HERACLES
(Turning to his attendants.)
Go, men, to Helicon and Parnassus: 240
tell the woodsmen there to chop up oaken logs
and haul them to the city. Then pile your wood
around the altar here on every side,
and let it blaze. Burn them all alive
until they learn the dead man rules no more; 245
that I, and I alone, am the power here.
But you old men, for this defiance,
you shall mourn the sons of Heracles
and each disaster that devours this house, 250
each separate grief, until you learn
you are only slaves; I am the master.
Chorus
O sons of earth, men whom Ares sowed,
teeth he tore from the dragon's foaming jaw,
up, up with these staffs that prop our arms
and batter the skull of this godless man, 255
no Theban, but an alien lording it
over the younger men, to our great shame!
(To Lycus.)
Never shall you boast that I am your slave,
never will you reap the harvest of my work,
all I labored for. Go back whence you came; 260
rage there. So long as there is life in me,
you shall not kill the sons of Heracles.
He has not gone so deep beneath the earth.
Because you ruined, then usurped, this land,
he who gave it help must go without his due. 265
Am I a meddler, then, because I help
the friend who, being dead, needs help the most?
O right hand, how you ache to hold a spear,
but cannot, want foundering on weakness.
Else, I should have stopped your mouth that calls me
slave, 270
and ruled this Thebes, in which you now exult,
31?