Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/285

---

Let not such shameful words escape thy lips.
⁠[To Hyllus.]
This woe, my son, is of thy mother's gift.
Oh, that I might crush out her guilty life
With my great club, as once the Amazons 1450
I smote upon the snowy Caucasus.
O well-loved Megara, to think that thou
Wast wife of mine when in that fit I fell
Of maddened rage! Give me my club and bow;
Let my hand be disgraced, and with a blot
Let me destroy the luster of my praise—
My latest conquest on a woman gained! 1455
Hyllus: ⁠Now curb the dreadful threatenings of thy wrath;
She has her wound—'tis over—and has paid
The penalty which thou wouldst have her pay:
For now, self-slain, my mother lies in death.
Hercules: ⁠O grief, still with me! She deserved to die 1460
Beneath the hands of angry Hercules.
Lichas, thou hast lost thy mate in death.
So hot my wrath, against her helpless corpse
I still would rage. Why does her body lie
Secure from my assaults? Go cast it out
To be a banquet for the birds of prey.
Hyllus: ⁠She suffered more than even thou wouldst wish.
Self-slain, and grieving sore for thee, she died. 1465
But 'tis not by a cruel wife's deceit,
Nor by my mother's guile, thou liest low.
By Nessus was this deadly plot conceived,
Who, smitten by thine arrow, lost his life.
'Twas in the centaur's gore the robe was dipped, 1470
And by thy pains he doth requite his own.
Hercules: ⁠Then truly are his pains well recompensed,
And my own doubtful oracles explained.
This fate the talking oak foretold to me,
And Delphi's oracle, whose sacred voice
Shook Cirrha's temples and Parnassus' slopes: 1475
"By hand of one whom thou hast slain, some day,
Victorious Hercules, shalt thou lie low.
This end, when thou hast traversed sea and land,