Sophocles Trachiniae 740

Deianeira

Friends, how I fear that I may have gone too far in all that I was doing just now!

Chorus

What has happened, Deianeira, daughter of Oeneus?

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Deianeira

I do not know, but I despair that I will soon be found to have done a great wrong, when my hope was for good.

Chorus

Surely it is nothing that bears on your gift to Heracles?

Deianeira

Yes, it is! So much so that I would never recommend to anybody

that he be eager for action in obscurity.

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Chorus

Tell us the cause of your fear, if it may be told.

Deianeira

A thing has happened, my friends, such that, if I declare it, it will be a strange marvel for you to hear. The implement with which I was just now anointing the festal robe,

a white tuft of fleecy sheep’s wool, has disappeared, eaten away by no animal in the courtyard, but self-devoured and self-destroyed it crumbled down over a stone slab. But I must tell the story at greater length, so that you may know exactly how this thing was accomplished.
 

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I neglected no part of the precepts which the savage Centaur gave me when he was hurting from the bitter barb in his side; they were in my memory, like the graven words which no hand may wash from a tablet of bronze. Now this was his order to me, and I obeyed it:

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to keep this potion hidden in inmost recesses always away from fire and untouched by the sun’s warm ray, until I should apply it, newly spread, where I wished. So I had done. And just now, when the moment for action had come, I performed the anointing secretly in the rooms of the house

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with a tuft of soft wool which I had plucked from a sheep of our home-flock; then I folded up my gift, and laid it, unvisited by sunlight, within its hollow chest, as you saw. But as I am going back into the house, I see a thing inexplicable by words and beyond the knowledge of the human mind to understand.

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For somehow I happened to have thrown the ball of wool, with which I had been anointing the robe, into the full blaze of the sun’s rays. As it grew warm, it ran all into confusion, and quickly crumbled to powder on the ground, like nothing in appearance so much as

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the morsels left by a saw’s teeth when wood is cut. It lies just so, fallen. And from the earth, where it lay exposed, clotted foam seethes up, like the rich juice of the blue fruit from the vine of Bacchus when it is poured on the ground.

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And so I am distraught, and I do not know to which side my thoughts should fall. I only see that I have brought a terrible deed to completion. For why or in thanks for what should the monster in his death-throes have shown good will to me, because of whom he was dying? Impossible! No, he was

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enchanting me in order to destroy the man who had shot him. And now too late I gain the knowledge of this, when it can no longer help. Yes, I alone—unless my outlook prove mistaken—I, miserable one, shall completely destroy him! For I know that the arrow which made the wound harmed

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even the god Cheiron, and that it kills all varieties of beasts that it touches. Since it is this same black venom in the blood that has passed out through the wound of Nessus, must it not kill Heracles also? To my mind, at least, it must. Nevertheless, I am resolved that, if he is to be brought down,

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at the same time I too will die along with him in the selfsame fall. No woman could bear to live with a reputation for evil, if she cares above all that her nature is not evil.

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Chorus

Fear is necessary when terrible deeds are done, but one should not judge one’s expectations before the outcome is known.

Deianeira

There is no room for expectation when one’s plans are bad, at least the kind of expectation which lends confidence.

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Chorus

And yet in the case of those whose mistakes were unwitting, men’s anger is softened. So it should be for you.

Deianeira

No, such words are not for one who took part in the wrongdoing,

but only for him who has no trouble at his own door.

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Chorus

It would suit you to refrain from saying anything more, unless you would reveal anything to your own son. For he is here, the one who earlier went to seek his father.

Hyllus

O Mother, how I wish I could choose one of three fates for you!

I wish that you no longer lived, or, if you remained, that someone else called you “Mother”, or that some new and kinder heart had been exchanged for your present one!

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Deianeira

My son, what have I done to cause your hate?

Hyllus

Listen to me! You have killed

your husband, my father—my father!

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Deianeira

oh, no! What is this you have blurted out, Hyllus?

Hyllus

Only what cannot but be fulfilled. For who could undo what has happened?

Deianeira

What do you mean, son? From whom did you hear this

that you charge me with a crime so awful?

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Hyllus

I have seen my father’s overwhelming misfortune with my own eyes. I did not learn of it by hearsay.

Deianeira

Where did you find him? Where were you with him?

Hyllus

If you need to hear, then I must tell all.

After sacking the famous city of Eurytus, he went his way with the trophies and choice spoils of victory. There is a sea-washed headland of Euboea , Cape Cenaeum, where he marked out altars and a sacred grove to the Zeus of his fathers.

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There I first saw him, to the gratification of my desire. He was about to make a sacrifice rich in offerings when his own herald, Lichas, came to him from home with your gift, the deadly robe, in his hands. This he put on as you prescribed

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and then began his offering with twelve bulls, free from blemish, the prime of the spoil; but altogether he brought a hundred mixed victims to the altar. At first the miserable wretch prayed with serene soul and rejoiced in his ornate garb.

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But when the blood-fed flame began to blaze from the holy offerings and from the resinous pine, a sweat broke out on his skin and the tunic clung to his sides close-glued at every joint, as if by a craftsman’s hand; there came

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a convulsive, biting pain in his bones; and then the venom, like that of some deadly, cruel viper, began to devour him. At that he shouted for the ill-fated Lichas—who was in no way to blame for your crime—asking by what plots he had brought that robe.

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But he, unfortunate one, all-unknowing, said that he had brought your gift from you alone, just as it had been sent. When Heracles heard it, just as a piercing spasm clutched his lungs, he caught him by the foot where the ankle bends in the socket

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and threw him at a surf-beaten rock in the sea, causing the white brain to ooze from his hair, when the crown of his head had been scattered and his blood with it.

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But all the people lifted up a cry of astounded grief when they saw that the one was frenzied, and the other destroyed;

and no one dared to approach the man. For he convulsed down to the ground and up into the air as he shouted and cried out. All around the cliffs resounded, both the steep headlands of Locris and the Euboean capes. But when he was exhausted with repeatedly

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throwing himself on the ground in his anguish and repeatedly shouting with howls of grief, as he dwelled on his ill-mated marriage with miserable you and his alliance with Oeneus, which, he said, he got for himself as the ruin of his life, then from out of the shrouding altar-smoke

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he raised his wildly-rolling eyes and saw me weeping among his many troops. He stared at me and called me: “O my son, come to me. Do not fly from my trouble, not even if you have to share my death. Come, lift me up and away and above all put me

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in a place where no one can see me. But if you have pity, at least carry me in all speed away from this country so that I may not die here.” When he had laid this command on me, we put him onboard ship and brought him just barely to this land,

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while he moaned in his convulsions. And you shall soon see him, either alive or freshly dead.
  Such, Mother, are the designs and deeds against my father of which you have been found guilty. May Punishing Justice and the Erinys punish you for them! Yes, if it be right, that is my prayer.

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Right it is, for to my eyes you have rejected the right by killing the best and bravest of men in all the world, whose equal you will never see again. Deianeira moves towards the house.

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Chorus

To Deianeira.

Why do you leave without a word? Do you not know that your silence pleads your accuser’s case?

Hyllus

Let her leave. May a fair wind speed her far from my sight! Why should she falsely keep the dignity of the name “Mother,” when she is all unlike a mother in her deeds? No, let her go—farewell to her. May such delight as

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she gives my father become her own! Exit Deianeira into the house, followed at a distance by Hyllus.

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