Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/285

Rh Let not such shameful words escape thy lips. [To Hyllus.] This woe, my son, is of thy mother's gift. Oh, that I might crush out her guilty life With my great club, as once the Amazons I smote upon the snowy Caucasus. O well-loved Megara, to think that thou Wast wife of mine when in that fit I fell Of maddened rage! Give me my club and bow; Let my hand be disgraced, and with a blot Let me destroy the luster of my praise— My latest conquest on a woman gained! Hyllus: Now curb the dreadful threatenings of thy wrath; She has her wound—'tis over—and has paid The penalty which thou wouldst have her pay: For now, self-slain, my mother lies in death. Hercules: O grief, still with me! She deserved to die Beneath the hands of angry Hercules. Lichas, thou hast lost thy mate in death. So hot my wrath, against her helpless corpse I still would rage. Why does her body lie Secure from my assaults? Go cast it out To be a banquet for the birds of prey. Hyllus: She suffered more than even thou wouldst wish. Self-slain, and grieving sore for thee, she died. But 'tis not by a cruel wife's deceit, Nor by my mother's guile, thou liest low. By Nessus was this deadly plot conceived, Who, smitten by thine arrow, lost his life. 'Twas in the centaur's gore the robe was dipped, And by thy pains he doth requite his own. Hercules: Then truly are his pains well recompensed, And my own doubtful oracles explained. This fate the talking oak foretold to me, And Delphi's oracle, whose sacred voice Shook Cirrha's temples and Parnassus' slopes: "By hand of one whom thou hast slain, some day, Victorious Hercules, shalt thou lie low. This end, when thou hast traversed sea and land,