Euripides' HERACLES Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

Euripides Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Euripides in Print

63 pages - You are on Page 21

Heracles: Cast from your heads these chaplets of death, look up to
the light, for instead of the nether gloom your eyes behold the welcome
sun. I, meantime, since here is work for my hand, will first go raze
this upstart tyrant's halls, and when I have beheaded the miscreant,
I will throw him to dogs to tear; and every Theban who I find has
played the traitor after my kindness, will I destroy with this victorious
club; the rest will I scatter with my feathered shafts and fill Ismenus
full of bloody corpses, and Dirce's clear fount shall run red with
gore. For whom ought I to help rather than wife and children and aged
sire? Farewell my labours! for it was in vain I accomplished them
rather than succoured these. And yet I ought to die in their defence,
since they for their sire were doomed; else what shall we find so
noble in having fought a hydra and a lion at the hests of Eurystheus,
if I make no effort to save my own children from death? No longer
I trow, as heretofore, shall I be called Heracles the victor.

Leader of the Chorus: 'Tis only right that parents should help their
children, their aged sires, and the partners of their marriage.

Amphitryon: My son, 'tis like thee to show thy love for thy dear ones
and thy hate for all that is hostile; only curb excessive hastiness.

Heracles: Wherein, father, am I now showing more than fitting haste?

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