Eksodos
Heracles
Yes, for you stir me from my slumbering plague.
Hyllus
I am miserable! I have no way out of so many dilemmas!
Heracles
Yes, since you think it wrong to obey your begetter.
Hyllus
But must I then learn to be unholy, Father?
1245
Heracles
It is not unholy, if you gladden my heart.
Hyllus
Do you, then, command me to do this as a clear duty?
Heracles
I do, and I call on the gods to bear me witness!
Hyllus
Then I will do it, and not refuse,
—calling upon the gods to witness your deed. I can never be condemned for obeying you, Father.
1250
Heracles
Your words make a fair ending, and to them, my son, quickly add the gracious deed itself, so that you may place me on the pyre before any pain returns to tear or sting me.
Come, make haste and lift me! This, in truth, is rest from troubles, this is the end, the last end, of Heracles!
1255
Hyllus
Nothing hinders the fulfillment of your wish, since your commandment strongly compels me, Father.
Heracles
Come, then, before you awaken this
plague, O my hardened soul, give me a bit of steel to bind my lips like stone to stone! Stop any cry, since the task you accomplish, though by constraint, gives cause for joy.
1260
Hyllus
Lift him, attendants!
Grant me ample forgiveness for this, but also recall the great cruelty of the gods in the deeds that are being done. They beget children and are hailed as fathers, and yet they can let such sufferings pass before their eyes.
1265
No man foresees the future; the present is full of mourning for us, and of shame for the powers above, and indeed of hardship beyond compare for him who endures this disaster.
1270
And you, maiden, do not be left at the house. You have seen immense, shocking death, with sorrows great in number and strange. And in all of them there is nothing that is not Zeus.
1275
