Page:The Greek bucolic poets (1912).djvu/497



''poem gives a picture of Heracles’ wife and mother at home in his house at Tiryns while he is abroad about his Labours. The two women sit weeping. The wife bewails his mad murder of their children, and gently hints that the mother might give her more sympathy in her sorrow if she would not be for ever lamenting her own. To which the hind old Alcmena replies, “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”; but though her own anxiety for the safety of the labouring Heracles, increased now by an evil dream, is food enough, God knows, for lamentation, she feels, as indeed Megara must know full well, for her sorrowing daughter too. The poem bears a resemblance to [Theocritus] XXV, and is thought by some to belong to the same author.'' Rh