Sophocles' TRACHINIAE Complete

Translated by R. Jebb.

Sophocles Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Sophocles in Print

57 Pages

Page 30

Leader: It is nothing, surely, that concerns thy gift to Heracles?

Deianeira: Yea, even so. And henceforth I would say to all, act not
with zeal, if ye act without light.

Leader: Tell us the cause of thy fear, if it may be told.

Deianeira: A thing hath come to pass, my friends, such that, if I
declare it, ye will hear a marvel whereof none could have dreamed.

That with which I was lately anointing the festal robe,- a white tuft
of fleecy sheep's wool,- hath disappeared,- not consumed by anything
in the house, but self-devoured and self-destroyed, as it crumbled
down from the surface of a stone. But I must tell the story More at
length, that thou mayest know exactly how this thing befell.

I neglected no part of the precepts which the savage Centaur gave
me, when the bitter barb was rankling in his side: they were in my
memory, like the graven words which no hand may wash from a tablet
of bronze. Now these were his orders, and I obeyed them:-to keep this
unguent in secret place, always remote from fire and from the sun's
warm ray, until I should apply it, newly spread, where I wished. So
had I done. And now, when the moment for action had come, I performed
the anointing privily in the house, with a tuft of soft wool which
I had plucked from a sheep of our home-flock; then I folded up my
gift, and laid it, unvisited by sunlight, within its casket, as ye
saw.

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