Stasimon 5
[Episode]
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,
1000
Messenger
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.
1005
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
1010
I do not know any mortal more miserable than he. Exit messenger.
1015
[Choral]
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,
Chorus
has outrun those former horrors . . . for the unhappy son of Zeus.
1020
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.
Alas! What groans or wails, what funeral dirge, or dance of death am I to raise?
1025
Ah, ah! see, the bolted doors
of the lofty palace are being rolled apart.
1030
Ah me! see the wretched children lying before their unhappy father, who is sunk in dreadful slumber after shedding their blood.
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.
1035
