Sophocles, Women of Trachis 633–730: Third stasimon; Deianeira discovers the effect of the charm

O you who dwell by the warm springs near ships’ haven and rocky cliff, and you who live by the crags of Oeta! And you dwellers by the land-locked waters of the Malian gulf, and the headland sacred to the virgin-goddess of the golden shuttle, where are the famed councils of the Greeks at the gates!

Soon the glorious voice of the flute will go up for you again, sounding no bothersome, strident notes, but divine music worthy of the lyre! For the son whom Alcmena bore to Zeus is hurrying homeward, with spoils won by supreme valor.

We thought him lost utterly to our land, a wanderer over sea, while we waited through twelve long months and knew nothing. She, his loving wife, miserable, was ever pining in her miserable heart, always weeping. But now Ares, stung to rage, has freed her days from their toil.

May he come, may he come! Let him not halt the many-oared ship that carries him before he has reached this town, leaving the island altar where he is reported to be sacrificing! May he come from there full of desire, steeped in love on the pretext of the robe by Persuasion’s all-powerful ointment!

Deianeira Friends, how I fear that I may have gone too far in all that I was doing just now!

Chorus What has happened, Deianeira, daughter of Oeneus?

Deianeira I do not know, but I despair that I will soon be found to have done a great wrong, when my hope was for good.

Chorus Surely it is nothing that bears on your gift to Heracles?

Deianeira Yes, it is! So much so that I would never recommend to anybody that he be eager for action in obscurity.

Chorus Tell us the cause of your fear, if it may be told.

A thing has happened, my friends, such that, if I declare it, it will be a strange marvel for you to hear. The implement with which I was just now anointing the festal robe, a white tuft of fleecy sheep’s wool, has disappeared, eaten away by no animal in the courtyard, but self-devoured and self-destroyed it crumbled down over a stone slab. But I must tell the story at greater length, so that you may know exactly how this thing was accomplished. I neglected no part of the precepts which the savage Centaur gave me when he was hurting from the bitter barb in his side; they were in my memory, like the graven words which no hand may wash from a tablet of bronze. Now this was his order to me, and I obeyed it: to keep this potion hidden in inmost recesses always away from fire and untouched by the sun’s warm ray, until I should apply it, newly spread, where I wished. So I had done. And just now, when the moment for action had come, I performed the anointing secretly in the rooms of the house with a tuft of soft wool which I had plucked from a sheep of our home-flock; then I folded up my gift, and laid it, unvisited by sunlight, within its hollow chest, as you saw. But as I am going back into the house, I see a thing inexplicable by words and beyond the knowledge of the human mind to understand. For somehow I happened to have thrown the ball of wool, with which I had been anointing the robe, into the full blaze of the sun’s rays. As it grew warm, it ran all into confusion, and quickly crumbled to powder on the ground, like nothing in appearance so much as the morsels left by a saw’s teeth when wood is cut. It lies just so, fallen. And from the earth, where it lay exposed, clotted foam seethes up, like the rich juice of the blue fruit from the vine of Bacchus when it is poured on the ground.

And so I am distraught, and I do not know to which side my thoughts should fall. I only see that I have brought a terrible deed to completion. For why or in thanks for what should the monster in his death-throes have shown good will to me, because of whom he was dying? Impossible! No, he was enchanting me in order to destroy the man who had shot him. And now too late I gain the knowledge of this, when it can no longer help. Yes, I alone—unless my outlook prove mistaken—I, miserable one, shall completely destroy him! For I know that the arrow which made the wound harmed even the god Cheiron, and that it kills all varieties of beasts that it touches. Since it is this same black venom in the blood that has passed out through the wound of Nessus, must it not kill Heracles also? To my mind, at least, it must. Nevertheless, I am resolved that, if he is to be brought down, at the same time I too will die along with him in the selfsame fall. No woman could bear to live with a reputation for evil, if she cares above all that her nature is not evil.

Chorus Fear is necessary when terrible deeds are done, but one should not judge one’s expectations before the outcome is known.

Deianeira There is no room for expectation when one’s plans are bad, at least the kind of expectation which lends confidence.

Chorus And yet in the case of those whose mistakes were unwitting, men’s anger is softened. So it should be for you.

Deianeira No, such words are not for one who took part in the wrongdoing, but only for him who has no trouble at his own door.