Euripides' HERACLES Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

Euripides Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Euripides in Print

63 pages - You are on Page 55

Heracles: Man brings no help to me; no! Hera has her way.

Theseus: Never will Hellas suffer thee to die through sheer perversity.

Heracles: Hear me a moment, that I may enter the lists with words
in answer to thy admonitions; and I will unfold to thee why life now
as well as formerly has been unbearable to me. First I am the son
of a man who incurred the guilt of blood, before he married my mother
Alcmena, by slaying her aged sire. Now when the foundation is badly
laid at birth, needs must the race be cursed with woe; and Zeus, whoever
this Zeus may be, begot me as a butt for Hera's hate; yet be not thou
vexed thereat, old man; for thee rather than Zeus do I regard as my
father. Then whilst I was yet being suckled, that bride of Zeus did
foist into my cradle fearsome snakes to compass my death. After I
was grown to man's estate, of all the toils I then endured what need
to tell? of all the lions, Typhons triple-bodied, and giants that
I slew; or of the battle I won against the hosts of four-legged Centaurs?
or how when I had killed the hydra, that monster with a ring of heads
with power to grow again, I passed through countless other toils besides
and came unto the dead to fetch to the light at the bidding of Eurystheus
the three-headed hound, hell's porter. Last, ah, woe is me have I
perpetrated this bloody deed to crown the sorrows of my house with
my children's murder. To this sore strait am I come; no longer may
I dwell in Thebes, the city that I love; for suppose I stay, to what
temple or gathering of friends shall I repair? For mine is no curse
that invites address. Shall I to Argos? how can I, when I am an exile
from my country? Well, is there a single other city I can fly to?
And if there were, am I to be looked at askance as a marked man, branded
by cruel stabbing tongues, "Is not this the son of Zeus that once
murdered wife and children? Plague take him from the land!"

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