Epeisodion 1
Amphitryon
to help these tender chicks, to requite him for all his labors in purging land and sea. Such help, my children, neither Hellas nor the city of Thebes affords you; to me a feeble friend you look, and I am empty sound and nothing more.
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For the vigor which once I had, has gone from me; my limbs are palsied with age, and my strength is decayed. If I were young and still powerful in body, I would have seized my spear and dabbled those flaxen locks of his with blood, so that the coward would now
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be flying from my spear beyond the bounds of Atlas.
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Chorus Leader
Have not the brave among mankind a fair occasion for speech, although slow to begin?
Lycus
Say what you will of me in your exalted phrase, but I by deeds will make you rue those words.
Calling to his servants Go, some to Helicon, others to the glens of Parnassus, and bid woodmen to cut me logs of oak, and when they are brought to the town, pile up a stack of wood all round the altar on either side, and set fire to it and burn them
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all alive, that they may learn that the dead no longer rules this land, but that for the present I am king. Angrily to the Chorus As for you, old men, since you thwart my views, not for the children of Heracles alone shall you lament, but likewise for your own
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misfortunes, and you shall never forget you are slaves and I your prince.
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Chorus
—You sons of Earth, whom Ares once sowed, when from the dragon’s ravening jaw he had torn the teeth, up with your staves, on which you lean your hands,
and dash out this villain’s brains! a fellow who, without even being a Theban, but a foreigner, lords it shamefully over the younger men; but my master shall you never be to your joy.
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—Nor shall you reap the harvest of all my toil;
Go back to where you came from, in your insolence. For never while I live, shall you slay these sons of Heracles; not so deep beneath the earth has their father disappeared from his children’s ken.
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—You are in possession of this land which you have ruined,
while he, its benefactor, has missed his just reward.
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—And yet do I take too much upon myself because I help those I love after their death, when most they need a friend?
—Ah! right hand, how you desire to wield the spear, but your weakness is a death-blow to your desire.
For then I would have stopped you calling me slave, and I would have governed Thebes with credit. In which you now rejoice; for a city sick with dissension and evil counsels does not think aright; otherwise it would never have accepted you as its master.
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Megara
Old men, I thank you; it is right that friends should feel virtuous indignation on behalf of those they love; but do not on our account vent your anger on the tyrant to your own undoing. Hear my advice, Amphitryon, if there appears to you to be anything in what I say.
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I love my children; strange if I did not love those whom I bore, whom I labored for! Death I count a dreadful fate; but the man who strives against necessity I esteem a fool. Since we must die, let us do so
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without being burnt alive, a source of mockery to our enemies, which to my mind is an evil worse than death; for much good do we owe our family. You have always had a warrior’s fair fame, so it is not to be endured that you should die a coward’s death;
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