AEG.  Why drive you me within?  If this you do
Be noble, why must darkness hide the deed? 
Why not destroy me out of hand?

OR.  Command not! 
Enter, and in the place where ye cut down
My father, thou shalt yield thy life to me.

AEG.  Is there no help but this abode must see
The past and future ills of Pelops’ race?

OR.  Thine anyhow.  That I can prophesy
With perfect inspiration to thine ear.

AEG.  The skill you boast belonged not to your sire.

OR.  You question and delay.  Go in!

AEG.  Lead on.

OR.  Nay, go thou first.

AEG.  That I may not escape thee?

OR.  No, that thou may’st not have thy wish in death. 
I may not stint one drop of bitterness. 
And would this doom were given without reprieve,
If any try to act beyond the law,
To kill them.  Then the wicked would be few.

LEADER OF CH.  O seed of Atreus! how triumphantly
Through grief and hardness thou hast freedom found,
With full achievement in this onset crowned!

* * * * *

THE TRACHINIAN MAIDENS

THE PERSONS

DEANIRA, wife of Heracles.
An Attendant. 
HYLLUS, son of Heracles and Deanira. 
CHORUS of Trachinian Maidens.
A Messenger. 
LICHAS, the Herald.
A Nurse.
An Old Man. 
HERACLES. 
IOLE, who does not speak.

SCENE.  Before the temporary abode of Heracles in Trachis.

This tragedy is named from the Chorus.  From the subject it might have been called ‘Deanira or the Death of Heracles’.

The Centaur Nessus, in dying by the arrow of Heracles, which had been dipped in the venom of the Hydra, persuaded the bride Deanira, whose beauty was the cause of his death, to keep some of the blood from the wound as a love-charm for her husband.  Many years afterwards, when Heracles was returning from his last exploit of sacking Oechalia, in Euboea, he sent before him, by his herald Lichas, Iole, the king’s daughter, whom he had espoused.  Deanira, when she had discovered this, commissioned Lichas when he returned to present his master with a robe, which she had anointed with the charm,—­hoping by this means to regain her lord’s affection.  But the poison of the Hydra did its work, and Heracles died in agony, Deanira having already killed herself on ascertaining what she had done.  The action takes place in Trachis, near the Mahae Gulf, where Heracles and Deanira, by permission of Ceyx, the king of the country, have been living in exile.  At the close of the drama, Heracles, while yet alive, is carried towards his pyre on Mount Oeta.

THE TRACHINIAN MAIDENS