetful, he looks back, nor believing her given back to himself, Orpheus, while Eurydice followed, he lost the rewards of his song: she who was born again perished. Then, seeking solace in his songs, in mournful measures Orpheus sang these things to the Getae: that laws were given to the gods above, and the god who orders the four seasons of the headlong year arranged their turns; for none does the distaff of greedy Fate refuse to weave the threads: whatever is born, can die. The conquered Hercules bids us believe the Thracian bard; now, now, when the laws are overthrown, when to the world the day shall come, the southern pole shall overwhelm whatever lies through Libya and the scattered Garamas holds; the northern pole shall overwhelm whatever lies beneath the heavens and dry Boreas strikes; the trembling Titan, his pole lost, shall shake off the day. The palace of heaven, falling, shall draw down the risings and settings, and all the gods alike shall some death and chaos destroy, and death shall fix the final fates upon itself for itself. What place shall hold the world? Shall the road of Tartarus depart, that it may lie open, the poles broken? Or is the space that divides the upper air from the lands enough, and too much for the world's evils? What place shall hold so great a fate, so great an outrage, what place the gods? Sea, Tartarus, stars, one place shall hold the three kingdoms. But what crash, not slight, stirs our astonished ears? It is, it is the sound of Hercules.

HERCULES, CHORUS

Turn back your panting steeds, bright Titan, send forth the night: let this day perish from the world, the day on which I die; let the pole bristle with a black cloud, stand against my stepmother; now, father, it were fitting that blind chaos were restored; hence and hence, its bonds broken, each pole ought to be shattered. Why spare the stars? You lose Hercules, father. Now into every quarter of the pole, Jupiter, look, lest some Gyas hurl the Thessalian ridges and Othrys become a light weight for Enceladus. Now, now proud Pluto will loose the doors of his black prison, will strike off his father's chains and give back heaven; he who, in place of the bolt and your torches, was born your son upon the earth, returns to the Styx: fierce Enceladus will rise and hurl against the gods above the weight by which he is now pressed; all the kingdom of the upper air, father, my death will make doubtful to you—before all heaven becomes the spoil of you, bury me, father, in the whole ruin of the world, break the pole you destroy.

CHORUS

You fear no vain things, son of the Thunderer: now Pelion will press Thessalian Ossa and Athos, heaped on Pindus, will thrust its grove among the heavenly stars; thence Typhoeus will overcome the crags and bear the Tyrrhenian Inarime; thence he will bear the Aetnaean furnaces and cleave the flank of the opened mountain, Enceladus not yet conquered by the bolt: already the kingdoms of heaven follow you.

HERCULES

I, who, leaving death behind, the Styx scorned, returned through the midst of Lethe's pools with a spoil at which, his steeds almost lapsing, Titan nearly fell, I, whom the three kingdoms of the gods have felt, I die, nor does any sword hiss through my side, sent across; the shaft of my death is not all of Othrys. No giant with savage maw overwhelms my corpse with the whole of Pindus: without a foe I am conquered, and what tortures me the more (O wretched valor!) is that the last day of Alcides lays low no evil. Alas, I spend my life on no deeds. O ruler of the world and you gods above, once witnesses of my right hand, O all the earth, does it please you that your Hercules be struck by death? O the dire shame for us, O the foul fate, that a woman shall be called the author of Hercules' death! By whose hands does Alcides die? If the unconquered fates willed that I should fall by a woman's hand, and through so foul distaffs my death has run, I might have fallen, ah me, by the hatred of Juno: I would have fallen by a woman's hand, but one that holds heaven; if it was too much, you gods above, let an Amazon born beneath the Scythian sky have tamed my strength—by the hand of what woman am I, the foe of Juno, conquered? Hence heavier for you, stepmother, is the shame. Why do you call this day joyful? What such thing did the earth bring forth for you in your anger? A mortal woman has surpassed your hatreds. Until now you bore that you were unequal to Alcides: you are conquered by two—let the gods be ashamed of their wraths. Would that the Nemean plague had glutted its maw with my blood, or that, ringed by a hundred snakes, I had fed the hydra with my foul matter, would that I had been given as prey to the Centaurs, or, bound among the shades, sat wretched on an eternal rock! Now I have dragged the last spoils while Fate stood amazed; now from the infernal Styx I have received the light, I have overcome the delays of Dis— everywhere death flees me, that I might lack the death of a glorious lot. O beasts, conquered beasts! The triple-formed hound did not, the sun once seen, lead me back to the Styx; not beneath the Hesperian pole did the Iberian throng of the savage herdsman conquer me, not the twin serpent. I have lost my death, ah me, so often honorable: what is my final title?

CHORUS

Do you see how valor, conscious of its praise, does not shudder at the Lethaean streams? It is ashamed of the author, it grieves not at death: it longs to end its last day by the vast bulk of a swollen giant and to suffer the mountain-bearing Titan and to owe its slaying to a raging beast. But your hand, pitiable one, is the cause, that there is no beast and no giant: for who is left a worthy author of Hercules' death, save your own right hand?

HERCULES

Alas, what scorpion within, what Crab, torn from the burning zone, fixed in me, burns my marrow? Once able to hold the blood of my swollen lungs, my heart, with fire distends the parched fibers. My liver burns, its gall dried up, and a slow vapor has drawn off all my blood, has consumed the outer skin, hence a wickedness has made entry into my limbs, the plague has carried off my flank. The evil has eaten through my limbs deep within and my ribs, has drained my marrow: it sits in the empty bones; nor do the very bones endure, but, their joints broken, shaken apart, they flow, collapsed in a mass, my huge body has failed, and my limbs are not enough for the plague of Hercules—O how great is the evil which I confess to be vast, O dire outrage! Behold, cities, behold what, what of that Hercules remains. Do you recognize Hercules, father? With these arms did I crush the throttled neck of the Nemean plague? With this hand the bow, drawn taut, brought down the Stymphalian birds from the very stars? With these steps did I conquer the swift beast that bore on its radiant brow the bright-shining head? With these hands did broken Calpe send forth the strait? By these do so many beasts, so many crimes, so many kings lie low? On these shoulders did the world sit? Is this mass mine, is this that neck? Did I set these hands against the falling sky? What Stygian guard shall be dragged beyond by my hand? Where is the former strength of myself, now buried? Why do I call upon Jove as father? Why, wretched, claim heaven through the Thunderer? Now, now Amphitryon will be believed my father. Whatever plague lies hidden in my flesh, come forth—why assail me with a hidden wound? What sea, the cold Scythian, what sluggish Tethys bore you, or the Iberian Calpe pressing on the Moorish shore? O dire evil! Is it a serpent, vibrating its squalid crested head, or some evil unknown even to me? Were you born of the blood of the Lernaean beast, or did the Stygian hound leave you on the lands? You are every evil and none—what face have you? Grant me at least to know by what evil I perish; whatever plague you are, or whatever beast, fear me openly! Who made you a place in the midst of my marrow? Behold, the skin torn away, my hand has uncovered the entrails; yet a deeper lair has been found—O evil like to Hercules! Whence is this weeping? Whence these tears upon my cheeks? A face once unconquered and never wont to offer tears to its own evils (the shame!) has now learned to weep. What day saw Hercules weeping, what land? Dry I bore my sorrows. For you that valor, which crushed so many evils, yielded to you alone; first and before all to me you took away my tears: harder than rough rock and than steel, my face, and the wandering Symplegades broke open my jaws and drove out a tear. Weeping, groaning—O highest ruler of the pole— the earth has seen me, and what tortures me the more, my stepmother has seen. Behold, it burns my fibers again, the fire has grown hot—whence now a bolt for me?

CHORUS

What could he not overcome, once harder than Getic Haemus nor gentler than the Parrhasian sky— he has yielded his limbs to savage grief and, moving his weary head upon his neck, bends his side with alternating weight, yet valor often swallows back the tears. So, though with a warm star Titan dares not loosen the northern snows, yet he conquers, and the icy radiance of the full-grown sun overcomes its torches.

HERCULES, ALCMENA

Turn your gaze to my disasters, father: never has Alcides fled to your hands, not when through my limbs the hydra unfolded its fruitful head; among the infernal lakes, possessed by black night, when I stood with Fate, I did not call upon you; so many beasts I conquered, rough ones, kings, tyrants, yet I never turned my face to the stars: always this hand of mine has pledged my vow; no lightnings have flashed for my sake in the holy sky—this day has bidden me wish for something; let it first hear my prayers and be the last as well: a single bolt I ask; believe me a giant: no less could I have claimed heaven for myself—while I thought you my true father, I spared heaven; whether you are cruel, father, or merciful, lend a hand to your son with hastening death and seize this glory for yourself. Or if it grieves you and your hand refuses the deed, send from the Sicilian peak, father, the burning Titans against me, who may bear Pindus in their hands or one who may crush me with Ossa, the mountain hurled. Let Bellona break the bars of Erebus, let her seek me with drawn sword; send savage Gradivus, let the dread god be armed against me: he is indeed a brother, but from a stepmother; you too, sister of Alcides only by a parent, hurl your spear against your brother, Pallas; suppliant I stretch my hands to you, stepmother: do you at least, I pray, scatter your shaft (I can perish by a woman's hand)— already broken, already glutted—why do you feed your threats? Why seek anything further? You see Alcides a suppliant, yet no land, no beast has seen me beseeching you. Now there is need of a stepmother angry with me—now does your grief cease? Now do you lay down your hatreds? You spare when death is my prayer. O earth and cities, will no one give a torch to Hercules, will no one hand me arms? Do you take away my weapons from me? So may no land conceive savage beasts after I am buried, nor ever the world implore my hands; if any evils shall be born, let an avenger be born: from every side overwhelm my unhappy head with stones, conquer my sorrows. Ungrateful world, do you delay? Have I fallen from your memory? Still would you lie subject to evils and to foes, had I not borne you. Snatch your avenger from his evils, you peoples: this time is given you to repay my deserts—death will be the price of all.

ALCMENA

What lands shall I, the wretched mother of Alcides, seek? Where is my son, where? If sure sight marks him, behold, reclining, he heaves with panting heart; he groans: it is over. Let me embrace, O son, your last limbs; let your fleeing spirit be gathered by my mouth: my arms, take their embrace. Where are your limbs? Where is that neck which bore the star-bearing world? Who has left you a scant part of yourself?

HERCULES

You behold Hercules indeed, mother, but a shade and a worthless I-know-not-what of myself. Recognize me, mother—why turn your face away and plunge your gaze? Do you blush to have Hercules called your child?

ALCMENA

What world has borne a new beast, what land begot it? Or what so dire an outrage triumphs over you? Who is the conqueror of Hercules?

HERCULES

You see Alcides laid low by a wife's guile.

ALCMENA

What guile is so great that conquers Alcides?

HERCULES

Whatever, mother, is enough for an angry woman.

ALCMENA

And whence did the plague fall into your limbs or bones?

HERCULES

A robe gave entry to a woman's poisons.

ALCMENA

Where is that robe? I behold your limbs laid bare.

HERCULES

It was consumed with me.

ALCMENA

Was so great a plague found?

HERCULES

Believe, O mother, that within my very flesh the hydra wanders and a thousand beasts with Lerna. What cloud of flame so great cleaves the Sicilian skies, what burning Lemnos, what tract of the fire-bearing pole forbidding the day to run in its blazing zone? Cast me into the very seas, O companions, and into the midst of rivers—what Hister is enough for me? Not Ocean himself, greater than the lands, shall break my fires; all moisture, in my evils, will fail, every stream will grow dry. Why, ruler of Erebus, did you send me back to Jove? It were fitting to hold me; give me back to your darkness, show such a Hercules to the powers below I subdued. I shall bring nothing thence; why do you fear Hercules again? Invade me, death, do not tremble: now I can die.

ALCMENA

Restrain at least your tears and tame your sorrows and amid such evils show Hercules unconquered, and defer death: conquer, as you are wont, the powers below.

HERCULES

If rugged Caucasus, binding me in its chains, offered me as a feast to the greedy bird, while Scythia groaned, no tearful groan would have fallen from me; if the wandering Symplegades pressed me with either rock, I would bear the threatening ruins of their returning; let Pindus fall upon me and Haemus and Athos, which breaks the Thracian waves, and Mimas, which takes the bolt of Jove: not though this very world, mother, should fall upon me and the Phoebean firmament, kindled, blaze above my marriage-bed, would an unworthy cry tame the mind of Hercules; let a thousand beasts run down and rage alike, hence with savage clangors let the heavenly Stymphalian bird, hence the threatening bull strike me with all its neck, and whatever was also a single huge thing; let here and there a wood rise up and harsh Sinis hurl against my limbs: torn apart, I shall keep silent—no beasts shall wring from me, no arms, a groan, nothing that can be driven.

ALCMENA

No woman's venom, son, cooks your limbs, but the hard chain of your toil and your long labor, perhaps, has fed your bloody sicknesses.

HERCULES

Where is the sickness, where is it? Is there still any evil in the world with me? Let it come; let someone here bend his bow against me: my bare hand will suffice. Let it come forth, come, here.

ALCMENA

Ah me. His sense too has excessive grief driven out by its assault. Take away, I beg, the weapons, and snatch hence, I pray, the deadly arrows: with fire suffused his cheeks threaten a crime; what hiding-places, an old woman, shall I seek? That grief is frenzy: it alone tames Hercules. Why, then, distraught, should I seek hiding-places or flight? Alcmena has deserved to meet death by a brave hand: let her perish even by a crime, before some coward consigns death to me, and a foul hand triumphs over me. Behold, wearied by his evils, grief binds his weary veins with sleep and shakes his panting breast with a heavy assault. Be favorable, you gods above; if you have denied to me, wretched, my son clothed in glory, an avenger at least, I pray, preserve for the lands; let the shaken grief depart and let the body of Hercules repair its strength.

HYLLUS, ALCMENA, HERCULES, PHILOCTETES, MUTE

O bitter light, O day capacious of crimes! The daughter-in-law of the Thunderer is dead, the son lies low, the grandson I survive; by a mother's crime this one perishes, by that fraud she was caught—who, through the turns of the years and in a whole lifetime, could, an old man, recount sorrows so great? One day has snatched away each parent; though I keep silent of the other evils and spare the fates: I lose Hercules, my father.

ALCMENA

Restrain your words, offspring clothed in Alcides and grandson like in fate to wretched Alcmena: a long sleep, perhaps, will conquer his grief. But behold, rest forsakes his weary mind and gives the body back to the sickness, and grief to me.

HERCULES

What is this? They stiffen! Trachis is seen from its ridge, behold, set among the stars, I have escaped at last the mortal race; who prepares heaven for me? You, you, father, now I see, and I behold my stepmother appeased as well. What sound strikes my heavenly ears? Juno calls me son-in-law. I see the gleaming palace of the bright upper air and the flaming zone worn by the wheel of Phoebus. I see the couch of Night; hence the shadows fly. What is this? Who shuts the citadel and, from the very stars, father, leads me down? Just now the Phoebean firmament breathed upon my face, just now I was near to heaven— I see Trachis; who gave me back the lands? Just now Oeta had stood below me and the whole world lay beneath; how well you had departed, grief! You force me to confess—spare me and seize this voice. This, Hyllus, this gift my mother's bounty prepares. Would that it were permitted with the hurled club to break that impious soul, as the Amazonian evil I tamed by the flank of snowy Caucasus. O dear Megara, were you my wife when I raged? Give me the club and the bow. Let my right hand be stained, let me set a blot upon my praises, let the last labor of Hercules be reckoned a woman.

HYLLUS

Restrain, father, the dire threats of your wraths; she has it, it is done, the punishment you seek she has paid: slain by her own right hand, your mother lies.

HERCULES

She fell by guile: by the hands of an angry Hercules she deserved to fall; Lichas has lost his companion. To rage upon the very lifeless body my impulse and my wrath compel; why does the corpse itself lack my threats? Let the beasts receive it as fodder.

HYLLUS

The wretched woman grieved more than the wronged: would you wish to take something from this too? She fell by her own hand, in your grief: more than you demand she has borne. But you lie low not by the crimes of a bloody wife nor by a mother's fraud: Nessus contrived these guiles, struck by your arrows, who spat out his life. The robe is dyed, father, with the blood of the half-beast, and Nessus now exacts these penalties for himself.

HERCULES

She has it, it is done, our fates unfold themselves; this light is the last: this lot the oak, prophetic, once gave me, and the Cirrhaean cave, shaking the Parnassian temples with its bellowing: 'By the right hand of a man you have slain, victor, Alcides, you shall one day lie; here, when you have measured out the seas and lands and shades, the last end is given you.' I complain no further: it was fitting that this end be given, lest any survive as the conqueror of Hercules. Now let a death be reckoned, bright, memorable, glorious, wholly worthy of me; I will make this day noble. Let the whole wood be cut down and the grove of Oeta settle: let a vast pyre receive Hercules. But before my death, you, offspring of Poeas, prepare for me, young man, this sad office; let the flame of Hercules kindle the whole day. To you, Hyllus, now I bring my final prayers. There is, among the captives, a maiden bright, recalling in her face her birth and her kingdom, born of Eurytus, Iole: prepare her for your torches and your marriage-bed. A bloody victor, I took away her homeland and her home and gave the wretched woman nothing but Alcides: and he too is snatched away; let her balance her sorrows, let her cherish a grandson of Jove and a son of Hercules; let her bear you whatever she has from us. And do you yourself lay aside your funeral lamentations, I beg, O bright mother: Alcides lives for you. By my valor I made your rival be believed your stepmother. Whether at the birth of Hercules that night is certain, or whether my father is mortal—though my descent from me be false, I have earned my parent: I have brought glory to heaven, and a mother conceived me to the praises of Jove. Nay, Jupiter himself, though he be Jupiter, rejoices to be believed my father; spare now your tears, parent: you will be proud among the Argive mothers. What such thing did Juno bear, holding the heavenly sceptre and wed to the Thunderer? Yet though mortal, holding heaven, I made her envious. She wished her own Alcides to be so called. Carry on now, Titan, your turns alone, left behind: I who everywhere had been your companion, seek Tartarus and the ghosts. Yet this glorious praise I shall bear to the depths, that no plague laid Alcides low openly, and every plague Alcides conquered openly.

CHORUS

O glory of the world, radiant Titan, at whose first warmth weary Hecate lifts the face of her nightly pair of steeds, tell to the Sabaeans set beneath the Dawn, tell to the Iberians set beneath the sunset, and to those who suffer beneath the Bear's wain and those who are shaken by the burning firmament, tell that to the eternal ghosts there hastens Hercules, and to the realm of the restless hound, whence he will never again return. Take up the rays that the clouds may follow, pale, gaze upon the mourning lands, and let foul mists wander over your head. When, O Titan, where, beneath what firmament shall you follow another Hercules on the lands? What hands shall the wretched world invoke, if any plague, manifold, beneath Lerna shall scatter its madness into a hundred dragons, if some boar shall make the woods restless for the ancient peoples of Arcadia, if some nursling of Thracian Rhodope, harsher than the lands of snowy Helice, shall sprinkle his stable with human gore? Who shall give peace to a fearful people, if the angry gods bid anything be born throughout the world? He lies, equal to all, whom earth bore equal to the Thunderer. Let lamentation resound through the measureless cities and, their hair caught by no knot, let the women strike their bared arms, and alone, the doors of the gods barred, let the temples lie open to the untroubled stepmother. You go to Lethe and the Stygian shore, whence no ships will bring you back: you go to the ghosts, pitiable, whence, death conquered, you had borne off a triumph, coming as a shade with bared arms, with languid face and slender neck; nor will that bark bear you alone, yet you will not be cheap among the shades: among Aeacus and the twin Cretans you will sit, discerning deeds, smiting tyrants. Spare, O rich, hold back your hands: it is a glory to have kept the iron pure, and, while you reigned, that the fates were less permitted, in the storms, against your cities. But valor has a place among the stars. Will you hold the space of the northern seat, or where Titan brings forth his heavy heats? Or will you shine in the warm sunset, whence you will hear Calpe resound when the sea was joined? What regions of the serene heaven will you press down? What place, with Alcides received among the stars, will be safe? Only far from the rugged Lion let your father give you a seat, and from the burning Crab, lest the stars, trembling at your face, confound their laws and Titan be afraid. While flowers come in the warming spring, or summer recalls the foliage to the woods, and the apples yield as autumn flees, or winter cuts back the foliage of the woods: you, companion to Phoebus, shall go companion to the stars. No age shall snatch you from the lands: sooner shall the harvest be born in the deep, or the strait resound with sweet water, sooner shall the star of the icy Bear descend and enjoy the forbidden sea, than your praises among the peoples grow still. You, father of things, we wretched beseech: let no beast be born, no plague, let not the pitiable earth dread savage chiefs, let no hall be ruled by one who thinks the only glory of a kingdom is ever to have held the threatening iron; if anything on earth is feared again, we ask for an avenger for the abandoned land. Alas, what is this? The world resounds, behold it mourns, the father mourns Alcides; or is it the clamor of the gods, or the voice of the timid stepmother, and, Hercules seen, does Juno flee the stars? Or did Atlas, his burden borne, totter? Or did the dread ghosts tremble the more, and, Hercules seen, did the hound of the underworld, trembling, its chains broken, flee? We are deceived: behold, with joyful face he comes whom Poeas bore, and on his shoulders the weapons he bears and the quivers known to the peoples, the heir of Hercules.

MESSENGER, CHORUS

Tell, young man, the fortunes of Hercules, I beg, and with what face Alcides bore his death.

MESSENGER

With one such as no man bore life.

CHORUS

So joyful did he assail the final fires?

MESSENGER

He showed that flames are now nothing. What beneath this world did Hercules leave free of conquest? Behold, all things are tamed.

CHORUS

Amid the heat what place was there for the brave man?

MESSENGER

The one evil he had not yet conquered in the world, the flame too is conquered; this also was added to the beasts: among the labors of Hercules the fire departs.

CHORUS

Tell on, come, by what manner was the flame conquered?

MESSENGER

When every band, mournful, seized upon Oeta, the beech loses its shade for this man and lies low, cut through at the whole trunk; this fierce man bends the pine threatening the stars and calls it from the midst of the cloud: about to fall, he moved the rock and bore with him the smaller wood, as the talking oak of Chaonia once: there stands wide a vast oak, and forbids Phoebus and stretches its boughs beyond the whole grove; it groans, threatening, with many a wound driven in, and breaks the wedges, the driven steel springs back and the iron suffers the wound and is too little rigid. At last, when, falling and stirred, it drew its broad ruin downward, straightway the place let in all the rays: driven from their seats, the birds wander, the grove cut down, the daylight and, garrulous, with weary wings, seek their homes. And now every tree has sounded, and the sacred oaks too have felt the rough hand with the iron, nor did its ancient glory profit the grove; all the wood is heaped, and the timbers in alternate rows lift to the stars for Hercules a narrow pyre: the pine, to seize the flames, and the tenacious oak and the shorter ilex. But the white poplar-wood fills the pyre, the adornment of Hercules' brow. But he, as a huge lion beneath the Nasamonian grove, reclining with sick breast, bellows, is borne along: who would believe him snatched to the flames? His was the face of one seeking the stars, not the fires. When he pressed upon Oeta and with his own eyes surveyed the whole pyre, set upon it, he broke the beams. He demanded his bow, 'Take these,' he said, 'offspring of Poeas, these gifts, receive this gift of Alcides. These the hydra felt, by these lie the Stymphalides and whatever other evil I conquered from afar. Happy in victory, young man, never in vain will you send these against the foe; or if you wish to take the birds from the midst of the cloud, the birds will descend and sure of their prey the shafts will flow from heaven, nor will this bow ever deceive your hand: it has learned to poise the shafts and to give a sure flight to the arrows, and the weapons, once sent from the string, do not themselves miss their path: do you only, I beg, furnish me the fires and the final torch. This knot,' he said, 'which no hand has taken, let it blaze with me through the fires; this weapon will follow only Hercules; this too you would receive,' he said, 'if you could bear it; let it aid your master's pyre.' Then he asked the rigid spoils of the Nemean evil, to be burned with him; the pyre lay hidden in the spoil. The whole throng groaned, nor did grief remit the tears to anyone; the mother, raging in her grief, spread wide her eager breast, and bared down to the womb, struck her vast breasts in great lamentation, and beating the gods above and Jove himself with her cries, she filled the whole place with a woman's voice. 'You make Hercules' death unsightly, mother, restrain your tears,' he said, 'let woman's grief go inward; why should Juno lead a joyful day while you weep? She rejoices to behold the tears of her rival; restrain your weak heart, mother: it is a wrong to tear your breasts and womb, which bore me.' And, roaring fiercely, such as he led the hound through the Argive cities, when, victor of Erebus, Dis scorned, he returned while fate trembled, such he lay down upon the pyre. Who, thus triumphing, stood joyful in the car, a victor? What tyrant gave laws to the nations with such a face? How great a peace his bearing wore! Our tears clung fast, the driven grief fell even from us ourselves; no one groaned for the man about to perish: now it is shame to weep; she whom her sex bids to mourn, Alcmena, clung with dry cheeks and stood, a parent now almost like her son.

CHORUS

Did he send no prayers to the stars, to the gods above, about to burn, or look to Jove in his vows?

MESSENGER

He lay heedless of himself and, gazing at heaven, sought with his eyes whether from some quarter his father looked down upon him, then, stretching his hands, he said: 'From whatever quarter you behold your son, father, you, you I beseech, for whom the day, joined to night, rested as one. If both shores of Phoebus sing my praises and the race of Scythia and every burning land that the day scorches, if the earth is full of peace, if no cities groan nor anyone defiles the altars with impious rites, if crimes are absent, admit this spirit, I beg, into the stars; no place of infernal death nor the mournful kingdoms of black Jove terrify me, but to go, a shade, to those gods whom I conquered, father, I blush. Open the day, the cloud dispelled, that the faces of the gods may behold burning Hercules; though you deny me the stars and the world, you will be forced, father, against your will: if grief shall take away any words, then open the Stygian lakes and give me back to the fates: approve your son first: that I may seem worthy of the stars, this day will make. What is done is light; this day, father, will either find a Hercules here, or condemn one.' When he had uttered this, he demanded the flames. 'Do this, companion of Alcides, not slothful,' he said, 'seize the Oetaean torch; let my stepmother behold in what manner I bear the flames. Why did your right hand tremble? Does your fearful hand shrink from the impious crime? Give me back now the quivers, coward, idle, unarmed—behold a hand that might bend our bow! Why does pallor sit upon your cheeks? Assail the torches with the spirit with which you see Alcides lie low, wretch; look upon him about to burn. Behold, now my father calls me and opens the poles; I come, father.' And his face was not the same. With trembling right hand he thrust on the burning pine. The fire shrinks back and the torches struggle against him and shun his limbs; but Hercules pursues the retreating fire. You would believe Caucasus or Pindus or Athos to burn: no sound bursts forth, only the fire groans. O hard heart! Typhon, set upon that pyre, monstrous, would himself have groaned, and he who set on his shoulders Ossa torn from the soil, fierce Enceladus; but he, rising amid the very flames, half-burned and torn, gazing undismayed: 'Now you are the parent of Hercules: thus to stand by the pyre, mother,' he said, 'thus it befits the mother of Hercules.' Set amid the heat and the threats of the flame, unmoved, unshaken, into neither side twisting his seized limbs, he exhorts, he warns, he does something even as he burns; to all the attendants he gave a brave spirit; you would think the burning man burned them. All the throng is amazed, the flames scarce find belief, so calm is his brow, so great the majesty in the man. Nor does he hasten to be burned; and when now to his brave death he had paid enough, the fire-bearing beams he drew hither and thither, which the least flame seizes, and turned them all into the fires, and where most the fire overflows he seeks it again, undismayed, fierce, then he fills his mouth with the flames: but for him the heavy beard blazed; and when now the threatening fire sought his face, when the flames licked his head, . . .

ALCMENA, HYLLUS

Fear the fates, you gods above: so small an ash is Hercules; to this, to this has that giant sunk! O how great a mass, Titan, goes to nothing; an old woman's bosom, alas for me, receives Alcides, this is his tomb: behold, scarcely the whole urn has Hercules filled; how light a weight to me, on whom the whole air pressed a light weight. To Tartarus once and the kingdoms, O son, the farthest, about to return, you went—when from the infernal Styx will you return again? Not that you may drag a spoil and Theseus may again owe his light to you— but when alone? The world, set upon you, will hold back your shade, and will the Tartarean hound be able to restrain you? When will you beat the Taenarian gates? Or to what jaws shall I, your mother, be driven, where death is entered? You go to the ghosts, to have a single journey. Why do I waste the day with complaint? Why, wretched life, do you endure? Why hold the light? What Hercules can I bear again for Jove? What son, so great, will call me, Alcmena, his parent? O too happy, too happy, Theban husband, you entered the regions of Tartarus while your son flourished, and you coming the powers below feared perhaps, because you, the father of so great a Hercules, even though false, were there: what lands shall I, an old woman, seek, hated by savage kings (if any savage king is yet left)? Ah, wretched me! Whoever, a son, groans for his slaughtered father, will seek punishment from me, all will overwhelm me: if some lesser Busiris or some lesser Antaeus terrifies the world of the burning tract, I shall be led as prey; if any avenges the herd of the bloody Thracian, the dire herds will tear my limbs; perhaps angry Juno will seek punishment: hither all her grief will turn; free at last from the conquered Alcides, untroubled, I survive, a rival—ah, how great the punishments she will seek, that I may not be able to bear children! This son made my womb a thing to fear. What regions shall Alcmena seek? What place, what region, what tract of the world will defend me, or into what hiding-places shall I, a mother, be driven, known everywhere through you? Shall I thus seek my homeland and my wretched home? Eurystheus holds Argos; shall I seek the wedded kingdom of Thebes and Ismenus and my chamber, in which once I saw Jove, beloved? O too happy, too happy, if I myself had felt the lightning-wielding Jove! Would that Alcides, an infant, had been cut from my flesh! Now time is given: it is given to see my son contending in glory with Jove, that this too might be granted, to know what fate could snatch from me. What people lives mindful of you, O son? Now all the race is ungrateful. Shall I seek Cleonae? Shall I seek the Arcadian peoples and seek out the lands famed for your deeds? Here the dire serpent fell, here the winged beast, here the bloody king, here, broken by your hand, the lion that, you buried, possesses the heaven: if the land is grateful, let all the people defend your Alcmena. Shall I seek the Thracian nations and the peoples of the Hebrus? This land too, by your deserts, is defended: the stables with their kingdom lie low. Here peace was given, the bloody king laid low: for where was it denied? What tomb shall I, an unhappy old woman, seek for you? Over your pyre let the whole world contend; what people, or what temples, what nations ask for the relics of great Hercules? Who, who seeks, who demands the burden of Alcmena? What tombs, son, what mound is enough for you? This whole world will be the title of your fame. Why, my soul, do you tremble? You hold the ashes of Hercules; embrace the bones: the relics will give aid, they will be safeguard enough, they will terrify kings, even your shade.

HYLLUS

The tears owed indeed to your son restrain, mother of Alcides clothed in glory, he is not to be mourned nor pressed with heavy prayer, whoever by valor has taken his road from the fates: eternal valor forbids Hercules to die.

ALCMENA

Shall I quiet my complaints, a parent, my avenger lost?

HYLLUS

Earth and sea, and where the purple day beholds either Ocean with its bright wheel—

ALCMENA

How many sons, wretched, did I bury, a parent, in one? I lacked a kingdom, but kingdoms I could give. Alone among all the lands that mothers bear, I spared my vows; nothing did I ask of the gods above while my son was safe: what could the ardor of Hercules not give me? What god could deny me anything? My vows were in this hand: whatever Jupiter denied, Hercules would give. What such thing did any mortal mother bear? Some mother stiffened, when, cut down in her whole offspring, she stood, and twice seven, a flock, one woman bewailed: to flocks could my son be matched, how many he was worth? To wretched mothers still a vast example was lacking: Alcmena I will give. Cease, you mothers, if stubborn grief still bids any to mourn, whom heavy sorrow has turned to stone; yield, all of you, to these evils. Come now, aged breast, O wretched hands, beat yourselves, but a single aged old woman, worn out, is enough for so great a funeral, which soon the whole world will seek? Yet make ready for lamentation, though wearied, your arms: that you may make for the gods envy by your mourning, summon the race to lamentation. Go, mourn the son of Alcmena and great Jove, for whom, when conceived, one day perished and Dawn brought two nights together: she herself perishes more than the light. Mourn together, all you nations, whose savage tyrants he bade penetrate the Stygian homes and, drenched with the peoples' blood, lay down the sword. Render the weeping owed to deserts so great, let the whole, the whole world resound: let dark-blue Crete weep for Alcides, land dear to the great Thunderer: let a hundred peoples beat their arms; now Curetes, now Corybantes, shake the Idaean arms with your hands: with arms it is fitting to mourn him; now, now bewail a true funeral: Alcides lies low, not less, Crete, than the Thunderer himself. Weep, Arcadians, for the death of Hercules, a race born before Phoebe arose: let the ridges of Parthenius and Pheneus resound and let heavy lamentation strike Maenalus. A groan for great Alcides demands the bristling boar laid low in your fields and the bird bidden to follow his arrows, its plumage veiling the whole day. Weep, Argive Cleonae, weep: here the lion that once terrified your walls my son's right hand broke: give blows, Bistonian mothers, and let cold Hebrus resound with lamentations: weep for Alcides, because no infant is born in the stables nor do herds tear your flesh; let the land freed from Antaeus weep and the tract snatched from wild Geryon: mourn with me, wretched nations, let either Tethys hear the blows, you too, hastening throng of the world, weep, you powers, for the fortunes of Hercules: your world, you gods above, my Alcides bore upon his neck, and the heaven, when the bearer of the star-bearing Olympus, Atlas, freed of his weight, breathed again: where now are your citadels, Jupiter? Where the palace of the promised world? Surely Alcides, a mortal, dies, surely is buried. How often your weapons and your torches he spared, how often the fire was to be scattered! Against me at least hurl your torch and think me Semele. Now, O son, have you the Elysian homes, now do you hold the shore to which nature calls the peoples? Or, after the hound was snatched, did black Styx bar your road, and on the very threshold of Dis do the fates delay you? What tumult now, O son, holds the shades and the ghosts? Has the ferryman fled, his bark drawn away, and, the Thessalian Centaurs stirred, does the hoof strike the astonished ghosts, and has the hydra, terrified, plunged its snakes beneath the waters, and do your labors, O son, fear you? I am deceived, deceived, raving in my frenzy. Neither do the ghosts and shades fear you. No tawny hide, snatched from the Argive lion, covered with its mane, clothes your left arm, dire, and no beast's teeth wall round your temples: the gift of your quiver has passed away and your weaker right hand will now send no shafts; unarmed you go, O son, through the shades, among which you will dwell forever.

THE VOICE OF HERCULES, ALCMENA

Why, while I hold the kingdoms of the starry pole and am at last given back to heaven, do you bid me feel my fate by your lamentation? Spare me: now my valor has made a road for me to the stars and to the very gods above.

ALCMENA

Whence, whence does a sound strike my trembling ears? Whence does a crash check my tears? I recognize that chaos has been conquered. From the Styx, O son, do you return again to me, and has dire death been broken more than once? Have you conquered again the regions of death, the bark and the sad fords of the underworld? Is languid Acheron now passable, and is it permitted to you alone to return, nor do the fates hold you after your funeral? Or has Pluto barred your road and, fearful, dreaded for his kingdom? Surely I saw you set upon the blazing woods, when most of all the dread of the flame raged toward heaven: you burned. Why did the farthest regions not hold, why, your shade? What did your ghosts fear, I pray? Are you, even as a shade, too dreadful for Dis?

HERCULES

The pools of groaning Cocytus do not hold me, nor has the dark bark borne my shade across; spare now, mother, your complaints: the ghosts but once and the shades I saw; whatever in me of you was mortal, the conquering fire has taken away: my father's part is given to heaven, your part to the flames. Therefore lay aside the lamentation that an idle mother prepares for her son; let mourning go to base things: valor strains to the stars, fear to death. Present from the stars, mother, I, Alcides, proclaim: punishment soon bloody Eurystheus shall pay you; borne in a car, you shall pass over his proud head. Now it befits me to enter the heavenly tract: again has Alcides conquered the infernal regions.

ALCMENA

Wait a little while—he is gone, from my eyes he departs, to the stars he is borne. Am I deceived, or does my mind think it has seen my son? My wretched mind is unbelieving. You are a god, and the world holds you forever. I believe your triumphs; I will seek the kingdom of Thebes and sing of a new divinity added to the temples.

CHORUS

Never is glorious valor borne to the Stygian shades: the brave live on, nor through the Lethaean streams shall savage fate drag you, but when, the day consumed, it shall demand the final hours, glory will open the road to the gods above. But you, great tamer of beasts and at once the pacifier of the world, be present; now too look back upon our lands, and if any monster with new face shall shake the peoples with heavy terror, do you break it with the three-forked lightnings: braver than your own father, hurl the bolts.