Heracles Mad (913-930)

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.