Chorus Alas alas! lament; the son of Zeus, flower of your city, is being cut down. Woe to you, Hellas! that will cast from you your benefactor, and destroy him as he dances in the shrill frenzy of Madness. She is mounted on her chariot, the queen of sorrow and sighing, and is goading on her steeds, as if for outrage, the Gorgon child of Night, with a hundred hissing serpent-heads, Madness of the flashing eyes. Soon has the god changed his good fortune; soon will his children breathe their last, slain by a father’s hand.
Amphitryon Ah me! alas!
Chorus O Zeus, unjust Vengeance, mad, relentless, will soon give your childless son up to misery.
Amphitryon Alas, O house!
Chorus The dance begins without the cymbals’ crash, with no glad waving of the wine-god’s staff—
Amphitryon Woe to these halls!
Chorus Toward bloodshed, and not to pour libations of Dionysus’ grape.
Amphitryon O children, make haste to fly!
Chorus That is the chant of death, of death, to the music of pipes. Ah, yes! he is hunting the children down. Never will Madness lead her revel rout in vain.
Amphitryon Ah misery!
Chorus Ah me! how I lament that aged father, that mother too that bore his children in vain. Look! look! A tempest rocks the house; the roof is falling with it.
Heracles Oh, oh! what are you doing, Pallas, child of Zeus, to the house? You are sending hell’s confusion against the halls, as once you did on Enceladus.
Messenger O white-haired old men!
Chorus Why this loud address to me?
Messenger It is dreadful within!
Chorus No need for me to call another prophet for that.
Messenger The children are dead.
Chorus Alas!
Messenger Ah weep! for here is cause for weeping.
Chorus A cruel murder, cruel parents’ hands!
Messenger No words can utter more than we have suffered.
Chorus How came the ruin you reveal, the ruin that must be lamented, from a father to his children? Tell me how these heaven-sent woes came rushing on the house; say how the children met their sad mischance.
Cite This Text