by Sophocles
a slashing pain clawing at his lungs—caught
Likhas by his ankle joint and launched him
at the sea-pounded rocks below. His brains
oozed white through his hair where the skull
broke open, then blood darkened it.
The people
cried out in awestruck grief, seeing one man
gone mad, another dead—but no one dared
go near him. Pain wrestled him down, then forced him
to leap up, shrieking wild sounds that echoed
off the headlands of Locris and the capes of Euboea. 900
When he was worn out from throwing himself
so many times screaming on the ground,
cursing and cursing his catastrophic
marriage to you, miserable woman,
and his alliance with your father, Oeneus—
yelled that it ruined his life—at that instant,
half-hidden in swirling altar smoke, he looked up,
his fierce eyes rolling, and saw me weeping
in the crowd. “Come here, Son,” he called to me.
“Don’t turn your back on me now—even 910
if you must share the death I am dying.
Lift me up, take me somewhere men can’t watch.
If you can pity me at all, take me away
so I’ll die anywhere but in this place.”
We did as he asked, carried him aboard,
and landed him—it wasn’t easy—with him
suffering and groaning. You’ll see him soon now,
still breathing, or just dead.
Those, Mother, are
the plot and the acts of which you’re guilty.
May Vengeance and the Furies destroy you. 920
And if they do crush you, I will rejoice.
And to exult is just. You’ve made it
just, killing the best man who ever lived.
You’ll never see a man like him, ever.
DEIANEIRA turns and walks toward the house without a word.
LEADER
Why are you walking quietly away? Don’t
you see? Your silence proves him right!
HYLLOS
Let her go.
Let a fair wind blow her away.
Why call her “Mother”
if there’s no mother
left in the woman? Let her go— 930
good-bye and good luck to her.
Let the same joy
she gave Father
seize her.
HYLLOS enters the house.
CHORUS
O sisters—see how suddenly
the sacred promise of the oracle,
spoken so long ago, strikes home.
It promised us the twelfth year
would end the long harsh work
of Herakles, a true son of Zeus. 940
At last the oracle comes true.
For how can a dead man work,
once he has gone to the grave?
If death darkens his face
as the centaur’s poison
pierces his sides, poison fathered
by Death and nourished
by the jewel-skinned
serpent, how can he live
to see tomorrow’s sun? 950
Locked in the Hydra’s
writhing grip, the black-
haired centaur’s
treacherous words
erupt at last—lashing Herakles
with burning, surging pain.
Our Queen knew nothing of this,
but a marriage loomed
that threatened her home.
She saw it coming. 960
Her hand seized the cure.
But the virulent hatred
of a strange beast—spoken at their one
fatal encounter—now brings tears
pouring from her eyes.
And doom comes on,
doom comes on, making
ever more clear this huge
calamity caused by guile.
Our tears burn as this plague 970
invades him, a crueler blow
than any his enemies
ever brought down
on this glorious hero
Herakles.
O dark
steel-tipped spear, keen
for battle, did you
capture that bride
from the heights
of Oechalia? 980
No! The love goddess,
Aphrodite, without
saying a word,
made it happen.
SERVANT
(offstage)
No! No!
SEMI-CHORUS 1
Do I imagine it?
Or is it the cry
of somebody grieving?
SEMI-CHORUS 2
No vague noise—
it’s anguish inside. 990
More trouble
for this house.
LEADER
See how slowly, her face dark,
an old woman comes toward us,
bringing us news.
Enter SERVANT from the house.
SERVANT
Daughters, we are still harvesting evil
from the gift that she sent to Herakles.
LEADER
Old woman, do you bring worse news?
SERVANT
Deianeira has left on her last journey.
Gone without taking one step. 1000
LEADER
You mean death, don’t you?
SERVANT
You heard me say it.
LEADER
Dead? That poor woman?
SERVANT
You’ve heard it twice.
LEADER
Wretched woman! How did she die?
SERVANT
The act itself was ruthless.
LEADER
Tell us what happened!
SERVANT
She stabbed herself.
LEADER
What rash fury,
what sick frenzy, made her do it? How
did she manage to make her death
follow his—and do it herself?
SERVANT
One thrust of a steel blade was enough.
LEADER
Then you saw her . . . kill herself? Poor woman! 1010
SERVANT
I saw it. I was there.
LEADER
What happened! How did it happen? Say it!
SERVANT
Her hand did what her mind chose.
LEADER
What are you saying?
SERVANT
The simple truth.
LEADER
The first-born child
of that new bride
is an avenging Fury—
scourging this house!
SERVANT
Now you see it. If you had seen the act itself,
you would have pitied her even more. 1020
LEADER
(pausing a beat)
How could a woman dare . . . do such a thing?
With her own hand?
SERVANT
Yes. It stunned me.
You must know what she did.
So you can tell the others.
When she came in alone,
and saw her son preparing a stretcher
in the courtyard—so he could go meet
his father—she hid, hoping no one could find her,
collapsing on the sacred altars, screaming
they’d be abandoned. When she touched
ordinary things that had been part of her life,
she wept. Aimlessly roaming, room to room, 1030
she saw the faces of servants she cherished.
This brought on more tears, more grief
at her own and her household’s destruction.
Strangers, she said, would soon take over
her house. After she’d stopped all that,
I saw her burst into Herakles’ bedr
oom.
Through an open doorway I watched.
She spread blankets on her lord’s bed,
jumped onto it, huddled there, tears
welling from her eyes, and cried out: 1040
“Our room! Bed where we loved! Good-bye
forever! Since you will never again
feel me lie down.” That’s all she said.
She ripped her robe open, viciously, just
where a gold brooch was pinned over her breasts,
leaving her left arm and whole ribcage naked.
I ran—fast as I could—to find her son
and warn him what she meant to do. Before we
got back, she’d driven a sword through her heart.
When he saw her, her son roared, because 1050
he knew, he knew, that his own rage
had made her do it. He’d found out
too late from the servants that she hadn’t
known what she was doing when she
followed the centaur’s instructions.
Her young son, now so miserable,
mourned her passionately. Kneeling at her side,
he kissed and kissed her lips, then stretched out
sobbing on the ground next to her bed,
confessing he was wrong to attack her, 1060
weeping that he’d been orphaned for life,
his mother and his father, both of them, dead.
All this has just happened. He is rash
who makes plans for tomorrow, makes any
plans at all—tomorrow doesn’t exist
until we have survived today.
LEADER
Who should I mourn first?
Whose death brings more grief?
I don’t know.
CHORUS
There is one sorrow in this house, 1070
we wait for another to arrive—
anxiety and grief are blood brothers.
LEADER
May a blast of wind
blow through our house
to drive me out of this land,
so I won’t die of terror
when I see him, the once
great son of Zeus.
CHORUS
He’s coming home, they tell us,
a fire in his bones nothing can cure, 1080
an unspeakable miracle of pain.
LEADER
He isn’t far away,
he’s near, the man I grieve
in my ear-piercing
nightingale’s voice.
Strangers are bearing him here,
but how do they carry him?
They seem to suffer his pain,
as they would for a friend.
HERAKLES, unconscious, accompanied by the OLD MAN, is carried in by his Soldiers on a stretcher.
They walk on sad silent feet. 1090
Oh they bring him in silence!
Should I think he is dead?
Or think he is sleeping?
Enter HYLLOS from the house.
HYLLOS
Father, to see you like this
hurts me so much! Father,
what can I do?
OLD MAN
Don’t talk. You’ll only stir up spasms
that’ll enrage him. He breathes, but he’s still
unconscious. Keep your mouth shut.
HYLLOS
You’re saying he’s alive, old man? 1100
OLD MAN
Don’t wake him! Don’t start him
again on that crazed lashing out.
HYLLOS
I’m the one losing my mind
under the weight of his pain.
HERAKLES wakes.
HERAKLES
O Zeus, what country are we in?
Who are these men staring at me?
I’m worn out by this torture.
God it hurts! Like rats gorging on my flesh.
OLD MAN
You see, I was right. Better to keep still
than to chase sleep from his mind and eyes. 1110
HYLLOS
No! How can I stand here while he suffers?
HERAKLES
You—Cenaean Rock on the coast
where I built my altars—is this how
you thank me for those sacrifices?
O Zeus! To what weakness that Rock
brought me! What wretched weakness.
I wish I’d never seen that place—
the place that made these eyes
boil over with madness,
madness nothing can soothe. 1120
Where is the spellbinder, the shrewd doctor,
who can cure this disease? Only Zeus.
Will the healer visit my bed?
I’d be amazed if he did.
Aiiiie!
Let me be. So unlucky! Let me die.
(to HYLLOS and the OLD MAN)
Don’t touch me.
Don’t turn me over.
That will kill me! Kill me!
If any of my pains slept,
you woke them up.
It grinds me—
O this plague
keeps coming back! 1130
Where are you now, you Greeks,
my coldhearted countrymen?
I wore myself out clearing
Greece of marauders—
sea monsters, forest brutes.
Now, when I’m struck down,
where is the man willing
to save me with the mercy
of fire and steel? Come—cut
this head from my neck— 1140
one solid blow will do it.
O Zeus, I am miserable.
OLD MAN
Help me with him—you are his son!
He’s more than I can handle. Your strength
can lift him much better than mine.
HYLLOS
I’m holding him. But I don’t know how—
does anyone know how?—
to deaden his flesh to this torture.
This is what Zeus wants him to feel.
HERAKLES
Where are you, Son? 1150
Lift me up. Hold me here,
under here. Here it comes—
this beast none of us can beat down,
lunging at me, sinking its teeth.
Goddess Athena, it hits me now, again.
Honor your father, Son. Take a sword,
no one will blame you, and drive it
through me—below my collarbone.
That will numb the screaming pain
your heartless mother tears from me. 1160
I want to see her quieted just like that—
screaming, the same way I’ll go down.
Sweet Hades, Zeus’ brother,
let me rest, take my life, take it
with one swift stroke of peace.
LEADER
Friends, I hear our lord suffer and I shiver.
Such a great man—and so much pain.
HERAKLES
I have done blazing work with my hands,
I’ve shouldered ugly burdens on this back,
but no task given me 1170
by Zeus’ wife, or that hated
Eurystheus, equaled
what Oeneus’ daughter—
Deianeira! Deianeira!
so lovely, so treacherous—
forced on me: this net
of the Furies
woven around my death!
It’s plastered to my body, it
eats through to my guts. 1180
It’s always in me—sucking
my lungs dry, leeching the fresh
blood from my veins—so my whole
body’s wasted, crushed
by these flesh-eating shackles.
No fighting soldier,
no army of giants
sprung from the earth,
no shock of wild beasts,
hurt me like this—not my own Greece, 1190
not barbarous shores, no land
born with no male strength,
she beat me—only she.
And didn’t even need a sword.
Son, prove you are my son in fact.
Show me you’re my son, and not hers.
Bring her out here, the woman who bore you.
Take her in your hands and put her in mine.
When she suffers what she deserves, 1200
I’ll know what causes you more pain—
my own broken body, or hers.
Go do it, Son. Don’t cringe. Do it.
Show me some pity. Others will say
I have earned it. Look at me,
weeping and bawling like a girl. No man living
can say he saw me act like this, no!
I went wherever fortune sent me, without
a murmur. Now this hard man
finds out he’s a woman. 1210
Come here, stand by your father,
look how Fate mauls me. I will
open my robe. Look, all of you,
on this sorry body. See how
disgusting and shocking my life is!
HERAKLES rips open the blood-soaked robe that’s bonded to his chest.
Aiiiie!
That raw, flaming pain
is back, roaring through me,
forcing me to fight it again,
so hungry for my flesh. 1220
Hades, welcome me!
Zeus, drive your lightning
into my brain.
The beast is at me again,
it’s famished and it’s raging.
My hands, O you hands,
my shoulders, chest, arms—
how frail you are!
Once you did all that I asked.
You are the lethal weapons 1230
that strangled the lion prowling
the plains of Nemea—
no man could get near
that cattle-raiding cat—but you could!
You tamed the flailing Hydra of Lerna
and that monstrous herd, those centaurs—
men fused to horses, a breed
violent, lawless, brutally strong.
You mastered the wild boar
of Erymanthus, and the three-headed bitch 1240
Hades kept in his dark realm, a terror
that cowed all comers,
the whelp of Echidna the Dreaded.
You whipped the serpent who stood guard
over the golden apples at the ends of the earth.
These struggles—and a thousand more—
have tested me. No man can boast
he has beaten my strength.
But now, with my bones
unhinged and my flesh shredded, 1250
I lose to an invisible raider—
