“I render thanks that Oechalia has been added to the list of our honours; but that the victor has yielded to the vanquished, I complain. The rumour has suddenly spread to all the Pelasgian cities—a rumour unseemly, to which your deeds should give the lie—that on the man whom Juno’s unending series of labours has never crushed, on him Ink- has placed her yoke. This would please Eurystheus, and it would please the sister of the Thunderer; stepdame that she is, she would gladly know of the stain upon your life; but ’twould give no joy to him for whom, so ’tis believed, a single night did not suffice for the begetting of one so great.
More than Juno, Venus has been your bane. The one, by crushing you down, has raised you up; the other has your neck beneath her humbling foot. Look but on the circle of the earth made peaceful by your protecting strength, wherever the blue waters of Nereus wind round the broad land. To you is owing peace upon the earth, to you safety on the seas; you have filled with worthy deeds both abodes of the sun. The heaven that is to bear you, yourself once bore; Hercules bent to the load of the Stars when Atlas was their stay. What have you gained but to spread the knowledge of your wretched shame, if a final act of baseness blots your former deeds? Can it be you that men say clutched tight the serpents twain while a tender babe in the cradle, already worthy of Jove? You began better than you end; your last deeds yield to your first; the man you are and the child you were are not the same. He whom not a thousand wild beasts, whom not the Stheneleian foe, whom not Juno could overcome, love overcomes.
Yet I am said to be well mated, because I am called the wife of Hercules, and because the father of my lord is he who thunders on high with impetuous steeds. As the ill-mated steer yoked miserably at the plough, so fares the wife who is less than her mighty lord. It is not honour, but mere fair-seeming, and brings dole to us who bear the load; would you be wedded happily, wed your equal. My lord is ever absent from me—he is better known to me as guest than husband—ever pursuing monsters and dreadful beasts. I myself, at home and widowed, am busied with chaste prayers, in torment lest my husband fall by the savage foe; with serpents and with boars and ravening lions my imaginings are full, and with hounds three-throated hard upon the prey. The entrails of slain victims stir my fears, the idle images of dreams, and the omen sought in the mysterious night. Wretchedly I catch at the uncertain murmurs of the common talk; my fear is lost in wavering hope, my hope again in fear. Your mother is away, and laments that she ever pleased the potent god. and neither your father Amphitryon is here, nor your son Hyllus; the acts of Eurystheus, the instrument of Juno’s unjust wrath, and the long-continued anger of the goddess—I am the one to feel.
Is this too little for me to endure? You add to it your stranger loves, and whoever will may be by you a mother. I will say nothing of Aug’e betrayed in the vales of Parthenius, or of thy travail, nymph sprung of Ormenus; nor will I charge against you the daughters of Teuthras’ son, the throng of sisters from whose number none was spared by you. But there is one love—a fresh offence of which I have heard—a love by which I am made stepdame to Lydian Lamus. The Meander, so many times wandering in the same lands, who oft turns back upon themselves his wearied waters, has seen hanging from the neck of Hercules—the neck which found the heavens but slight burden—bejewelled chains! Felt you no shame to bind with gold those strong arms, and to set the gem upon that solid brawn? Ah, to think ’twas these arms that crushed the life from the Nemean pest, whose skin now covers your left side! You have not shrunk from binding your shaggy hair with a woman’s turban! More meet for the locks of Hercules were the white poplar. And for you to disgrace yourself by wearing the Maeonian zone, like a wanton girl—feel you no shame for that? Did there come to your mind no image of savage Diomede, fiei’cely feeding his mares on human meat? Had Busiris seen you in that garb, he whom you vanquished would surely have reddened for such a victor as you. Antaeus would tear from the hard neck the turban-bands, lest he feel shame at having succumbed to an unmanly foe.
They say that you have held the wool-basket among the girls of Ionia, and been Frightened at your mistress’ threats. Do you not shrink, Alcides, from laying to the polished wool-basket the hand that triumphed over a thousand toils; do you draw off with stalwart thumb the coarsely spun strands, and give back to the hand of a pretty mistress the just portion she weighed out? Ah, how often, while with dour finger you twisted the thread, have your too strong hands crushed the spindle! Before your mistress’ feet.... and told of the deeds of which you should now say naught—of enormous serpents, throttled and coiling their lengths about your infant hand; how the Tegeaean boar has his lair on cypress-bearing Erymanthus, and afflicts the ground with his vast weight. You do not omit the skulls nailed up in Thracian homes, nor the mares made fat with the flesh of slain men; nor the triple prodigy. Geryones, rich in Iberian cattle, who was one in three; nor Cerberus, branching from one trunk into a three-fold dog, his hair inwoven with the threatening snake; nor the fertile serpent that sprang forth again from the fruitful wound, grown rich from her own hurt; nor him whose mass hung heavy between your left side and left arm as your hand clutched his throat; nor the equestrian array that put ill trust in their feet and dual form, confounded by you on the ridges of Thessaly.
These deeds can you recount, gaily arrayed in a Sidonian gown? Does not your dress rob from your tongue all utterance? The nymph-daughter of Iardanus has even tricked herself out in your arms, and won famous triumphs from the vanquished hero. Go now, puff up your spirit and recount your brave deeds done; she has proved herself a man by a right you could not urge. You are as much less than she, O greatest of men, as it was greater to vanquish you than those you vanquished. To her passes the full measure of your exploits—yield up what you possess; your mistress is heir to your praise. O shame, that the rough skin stripped from the flanks of the shaggy lion has covered a woman’s delicate side! You are mistaken, and know it not—that spoil is not from the lion, but from you; you are victor over the beast, but she over you. A woman has borne the darts blackened with the venom of Lerna, a woman scarce strong enough to carry the spindle heavy with wool; a woman has taken in her hand the club that overcame wild beasts, and in the mirror gazed upon the armour of her lord!
These things, however, I had only heard; I could distrust men’s words, and the pain hit on my senses softly, through the ear—but now my very eyes must look upon a stranger-mistress “led before them, nor may I now dissemble what I suffer! You do not allow me to turn away; the woman comes a captive through the city’s midst, to be looked upon by my unwilling eyes. Nor comes she after the manner of captive women, with hair unkempt, and with becoming countenance that tells to all her lot; she strides along, sightly from afar in plenteous gold, apparelled in such wise as you yourself in Phrygia. She looks straight out at the throng, with head held high, as if ’twere she had conquered Hercules; you might think Oechalia standing yet, and her father yet alive. Perhaps you will even drive away Aetolian Deianira, and her rival will lay aside the name of mistress, and be made your wife. Iole, the daughter of Eurytus, and Aonian Alcides will be basely joined in shameful bonds of Hymen. My mind fails me at the thought, a chill sweeps through my frame, and my hand lies nerveless in my lap.
Me, too, you have possessed among your many loves—but me with no reproach. Regret it not—twice you have fought for the sake of me. In tears Achelous gathered up his horns on the wet banks of his stream, and bathed in its clayey tide his mutilated brow; the half-man Nessus sank down in lotus-bearing Euenus, the geing its waters with his equine blood. But why am I reciting things like these? Even as I write comes rumour to me saying my lord is dying of the poison from my cloak. Alas me! what have I done? Whither has madness driven me in my love? O wicked Deianira, why hesitate to die?
Shall thy lord be torn to death on midmost Oeta, and shalt thou, the cause of the monstrous deed, remain alive? If I have yet done aught to win the name of wife of Hercules, my death shall be the pledge of our union. Thou, Mel eager, shalt also see in me a sister of thine own! O wicked Deianira. why hesitate to die?
Alas, for my devoted house! Agrius sits on the lofty throne; Oeneus is reft of all, and barren old age weighs heavy on him. Tydeus my brother is exiled on an unknown shore; my second brother’s life hung on the fateful fire; our mother drove the steel through her own heart. O wicked Deianira, why hesitate to die?
This one thing I deprecate, by the most sacred bonds of our marriage-bed—that I seem to have plotted for your doom. Nessus, stricken with the arrow in his lustful heart, “This blood,’ he said,” has power over love.” The robe of Nessus, saturate with poisonous gore, I sent to you. () wicked Deianira, why hesitate to die?
And now, fare ye well, O aged father, and O my sister Gorge, and O my native soil, and brother taken from thy native soil, and thou, O light that shinest to-day, the last to strike upon mine eyes; and thou my lord, O fare thou well—would that thou couldst!—and Hyllus, thou my son, farewell to thee!
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