Heracles

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 537 sections

914b
A cruel murder,
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cruel parents’ hands!
916
No words can utter more than we have suffered.
917
How came the ruin you reveal, the ruin that must be lamented, from a father to his children? Tell me how these heaven-sent woes
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came rushing on the house; say how the children met their sad mischance.
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Victims to purify the house were stationed before the altar of Zeus, for Heracles had slain and cast from his halls the king of the land.
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There stood his group of lovely children, with his father and Megara; and already the basket was being passed round the altar, and we were keeping holy silence. But just as Alcmena’s son was bringing the torch in his right hand to dip it in the holy water,
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he stopped without a word. And as their father lingered, his children looked at him; he was no longer himself; his eyes were rolling; he was quite distraught; his eyeballs were bloodshot, and foam was oozing down his bearded cheek.
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He spoke with a madman’s laugh: Father, why should I offer the purifying flame before I have slain Eurystheus, and have the toil twice over? It is the work of my unaided arm to settle these things well; as soon as I have brought the head of Eurystheus here,
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I will cleanse my hands for those already slain. Spill the water, cast the baskets from your hands. Ho! give me now my bow and club! To Mycenae will I go; I must take crow-bars and pick-axes, for I will shatter again
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with iron levers those city-walls which the Cyclopes squared with red plumb-line and mason’s tools.
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Then he set out, and though he had no chariot there, he thought he had, and was for mounting to its seat, and using a goad as though his fingers really held one.
950
A twofold feeling filled his servants’ breasts, amusement and fear at once; and one looking to his neighbor said: Is our master making sport for us, or is he mad? But he was pacing to and fro in his house; and, rushing into the men’s chamber, he said he had reached the city of Nisus;
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and going into the house, he threw himself upon the floor, as he was, and made ready to feast. But after waiting a brief space he began saying he was on his way to the plains amid the valleys of the Isthmus; and then stripping himself of his mantle,
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he fell to competing with no one, and he proclaimed himself victor with his own voice, calling on no one to listen. Next, fancy carrying him to Mycenae, he was uttering fearful threats against Eurystheus. Meantime his father caught him by his stalwart arm, and thus addressed him:
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My son, what do you mean by this? What strange doings are these? Can it be that the blood of your late victims has driven you frantic? But he, supposing it was the father of Eurystheus striving in abject supplication to touch his hand: thrust him aside, and then against his own children aimed his bow
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and made ready his quiver, thinking to slay the sons of Eurystheus. And they in wild fright darted here and there, one to his hapless mother’s skirts, another to the shadow of a pillar, while a third cowered beneath the altar like a bird.
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Then cried their mother: O you who begot them, what are you doing? do you mean to slay your children? Likewise his aged father and all the gathered servants cried aloud. But he, hunting the child round and round the column, in dreadful circles, and coming face to face with him shot him to the heart; and he fell upon his back,
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sprinkling the stone pillars with blood as he gasped out his life. Then Heracles shouted in triumph and boasted loud: Here lies one of Eurystheus’ brood dead at my feet, atoning for his father’s hatred. Then he aimed his bow against a second, who had crouched
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at the altar’s foot thinking to escape unseen. But before he fired, the poor child threw himself at his father’s knees, and, flinging his hand to reach his beard or neck, cried: Oh! hear me, dearest father, do not kill me! I am your child, your own; it is no son of Eurystheus you will slay.
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But that other, with savage Gorgon-scowl, as the child now stood in range of his baleful archery, smote him on the head, as a smith strikes his molten iron, bringing down his club upon the fair-haired boy, and crushed the bones. The second caught,
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away he goes to add a third victim to the other two. But before he could, the poor mother caught up her child and carried him within the house and shut the doors. But he, as though he really were at the Cyclopean walls, prized open the doors with levers, and, hurling down their posts,
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with one shaft laid low his wife and child. Then in wild gallop he starts to slay his aged father; but there came a phantom, as it seemed to us on-lookers, of Pallas, with plumed helm, brandishing a spear; and she hurled a rock against the breast of Heracles,
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which held him from his frenzied thirst for blood and plunged him into sleep; to the ground he fell, striking his back against a column that had fallen on the floor shattered in two when the roof fell in.
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Then we rallied from our flight, and with the old man’s aid bound him fast with knotted cords to the pillar, so that on his awakening he might do no further mischief. So there he sleeps, poor wretch! a sleep that is not blessed, having murdered wife and children; no, for my part
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I do not know any mortal more miserable than he. Exit messenger.
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That murder wrought by the daughters of Danaus, which the rock of Argos keeps, was once the most famous and notorious in Hellas; but this has surpassed,
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has outrun those former horrors . . . for the unhappy son of Zeus.
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I could tell of the murder done by Procne, mother of an only child, offered to the Muses; but you had three children, wretched parent, and all of them have you in your frenzy slain.
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Alas! What groans or wails, what funeral dirge, or dance of death am I to raise?
1028
Ah, ah! see, the bolted doors
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of the lofty palace are being rolled apart.
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Ah me! see the wretched children lying before their unhappy father, who is sunk in dreadful slumber after shedding their blood.
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Round him are bonds and cords, made fast with many knots about the body of Heracles, and lashed to the stone columns of his house.
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Softly, softly! you aged sons of Thebes, let him sleep on and forget his sorrows.
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For you, old friend, I weep and mourn, for the children too and that victorious chief.
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Stand further off, make no noise nor outcry, do not rouse him from his calm
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deep slumber.
1050b
O horrible! all this blood—
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Hush, hush! you will be my ruin.
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That he has spilled is rising up against him.
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Gently raise your dirge of woe, old friends;
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or he will wake, and, bursting his bonds, destroy the city, rend his father, and dash his house to pieces.
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I cannot, cannot—
1057b
Hush! let me note his breathing;
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come, let me put my ear close.
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Is he sleeping?
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Yes, he is sleeping, a deadly sleepless sleep, having slain wife and children with the arrows of his twanging bow.
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Ah! mourn—
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Indeed I do.
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The children’s death—
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Ah me!
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And your own son’s doom.
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Alas!
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Old friend—
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Hush! hush! he is turning over, he is waking! Oh!
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let me hide myself, concealed beneath the roof.
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Courage! darkness still holds your son’s eye.
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Oh beware! it is not that I shrink from leaving the light after my miseries, poor wretch! but if should he slay me, his father,
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then he will be devising mischief on mischief, and to the avenging curse will add a parent’s blood.
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Well for you if you had died in that day, when, for your wife, you went forth to exact vengeance for her slain brothers
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by sacking the Taphians’ sea-beat town.
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Fly, fly, my aged friends, from before the palace, escape his waking fury. Or soon he will heap up fresh slaughter on the old,
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ranging wildly once more through the streets of Thebes.
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O Zeus, why have you shown such savage hate against your own son and plunged him in this sea of troubles?
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Aha! I am alive and breathing; and my eyes resume their function, opening on
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the sky and earth and the sun’s darting beam; but how my senses reel! in what strange turmoil am I plunged! my fevered breath in quick spasmodic gasps escapes my lungs. How now? why am I lying here, my brawny chest and arms made fast with cables like a ship,
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beside a half-shattered piece of masonry, with corpses for my neighbors; while over the floor my bow and arrows are scattered, that once like trusty squires to my arm
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both kept me safe and were kept safe by me? Surely I have not come a second time to Hades’ halls, having just returned from there for Eurystheus? To Hades? From where? No, I do not see Sisyphus with his stone, or Pluto, or his queen, Demeter’s child.
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Surely I am distraught; where am I, so helpless? Ho, there! which of my friends is near or far to cure me in my perplexity? For I have no clear knowledge of things once familiar.
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My aged friends, shall I approach the scene of my sorrow?
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Yes, and let me go with you, not desert you in your trouble.
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Father, why do you weep and veil your eyes, standing far from your beloved son?
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My child! mine still, for all your misery.
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Why, what is there so sad in my case that you weep?
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That which might make any of the gods weep, if he were to learn it.
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A bold assertion that, but you are not yet explaining what has happened.
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Your own eyes see that, if by this time you are restored to your senses.
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Fill in your sketch if any change awaits my life.
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I will explain, if you are no longer mad as a fiend of hell.
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Oh! what suspicions these dark hints of yours again excite!
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I am still doubtful whether you are in your sober senses.
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I have no recollection of being mad.
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Am I to loose my son, old friends, or what shall I do?
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Loose me, yes, and say who bound me; for I feel shame at this.
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Rest content with what you know of your woes; the rest forego.
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No. for is silence sufficient to learn what I wish?
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O Zeus, do you behold these deeds proceeding from the throne of Hera?
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What! have I suffered something from her enmity?
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A truce to the goddess! attend to your own troubles.
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I am undone; you will tell me some mischance.
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See here the corpses of your children.
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O horror! what sight is here? ah me!
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My son, against your children you have waged unnatural war.
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War! what do you mean? who killed these?
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You and your bow and some god, whoever is to blame.
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What are you saying? what have I done? Speak, father, you messenger of evil!
1137
You were insane; it is a sad explanation you are asking.
1138
Was it I that slew my wife also?
1139
Your own unaided arm has done all this.

Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0006.tlg009.perseus-eng2. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source.