Stasimon 6
[Episode]
Your misfortunes reach from earth to heaven.
1240
Heracles
Therefore I am resolved on death.
Theseus
Do you suppose the gods attend to your threats?
Heracles
The god has been remorseless to me; so I will be the same to the gods.
Theseus
Hush! lest your presumption add to your sufferings.
Heracles
My ship is freighted full with sorrow; there is no room to stow anything further.
1245
Theseus
What will you do? Where is your fury drifting you?
Heracles
I will die and return to that world below from which I have just come.
Theseus
Such language is fit for any common fellow.
Heracles
Ah! yours is the advice of one outside sorrow.
Theseus
Are these indeed the words of Heracles, the much-enduring?
1250
Heracles
Though never so much as this. Endurance must have a limit.
Theseus
Is this the benefactor and great friend to mortals?
Heracles
Mortals bring no help to me; no! Hera has her way.
Theseus
Never would Hellas allow you to die through sheer perversity.
Heracles
Hear me a moment, that I may enter the contest with arguments in answer to your admonitions; and I will unfold to you why life now as well as formerly has been unbearable to me. First I am the son of a man who incurred the guilt of blood, before he married my mother Alcmena,
1255
by slaying her aged father. Now when the foundation is badly laid at birth, it is necessary for the race to be cursed with woe; and Zeus, whoever this Zeus may be, begot me as an enemy to Hera; yet do not be vexed, old man;
1260
for you rather than Zeus I regard as my father. Then while I was being suckled, that bedfellow of Zeus foisted into my cradle fearsome snakes to cause my death. After I took on a cloak of youthful flesh,
1265
of all the toils I then endured what need to tell? what did I not destroy, whether lions, or triple-bodied Typhons, or giants or the battle against the hosts of four-legged Centaurs? or how when I had killed the hydra,
1270
that monster with a ring of heads with power to grow again, I passed through a herd of countless other toils besides and came to the dead to fetch to the light at the bidding of Eurystheus the three-headed hound, hell’s porter. Last, ah, woe is me! I have dared this labor,
1275
to crown the sorrows of my house with my children’s murder. I have come to this point of necessity; no longer may I dwell in Thebes, the city that I love; for suppose I stay, to what temple or gathering of friends shall I go? For mine is no curse that invites greetings.
1280
Shall I go to Argos? how can I, when I am an exile from my country? Well, is there a single other city I can rush to? Am I then to be looked at askance as a marked man, held by cruel stabbing tongues: Is not this the son of Zeus that once murdered children
1285
and wife? Plague take him from the land!
1290
Now to one who was once called happy, such changes are a grievous thing; though he who is always unfortunate feels no such pain, for sorrow is his birthright. This, I think, is the piteous pass I shall one day come to;
for earth will cry out forbidding me to touch her, the sea and the river-springs will refuse me a crossing, and I shall become like Ixion who revolves in chains upon that wheel. And so this is best, that I should be seen by no one of the Hellenes,
1295
among whom in happier days I lived in bliss. What right have I to live? what profit can I have in the possession of a useless, impious life? So let that noble wife of Zeus dance, beating her foot in its shoe;
1300
for now has she worked her heart’s desire in utterly confounding the first of Hellas’ sons. Who would pray to such a goddess? Her jealousy of Zeus for his love of a woman has destroyed
1305
the benefactors of Hellas, guiltless though they were.
1310
Chorus Leader
This is the work of none other of the gods than the wife of Zeus; you are right in that surmise.
Theseus
I cannot counsel you . . . rather than to go on suffering. There is not a man alive that has wholly escaped misfortune’s taint,
