Euripides' HERACLES Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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63 pages - You are on Page 38

But that other, with savage Gorgon-scowl, as the child now stood in
range of his baleful archery, smote him on the head, as smites a smith
his molten iron, bringing down his club upon the fair-haired boy,
and crushed the bones. The second caught, away he hies to add a third
victim to the other twain. But ere he could, the poor mother caught
up her babe and carried him within the house and shut the doors; forthwith
the madman, as though he really were at the Cyclopean walls, prizes
open the doors with levers, and, hurling down their posts, with one
fell shaft laid low his wife and child. Then in wild career he starts
to slay his aged sire; but lo! there came a phantom,-so it seemed
to us on-lookers,-Of Pallas, with plumed helm, brandishing a spear;
and she hurled a rock against the breast of Heracles, which stayed
him from his frenzied thirst for blood and plunged him into sleep;
to the ground he fell, smiting his back against a column that had
fallen on the floor in twain when the roof fell in. Thereon we rallied
from our flight, and with the old man's aid bound him fast with knotted
cords to the pillar, that on his awakening he might do no further
evil. So there he sleeps, poor wretch! a sleep that is not blest,
having murdered wife and children; nay, for my part know not any son
of man more miserable than he.
(The Messenger withdraws.)

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