HERACLES
Amphitryon
Run, run, old friends, back from the house,
away! He wakes! Run, run
from his reawakened rage!
He wakes to pile murder on murder,
to dance madness through all Thebes! 1085
Chorus
0 Zeus, why have you hated him so much,
your own son? Why launched him on this sea of grief?
Heracles
How now?
1 do breathe . . . what I ought to see, I see:
heaven and earth, the gleaming shafts of the sun. . . . 1090
But how strangely my muddled senses swim,
as on a choppy sea ... my breath comes warm,
torn up unsteadily from heaving lungs. . . .
And look: I sit here, like a ship lashed tight
with cables binding my chest and arms, 109 j
moored to a piece of broken masonry;
and there, close beside me, corpses lie ...
and my bow and arrows littered dn the. ground',
those faithful former comrades of my arms,
that guarded my chest, and I guarded them. 1100
Have I come back to Hades? Have I run
Eurystheus' race again? Hades? But how?
No, for I see no rock of Sisyphus,
no Pluto, no queen Demeter's sceptre.
I am bewildered. Where could I be helpless? 1105
Help! Is there some friend of mine, near or far,
who could help me in my bewilderment?
For all I took for granted now seems strange. . . .
Amphitryon
Old friends, shall I approach my affliction?
Chorus
Go, and 111 go with you, sharing in your grief. n 10
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