Stasimon 2
[Episode]
Apollo! what a prelude to your story!
Megara
My brothers are dead, and my old father.
Heracles
How so? what did he do? whose spear did he meet?
540
Megara
Lycus, our new monarch, slew him.
Heracles
Did he meet him in fair fight, or was the land sick and weak?
Megara
Yes, from faction; now he is master of the city of Cadmus with its seven gates.
Heracles
Why has panic fallen on you and my aged father?
Megara
He meant to kill your father, me, and my children.
545
Heracles
What are you saying? What did he have to fear from my orphan babes?
Megara
He was afraid they might some day avenge Creon’s death.
Heracles
What is this dress they wear, suited to the dead?
Megara
It is the garb of death we have already put on.
Heracles
And were you being forced to die? O woe is me!
550
Megara
Yes, deserted by every friend, and informed that you were dead.
Heracles
What put such desperate thoughts into your heads?
Megara
That was what the heralds of Eurystheus kept proclaiming.
Heracles
Why did you leave my hearth and home?
Megara
He forced us; your father was dragged from his bed.
555
Heracles
Had he no shame, to ill-use the old man so?
Megara
Shame indeed! that goddess and he dwell far enough apart.
Heracles
Was I so poor in friends in my absence?
Megara
Who are the friends of a man in misfortune?
Heracles
Do they make so light of my hard warring with the Minyans?
560
Megara
Misfortune, to repeat it to you, has no friends.
Heracles
Cast from your heads these chaplets of death, look up to the light, for instead of the darkness below your eyes behold the welcome sun.
I, meanwhile, since here is work for my hand, will first go raze this upstart tyrant’s halls, and when I have beheaded the villain, I will throw him to dogs to tear; and every Theban who I find has played the traitor after my kindness,
565
will I destroy with this victorious club; the rest will I tear apart with my feathered shafts and fill Ismenus full of bloody corpses, and Dirce’s clear stream shall run red with gore. For whom ought I to help rather than wife
570
and children and aged father? Farewell my labors! for it was in vain I accomplished them rather than helping these. And yet I ought to die in their defence, since they for their father were doomed; or what shall we find so noble in having fought a hydra and a lion
575
at the commands of Eurystheus, if I make no effort to save my own children from death? No longer then, as before, shall I be called Heracles the victor.
580
Chorus Leader
It is only right that parents should help their children, their aged fathers, and the partners of their marriage.
