Heracles Mad (260-295)

Go back to where you came from, in your insolence. For never while I live, shall you slay these sons of Heracles; not so deep beneath the earth has their father disappeared from his children’s ken.

—You are in possession of this land which you have ruined,

while he, its benefactor, has missed his just reward.

—And yet do I take too much upon myself because I help those I love after their death, when most they need a friend?

—Ah! right hand, how you desire to wield the spear, but your weakness is a death-blow to your desire.

For then I would have stopped you calling me slave, and I would have governed Thebes with credit. In which you now rejoice; for a city sick with dissension and evil counsels does not think aright; otherwise it would never have accepted you as its master.

Old men, I thank you; it is right that friends should feel virtuous indignation on behalf of those they love; but do not on our account vent your anger on the tyrant to your own undoing. Hear my advice, Amphitryon, if there appears to you to be anything in what I say.

I love my children; strange if I did not love those whom I bore, whom I labored for! Death I count a dreadful fate; but the man who strives against necessity I esteem a fool. Since we must die, let us do so

without being burnt alive, a source of mockery to our enemies, which to my mind is an evil worse than death; for much good do we owe our family. You have always had a warrior’s fair fame, so it is not to be endured that you should die a coward’s death;

and my husband’s reputation needs no one to witness that he would never consent to save these children’s lives by letting them incur the stain of cowardice; for the noble are afflicted by disgrace on account of their children, nor must I shrink from following my lord’s example.

As to your hopes consider how I weigh them. Do you think your son will return from beneath the earth? And who ever has come back from the dead out of the halls of Hades? But would you soften this man by entreaty? Oh no! better to fly from one’s enemy when he is so brutish,