Euripides' HERACLES Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

Euripides Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Euripides in Print

63 pages - You are on Page 34

Chorus: (chanting) Alas! alas! lament, O city; the son of Zeus, thy
fairest bloom, is being cut down.

Woe is thee, Hellas! that wilt cast from thee thy benefactor, and
destroy him as he madly, wildly dances where no pipe is heard.

She is mounted on her car, the queen of sorrow and sighing, and is
goading on her steeds, as if for outrage, the Gorgon child of Night,
with hundred hissing serpent-heads, Madness of the flashing eyes.

Soon hath the god changed his good fortune; soon will his children
breathe their last, slain by a father's hand.

Ah me! alas! soon will vengeance, mad, relentless, lay low by cruel
death thy unhappy son, O Zeus, exacting a full penalty.

Alas, O house! the fiend begins her dance of death without the cymbal's
crash, with no glad waving of the wine-god's staff.

Woe to these halls toward bloodshed she moves, and not to pour libations
of the juice of the grape.

O children, haste to fly; that is the chant of death her piping plays.

Ah, yes! he is chasing the children. Never, ah! never will Madness
lead her revel rout in vain.

Ah misery!
Ah me! how I lament that aged sire, that mother too that bore his
babes in vain.

Look! look!
A tempest rocks the house; the roof is falling with it.
Oh! what art thou doing, son of Zeus?
Thou art sending hell's confusion against thy house, as erst did Pallas
on Enceladus.
(A Messenger enters from the palace.)

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