Heracles Mad (901-975)

O white-haired old men!

Why this loud

address to me?

It is dreadful within!

No need for me to call another prophet for that.

The children are dead.

Alas!

Ah weep! for here is cause for weeping.

A cruel murder,

cruel parents’ hands!

No words can utter more than we have suffered.

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.

Victims to purify the house were stationed before the altar of Zeus, for Heracles had slain and cast from his halls the king of the land.

There stood his group of lovely children, with his father and Megara; and already the basket was being passed round the altar, and we were keeping holy silence. But just as Alcmena’s son was bringing the torch in his right hand to dip it in the holy water,

he stopped without a word. And as their father lingered, his children looked at him; he was no longer himself; his eyes were rolling; he was quite distraught; his eyeballs were bloodshot, and foam was oozing down his bearded cheek.

He spoke with a madman’s laugh: Father, why should I offer the purifying flame before I have slain Eurystheus, and have the toil twice over? It is the work of my unaided arm to settle these things well; as soon as I have brought the head of Eurystheus here,

I will cleanse my hands for those already slain. Spill the water, cast the baskets from your hands. Ho! give me now my bow and club! To Mycenae will I go; I must take crow-bars and pick-axes, for I will shatter again

with iron levers those city-walls which the Cyclopes squared with red plumb-line and mason’s tools.

Then he set out, and though he had no chariot there, he thought he had, and was for mounting to its seat, and using a goad as though his fingers really held one.

A twofold feeling filled his servants’ breasts, amusement and fear at once; and one looking to his neighbor said: Is our master making sport for us, or is he mad? But he was pacing to and fro in his house; and, rushing into the men’s chamber, he said he had reached the city of Nisus;

and going into the house, he threw himself upon the floor, as he was, and made ready to feast. But after waiting a brief space he began saying he was on his way to the plains amid the valleys of the Isthmus; and then stripping himself of his mantle,

he fell to competing with no one, and he proclaimed himself victor with his own voice, calling on no one to listen. Next, fancy carrying him to Mycenae, he was uttering fearful threats against Eurystheus. Meantime his father caught him by his stalwart arm, and thus addressed him:

My son, what do you mean by this? What strange doings are these? Can it be that the blood of your late victims has driven you frantic? But he, supposing it was the father of Eurystheus striving in abject supplication to touch his hand: thrust him aside, and then against his own children aimed his bow

and made ready his quiver, thinking to slay the sons of Eurystheus. And they in wild fright darted here and there, one to his hapless mother’s skirts, another to the shadow of a pillar, while a third cowered beneath the altar like a bird.

Then cried their mother: O you who begot them, what are you doing? do you mean to slay your children? Likewise his aged father and all the gathered servants cried aloud. But he, hunting the child round and round the column, in dreadful circles, and coming face to face with him shot him to the heart; and he fell upon his back,