Stasimon 6
[Episode]
Softly, softly! you aged sons of Thebes, let him sleep on and forget his sorrows.
Chorus
For you, old friend, I weep and mourn, for the children too and that victorious chief.
1045
Amphitryon
Stand further off, make no noise nor outcry, do not rouse him from his calm
Chorus
O horrible! all this blood—
1050
Amphitryon
Hush, hush! you will be my ruin.
Chorus
That he has spilled is rising up against him.
Amphitryon
Gently raise your dirge of woe, old friends;
or he will wake, and, bursting his bonds, destroy the city, rend his father, and dash his house to pieces.
1055
Amphitryon
Hush! let me note his breathing;
come, let me put my ear close.
1060
Chorus
Is he sleeping?
1060
Amphitryon
Yes, he is sleeping, a deadly sleepless sleep, having slain wife and children with the arrows of his twanging bow.
1060
Amphitryon
Indeed I do.
1065
Chorus
The children’s death—
Chorus
And your own son’s doom.
Amphitryon
Hush! hush! he is turning over, he is waking! Oh!
let me hide myself, concealed beneath the roof.
1070
Chorus
Courage! darkness still holds your son’s eye.
Amphitryon
Oh beware! it is not that I shrink from leaving the light after my miseries, poor wretch! but if should he slay me, his father,
then he will be devising mischief on mischief, and to the avenging curse will add a parent’s blood.
1075
Chorus
Well for you if you had died in that day, when, for your wife, you went forth to exact vengeance for her slain brothers
by sacking the Taphians’ sea-beat town.
1080
Amphitryon
Fly, fly, my aged friends, from before the palace, escape his waking fury. Or soon he will heap up fresh slaughter on the old,
ranging wildly once more through the streets of Thebes.
1085
