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Come close, stand near your father and do examine the magnitude of the misfortune by which I suffer; for I will uncover my suffering. Look! See all of you this miserable body;
see how wretched, how pitiable I am!
Ah, misery! The ruinous spasm flames again; it shoots through my sides—I must wrestle once more with that cruel, devouring plague!
1080
King Hades, receive me! Strike me, O fire of Zeus! Hurl down your thunderbolt, ruler, dash it, Father, upon my head! Again the pest consumes me, it has blazed up, it has leapt to fury! O hands, my hands,
1085
O shoulders and chest and trusty arms, you are indeed those noted arms which once subdued with your might the dweller in
Nemea
, the scourge of herdsmen, the lion, a creature that no man might approach or confront; you tamed the Lernaean Hydra,
1090
and that monstrous army of beasts with double form, hostile, going on hoofed feet, violent, lawless, of surpassing violence; you tamed the beast in Erymanthia, and underground the three-headed whelp of Hades, a resistless terror, offspring of the fierce Echidna; you tamed the dragon
1095
that guarded the golden fruit in the farthest places of the earth. These toils and thousands more have I tasted, and no man has ever erected a trophy of victory over my hands. But now, with joints unhinged and with flesh torn to shreds, I have become the miserable spoil of an unseen destroyer,
1100
—I, who am called the son of noblest mother, I, who am reputed the seed of Zeus, lord of the starry sky.
But you may be sure of one thing: though I am nothing, though I cannot move a step, yet she who has done this deed shall feel my heavy hand even so. Let her but come to me
1105
so that she may learn to proclaim this message to all the world, that in my death, as in my life, I punished the guilty!
1110
Come close, stand near your father and do examine the magnitude of the misfortune by which I suffer; for I will uncover my suffering. Look! See all of you this miserable body;
see how wretched, how pitiable I am!
Ah, misery! The ruinous spasm flames again; it shoots through my sides—I must wrestle once more with that cruel, devouring plague!
1080
Ah, misery! The ruinous spasm flames again; it shoots through my sides—I must wrestle once more with that cruel, devouring plague!
King Hades, receive me! Strike me, O fire of Zeus! Hurl down your thunderbolt, ruler, dash it, Father, upon my head! Again the pest consumes me, it has blazed up, it has leapt to fury! O hands, my hands,
1085
O shoulders and chest and trusty arms, you are indeed those noted arms which once subdued with your might the dweller in
Nemea
, the scourge of herdsmen, the lion, a creature that no man might approach or confront; you tamed the Lernaean Hydra,
1090
and that monstrous army of beasts with double form, hostile, going on hoofed feet, violent, lawless, of surpassing violence; you tamed the beast in Erymanthia, and underground the three-headed whelp of Hades, a resistless terror, offspring of the fierce Echidna; you tamed the dragon
1095
that guarded the golden fruit in the farthest places of the earth. These toils and thousands more have I tasted, and no man has ever erected a trophy of victory over my hands. But now, with joints unhinged and with flesh torn to shreds, I have become the miserable spoil of an unseen destroyer,
1100
—I, who am called the son of noblest mother, I, who am reputed the seed of Zeus, lord of the starry sky.
But you may be sure of one thing: though I am nothing, though I cannot move a step, yet she who has done this deed shall feel my heavy hand even so. Let her but come to me
1105
But you may be sure of one thing: though I am nothing, though I cannot move a step, yet she who has done this deed shall feel my heavy hand even so. Let her but come to me
so that she may learn to proclaim this message to all the world, that in my death, as in my life, I punished the guilty!
1110
Trachiniae. Sophocles. Richard Jebb (Translator). Cambridge. 1892.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.