Stasimon 6
Amphitryon
Hush! hush! he is turning over, he is waking! Oh!
let me hide myself, concealed beneath the roof.
1070
Chorus
Courage! darkness still holds your son’s eye.
Amphitryon
Oh beware! it is not that I shrink from leaving the light after my miseries, poor wretch! but if should he slay me, his father,
then he will be devising mischief on mischief, and to the avenging curse will add a parent’s blood.
1075
Chorus
Well for you if you had died in that day, when, for your wife, you went forth to exact vengeance for her slain brothers
by sacking the Taphians’ sea-beat town.
1080
Amphitryon
Fly, fly, my aged friends, from before the palace, escape his waking fury. Or soon he will heap up fresh slaughter on the old,
ranging wildly once more through the streets of Thebes.
1085
Chorus Leader
O Zeus, why have you shown such savage hate against your own son and plunged him in this sea of troubles?
Heracles
Aha! I am alive and breathing; and my eyes resume their function, opening on
the sky and earth and the sun’s darting beam; but how my senses reel! in what strange turmoil am I plunged! my fevered breath in quick spasmodic gasps escapes my lungs. How now? why am I lying here, my brawny chest and arms made fast with cables like a ship,
1090
beside a half-shattered piece of masonry, with corpses for my neighbors; while over the floor my bow and arrows are scattered, that once like trusty squires to my arm
1095
both kept me safe and were kept safe by me? Surely I have not come a second time to Hades’ halls, having just returned from there for Eurystheus? To Hades? From where? No, I do not see Sisyphus with his stone, or Pluto, or his queen, Demeter’s child.
1100
Surely I am distraught; where am I, so helpless? Ho, there! which of my friends is near or far to cure me in my perplexity? For I have no clear knowledge of things once familiar.
1105
Amphitryon
My aged friends, shall I approach the scene of my sorrow?
Chorus Leader
Yes, and let me go with you, not desert you in your trouble.
1110
Heracles
Father, why do you weep and veil your eyes, standing far from your beloved son?
Amphitryon
My child! mine still, for all your misery.
