immediately stretching out1 the sword, drove it to the middle in his side, and still in possession of his senses, with his enfeebled arm he embraces the virgin2; and gasping, he casts a swift gush of gory drops on her pallid cheek. And dead by the dead the hapless youth lies, having obtained his nuptial rites in the mansions of Pluto, a proof to the world of rashness, how it attaches to man the greatest of his ills.

CH. What can you conjecture this to mean? The woman has some time since disappeared before uttering word, good or bad3.

MESS. I myself also am astonished: but I live in the hope that, hearing the calamities of her son, she does not deign to make her lamentations public, but within, beneath the roof of the palace, will appoint her maids to mourn a domestic sorrow: for she is not devoid of judgment, so as to commit what is improper.

CH. I know not: for to me, at least, a deep silence seems to portend something grievous, and an excess of clamorous grief to be without consequence.

MESS. But going within the palace, we will inform ourselves whether she secretly conceals in her enraged heart any unlawful purpose: for your suggestion is good, and there is something grievous in too deep silence.

CH. And in truth here comes the king himself, having a memorable token in his hand, if we may lawfully so say,-no

1πεvτalεíc, pro iπevτeiváμevoç. Sic, ut erat, ensem intentans. Musgrave.

2 This description of the two ill-fated lovers, the dying and the dead, contains the very essence of poetry, and tragic beauty. A finer subject for a picture cannot well be imagined.

3 There is something very striking and fearful in the moody silence of deep passion and despair.

δέδοιχ ̓ ὅπως

μὴ ἐκ τῆς σιωπῆς τῆσδ ̓ ἀναῤῥήξει κακά. (dip. Tyran. 1074. A few lines below, the Chorus also expresses this same feeling of apprehension, arising from the same cause.

4 Creon, it would appear from this, comes in, carrying the dead body of Hæmon. Shakspeare, in a similar way, introduces Lear with Cordelia in his arms. This incident is well calculated for stage effect: but the Goths who have mangled Lear for representation, have now left out the scene of that fair dead daughter." TR.-Macready, however, has shown his wonted judgment by its restoration. In the present scene, Vandenhoff's action and declamation merited the highest commendation.

B.

calamity from a foreign source, but he himself its guilty author.

[Enter CREON, leaning upon the body of his son, borne on a litter.]

CR. Alas! the irreparable and deadly errors of a perverted mind! O ye, who look on the kindred slayers and the slain! Oh me! for the infatuation of my counsels! O my son! my son! in your youth by an untimely fate, [woe, woe, woe, woe!] thou hast died, thou hast departed by mine, not thy rashness!

CH. Ah me! how you seem too late to perceive justice!

CR. Ah me! I wretched gain it by experience; and on my head the god then dashed with heavy impulse, and drove me on to furious ways; having, alas! overturned to be trampled beneath foot my former joy. Alas! alas! O the toils of mortals! hapless toils!

MESSENGER. O master, how, both having the possessing, you bear these evils in your hands, and you seem coming soon about to behold other evils in your palace.

CR. And what, after these calamities, is there still more calamitous?

MESS. Your wife is dead, the full mother of this corpse, in an unhappy fate by wounds just fresh inflicted.

CR. O port of the grave, that no expiation may soothe, why, why do you destroy me? O thou that hast conveyed to me the evil tidings of sorrow, what a tale dost thou tell? Alas. alas! thou hast a second time despatched a dead man. What, O man, dost thou say? What new intelligence dost thou deliver? Woe, woe, woe, woe! that the death of my wife by murder is added to the destruction of my son?

MESS. You may behold it; for the body is no longer in the inner recesses.

[By a movement of the iккúк\npa the scene opens and discovers the body of EURYDICE, surrounded by her attendants.]

CR. Woe is me! this other succeeding evil I wretched behold. What then, what fate yet awaits me? I, an unhappy wretch, am already bearing in my arms my son, and I see opposite that other dead body. Alas! alas, O wretched mother! alas, my son!

MESS. She, in keen anger, falling down beside the altar, closes her darkening eyes, having first, indeed, bewailed the

illustrious bed of Megareus, who formerly died, and again of him before us; and last, having imprecated a baneful fortune on you the murderer of your children.

ČR. Woe, woe, woe, woe! I am fluttered with fear. Why does not some one wound me through with a two-edged sword? A wretched man am I, alas! alas! and in a wretched fate am I involved.

MESS. As being guilty at least of both the one fate and the other, you were denounced by her as she died.

CR. But in what way did she depart from life in the slaughter?

MESS. Having with her own hand pierced herself below the liver, when she heard the deeply-mournful sufferings of her son.

CR. Woe is me; this guilt will never apply to any other but me: for I, a miserable wretch, I have slain thee: I say the truth. O ye attendants, conduct me, with all speed conduct me without; me, who am no more than nothingness.

CH. You bid what profits, if there be any aught that profits in misfortunes: for present evils, when shortest are best. CR. Let it come, let it come, let the last of my fates appear, bringing most happily to me the close of my days: let it come, let it come, so that I may never behold another day.

MESS. Those things are future: of these things present command what we ought to do; for others are a care to those whom it behoves to have this care.

CR. But I prayed for those things I desire.

MESS. Pray now for nothing; since there is no escape to mortals from predestined calamity.

[CREON is led off.]

CR. Lead away now without this shadow of a man, who, O my son, unwillingly slew thee, and thee, too, my wife. O wretched man that I am! I neither know whither nor to whom I should look; for every thing misguided, both in my hands and over my head, has an intolerable fate made to burst upon me.

CH. To be wise is the first part of happiness and it behoves us not to be guilty of irreverence in those things at least that concern the gods; for the haughty words of the vaunting, paying the penalty of severe affliction, have taught wisdom to old age.

TRACHINIE.

HERCULES having excited the jealous fears of Deianira by bringing home the captive Iole as a new partner of his bed, she sent him as a love-charm a garment dipped in the blood which fell from the deathwound with which the Centaur Nessus had been stricken by Hercules. The poison took a fatal effect, and Hercules, perishing in agony, was placed on a funeral pile on Mount Eta, where he was to receive his immortality, and rest from suffering. Deianira, in despair, slew herself. B.

DEIANIRA. There is an ancient saying, renowned among men, that you cannot fully judge of the life of mortals, whether it has been good or bad to an individual before his death'. But I, even before I come to the realms of Pluto, know that I have led my life in misfortune and calamity: I, who indeed, while dwelling in the palace of my father Eneus, in Pleuron2, felt the greatest horror of nuptials of all the Ætolian maids. For my suitor was a river, I mean the Acheloüs, who, in three forms, sought me of my father: now coming in full shape a bull3: at

1 This sentiment is common enough; but the way in which it is here talked of, as famous and proverbial, shows us that Sophocles had in view the speech of Solon to Croesus. If he meant to make Deianira quote Solon, he is guilty of a very gross anachronism. TR.-See Hermann. B. 2 Pleuron was the capital of Ætolia, and is reported to have been a city of great splendour in the early ages of Greece.

8 This seems to have been the common way, in ancient times, of representing rivers. Homer has frequent allusions to it; and Horace applies the epithet" tauriformis" to the Aufidus, at a time when such superstitions had rather gone by. There are various accounts given of the origin and meaning of this fanciful custom; but that which supposes it to have

another time, a speckled wreathed snake; and at a third, in the body of a man with the head of a bull; and from his thick-shaggy beard, the streams of liquid founts kept flowing. I, wretched, having received such a suitor, always prayed to die before I should ever approach his bed. And in late time indeed, but to my joy, came the illustrious son of Jove and Alcmena, who engaging with this monster in the strife of battle, delivers me. The manner of their fray I am not able to describe: for I know it not; but whosoever sat undismayed during the spectacle, he could tell it'. For I sat confounded with terror, lest my beauty might, on a time, work my bane. But Jove, the arbiter of conflicts, disposed the issue well, if in truth it be well; for being united his awarded bride to Hercules, I ever sustain fear succeeding fear in boding cares for him, since night brings, and night in turn removes some toil. And I indeed have borne him children, whom, like a husbandman that hath a field far distant, he hath once only looked on in the seed-time, and once again in the harvest. Such a life sends from home and to home the hero, always paying service to some one and now when he has reached the goal of these labours, here in truth I feel most alarmed. For since the time that he slew the mighty Iphitus, we indeed, changing our abode, dwell here in Trachis, with a stranger host; but where he has gone, no one knows: but he has departed, leaving bitter pangs to me on his account; and I am almost sure that he has met with some mishap. For he remains for no small space of time, but already for ten months, in addition to

:

some reference to the overflowing of the Nile, when the sun enters the Bull, thougn tar-fetched, is perhaps the least absurd.

1 A spirited description of the combat is given by the Chorus in this play, v. 500-530.

2 Eurystheus king of Mycena was the great task-master of Hercules. The Fates had decreed that the one of them who was first born should have the other for his slave. Juno, the implacable step-mother of Hercules, took advantage of her power as the goddess of child-birth, to give Eurystheus the important start. Virgil alludes to this circumstance, En. viii. v. 291.

ut duros mille labores

Rege sub Eurystheo, fatis Junonis iniquæ,

Pertulerit.

3 The murder of Iphitus is related in this play, v. 270–275. * Ceyx, the king of Trachis.