Eksodos
Chorus
I shudder, friends, to hear these sorrows
which our King suffers. What a man is here, and what misfortunes lash at him!
1045
Heracles
Ah, many and hot and cruel not in name alone have been the labors of these hands, the burdens hoisted upon these shoulders! And yet no toil ever laid on me by the bedfellow of Zeus or by the hateful Eurystheus was as harsh
as this thing which the daughter of Oeneus, fair and false, has fastened upon my back, this woven net of the Erinyes in which I perish! Plastered to my sides, it has eaten away my inmost flesh and sucks the channels of my lungs,
1050
making my body its home. Already it has drunk away my fresh lifeblood, and my whole body is wasted, conquered by these indescribable bonds. Not spearmen on the battlefield, nor the Giants’ earth-born army, nor the might of savage beasts,
1055
not Hellas, nor the land of the barbarian, nor any land which I came to purify has ever done this to me. No, a woman, a weak woman, born not to the strength of man, all alone has brought me down without a stroke of the sword!
Son, show yourself my trueborn son,
1060
and do not honor your mother’s name above your father’s. Bring out the woman that bore you, and give her with your own hands into my hand, that I may know for certain which sight grieves you more—my tortured frame, or hers, when she suffers her just punishment!
1065
Go, my son, be bold! Show your pity for me, whom many might think deserving of pity—pity me moaning and weeping like a girl! No one could say that he had ever seen this man do that before. No, always without complaint I used to pursue my troubles.
1070
But now in my misery I have been found a woman, instead of the man I used to be.
1075
Come close, stand near your father and do examine the magnitude of the misfortune by which I suffer; for I will uncover my suffering. Look! See all of you this miserable body;
see how wretched, how pitiable I am!
Ah, misery! The ruinous spasm flames again; it shoots through my sides—I must wrestle once more with that cruel, devouring plague!
1080
King Hades, receive me! Strike me, O fire of Zeus! Hurl down your thunderbolt, ruler, dash it, Father, upon my head! Again the pest consumes me, it has blazed up, it has leapt to fury! O hands, my hands,
1085
O shoulders and chest and trusty arms, you are indeed those noted arms which once subdued with your might the dweller in Nemea, the scourge of herdsmen, the lion, a creature that no man might approach or confront; you tamed the Lernaean Hydra,
1090
and that monstrous army of beasts with double form, hostile, going on hoofed feet, violent, lawless, of surpassing violence; you tamed the beast in Erymanthia, and underground the three-headed whelp of Hades, a resistless terror, offspring of the fierce Echidna; you tamed the dragon
1095
that guarded the golden fruit in the farthest places of the earth. These toils and thousands more have I tasted, and no man has ever erected a trophy of victory over my hands. But now, with joints unhinged and with flesh torn to shreds, I have become the miserable spoil of an unseen destroyer,
1100
—I, who am called the son of noblest mother, I, who am reputed the seed of Zeus, lord of the starry sky.
But you may be sure of one thing: though I am nothing, though I cannot move a step, yet she who has done this deed shall feel my heavy hand even so. Let her but come to me
1105
so that she may learn to proclaim this message to all the world, that in my death, as in my life, I punished the guilty!
1110
Chorus
Ah, unhappy Greece, what mourning do I foresee for her, if she is cheated of this man!
Hyllus
Father, since your pause permits an answer,
hear me, diseased though you are; I will ask you for no more than is my due. Give yourself to me in a mood not as harsh as that to which your heart is now stung. Otherwise you cannot learn in what circumstances you wrongly wish to triumph and wrongly show resentment.
1115
Heracles
Stop when you have said what it is you desire. In this pain of mine I understand none of your many riddles.
1120
Hyllus
I come to tell you of my mother—her present circumstances and how she erred unknowingly.
Heracles
You corrupt thing! Have you indeed mentioned her name again,
the name, “Mother, Murderess of Father,” in my hearing?
1125
Hyllus
Yes, for her condition is such that my silence shames me.
Heracles
No, it does not shame you, when you consider her past crimes.
Hyllus
You will not say so, at least in view of her deeds today.
Heracles
Speak—but take care that you not be found corrupt.
Hyllus
I will speak. She is just now dead, a new murder.
1130
Heracles
By whose hand? Your sinister words give a prophecy of wonder!
