Woman, I tell thee thou hast done to death
Thy husband, yea my sire, this very day.
Ah me! what word hath passed thy lips, my son?
A word that of fulfilment shall not fail;
For what is done no mortal can undo.
What say’st thou, son? What warranty is thine
To charge me with a deed so terrible?
The evidence of my eyes; myself I saw
My father’s anguish; ’tis no hearsay charge.
Where didst thou find him? wast thou by his side?
As thou must hear it, I must tell thee all.
He had sacked the famous town of Eurytus,
And thence returning rich with spoils of war,
Had reached a sea-washed promontory, named
Cenaeum, where Euboea fronts the north.
There I first met him as he marked the bounds
Of altars and a sacred grove to Zeus,
His father. At the sight my heart was glad.
He stood addressed to offer sacrifice,
A lordly hecatomb, when Lichas came,
His own familiar herald, bringing him
Thy gift, the fatal robe; he put it on
According to thy precept; then began
His sacrifice with twice six faultless bulls,
The firstfruits of the booty; but in all
A hundred victims at the altar bled.
At first, poor wretch, with joyous air serene,
Proud of the glory of his robe, he prayed;
But when the blood-red flame began to blaze
From the high altars and the resinous pine,
A sweat broke out upon him; and the coat
Stuck to his side, and clung to every limb,
Glued, as it were, by some skilled artisan.
A pricking pain began to rack his bones.
Soon the fell venom of the hydra dire
Worked inward and devoured him. Thereupon
He called for Lichas, who, poor witless wretch,
Had in thy guilt no part or lot, demanding
Who hatched the plot and why he had brought the robe.
The youth unwitting said it was thy gift,
Thine only, and delivered as ’twas sent.
While yet he listened a convulsive spasm
Shot through his lungs. He caught him by the foot,
Just at the ankle joint, and hurled him full
Against a rock out-jutting from the foam:
His skull was crushed to fragments, and his hair
Bedaubed with blood and flecked with scattered brains.
A cry of horror from the crowd arose
At sight of one distraught and one struck dead;
And no man dared to face him, for the pain
Now dragged him down, now made him leap in air,
While with his yells and screams the rocks resound
From Locrian headlands to Euboean capes.
But when his agony had spent itself—
Now writhing prone, now making loud lament,
With curses on his marriage bed and thee,
The bride he won from Oeneus for his bane—
From out the cloud of smoke that compassed him
He wildly gazed and spied me in the throng
Weeping, and fixed his eye on me and spake:
“Come hither, boy, shun not my misery,
E’en if my son must share his father’s death,
But bear me hence and set me, if thou wilt,
Where none shall see me more, no matter where;
Or if thou hast no heart for this, at least
Ferry me quickly hence, lest here I die.”
So he enjoined. We laid him on the deck
In torment, groaning loud; and presently
Ye shall behold him living or just dead.
Such, mother, is the evil ’gainst my sire
That thou hast planned and wrought. Thy guilt is plain:
May Vengeance and the Erinys visit thee!
So pray I, if ’tis right, and right it is,
For I have seen thee trample on the right,
Slaying the noblest man who ever lived,
Whose peer thou never shalt behold again. Exit Deianira.
Why dost thou steal away thus silently?
Such silence sure is eloquent of guilt.
Let her depart and speed before the gale
Out of my sight. Why should the empty name
Of mother henceforth swell her vanity,
Who in her deeds shows naught of motherhood?
Let her depart in peace, and may she share
Herself the happiness she brings my sire!
Strophe 1
Lo, maidens, in our eyes
Fulfilled this day
The word inspired of ancient prophecies.
Did not the god’s voice say,
The twelfth year, when its tale of months is run,
Shall end his toils for Zeus’s true-born son?
That promise doth not fail,
’Tis wafted on the gale.
Can he when once the light of life has fled
Be subject still to bondage ’mongst the dead?
Antistrophe 1
And if the mists of death enfold him now,
If the doom grips his heart,
Wrought by the Centaur’s art;
How racked by venom bred
Of Death, on asp’s blood fed,
How in the clutches of the Hydra, how
Can he survive to see to-morrow’s sun,
When through each vein doth run
The leprous bane prepared
By the fell beast, black-haired
Nessus, his life to drain,
And vex him with tumultuous pain?
Strophe 2
Of this our ill-starred queen,
All innocent, knew naught:
Only the curse to void, I ween,
Of a new bride she sought,
Witless a stranger’s remedy she used.
How was her fond simplicity abused!
Too late her error doth she rue,
And pearly tears her eyes bedew:
Awe-stricken we await
The swoop of instant fate.
Antistrophe 2
Our pent up tears outflow.
Ye gods! did e’er such blow
From his worst foes afflict our King before
As this fell plague? O bloodstained spear that bore
From proud Oechalia’s height
Stormed by the hero’s might,
A vanished bride, how clear
The Cyprian’s wiles appear!
Unseen, thy spear she steeled,
And now she stands revealed.
Listen! I seem to hear—or do I dream?—
A cry of sorrow pealing through the house.
Heard you it?
Yea, a despairing wail rings out within,
Distinct; the house has suffered something strange.
Mark ye that aged crone!
With what a cloud upon her puckered brow
She comes to bring us news of grave import!
My daughters, what a crop of miseries
We are reaping from that gift to Heracles!
What new misfortune, mother, hast to tell?
Deianira has departed hence
On her last journey, yet not stirred a step.
Thou canst not mean she is dead.
My tale is told.
Poor lady, dead?
I say it once again.
Alas, poor wretch! How
