LP0028 The Megara w/ extras

Legendary Passages #0028 - The Megara - The first wife of Heracles, plus the lover of Aphrodite.     Last time one of the odes recounted the story of baby Heracles. This time we hear two passages: a dialogue between Heracles' mother Alcmena and his wife Megara, and then the fate of Adonis, mortal lover of Aphrodite.     First there is an introduction to the text setting the scene in Tyrins, while Heracles is out on his labors. The translator compares this text to the 25th Idyll of Theocritus, featured next episode, and also way back in episode 4.     The passage begins with Megara's monologue, where she first asks why her mother in law cries so much, for her own woes are countless. Her perfect man killed their children in front of her and she wishes that she had joined them; all of her friends and family are far away, and her husband is gone for months at a time.     Alcmena reveals to her that she loves her as if she were her own daughter, and that every time Heracles leaves she does not know if she shall ever see him again. Alcmena had a terrible nightmare of a field worker and a great wall of fire, and her other son Iphicles fallen and unable to rise; and prays that misfortune not fall on her family but on the house of Eurystheus.     The second passage is from the Bucolic Collection and is quite short. Adonis, lover of Aphrodite, was killed by a boar, who then tells her that the boy was so beautiful he tried to kiss him, but instead his tusks gored him to death. The Megara a Legendary Passage from The Megara & The Dead Adonis trans. by J. M. Edmonds     This 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 kind old Alcmena replies,     “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”; but through 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. Megara the wife of Heracles addresses his mother Alcmena.     “Mother dear, O why is they heart cast down in this exceeding sorrow, and the rose o’ they cheek a-withering away? What is it, sweet, hath made thee so sad? Is it because thy doughty son be given troubles innumerable by a man of nought, as a lion might be given by a fawn? O well-a-day that the Gods should have sent me this dishonour! and alas that I should have been begotten unto such an evil lot! Woe’s me that I that was bedded with a man above reproach, I that esteemed him as the light of my eyes and do render him heart’s worship and honour to this day, should have lived to see him of all the world most miserable and best acquaint with the taste of woe!     O misery that the bow and arrows given him of the great Apollo should prove to be the dire shafts of a Death-Spirit or a Fury, so that he should run stark mad in his own home and slay his own children withal, should reave them of dear life and fill the house with murder and blood.     Aye, with my own miserable eyes I saw my children smitten of the hand of their father, and that hath no other so much as dreamt of. And for all they cried and cried upon their mother I could not help them, so present and invincible was their evil hap. But even as a bird that waileth upon her young ones’ perishing when her babes be devoured one by one of a dire serpent in the thicket, and flies to and fro, the poor raving mother, screaming above her children, and cannot go near to aid them for her