Heracles All hail! my house and gates of my home, how glad I am to emerge to the light and see you. Ah! what is this? I see my children before the house in the robes of death, with chaplets on their heads and my wife amid a throng of men, and my father weeping—what misfortune? Let me draw near to them and inquire; lady, what strange stroke of fate has fallen on the house?
Megara Dearest of all mankind to me!
Amphitryon O ray of light appearing to your father!
Megara Are you safe and is your coming just in time to help your dear ones?
Heracles What do you mean? What is this confusion I find on my arrival, father?
Megara We are being ruined; forgive me, old friend, if I have anticipated that to which you had a right to tell him; for women’s nature is perhaps more prone to grief than men’s and they are my children that were being led to death, which was my own lot too.
Heracles Apollo! what a prelude to your story!
Megara My brothers are dead, and my old father.
Heracles How so? what did he do? whose spear did he meet?
Megara Lycus, our new monarch, slew him.
Heracles Did he meet him in fair fight, or was the land sick and weak?
Megara Yes, from faction; now he is master of the city of Cadmus with its seven gates.
Heracles Why has panic fallen on you and my aged father?
Megara He meant to kill your father, me, and my children.
Heracles What are you saying? What did he have to fear from my orphan babes?
Megara He was afraid they might some day avenge Creon’s death.
Heracles What is this dress they wear, suited to the dead?
Megara It is the garb of death we have already put on.
Heracles And were you being forced to die? O woe is me!
Megara Yes, deserted by every friend, and informed that you were dead.
Heracles What put such desperate thoughts into your heads?
Megara That was what the heralds of Eurystheus kept proclaiming.
Heracles Why did you leave my hearth and home?
Megara He forced us; your father was dragged from his bed.
Heracles Had he no shame, to ill-use the old man so?
Megara Shame indeed! that goddess and he dwell far enough apart.
Heracles Was I so poor in friends in my absence?
Megara Who are the friends of a man in misfortune?
Heracles Do they make so light of my hard warring with the Minyans?
Megara Misfortune, to repeat it to you, has no friends.
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