Then one of the children, Iphicles, straightway screamed out, when he beheld the hideous monsters above the hollow shield, and saw their pitiless fangs, and eager to flee from them he kicked off the woollen coverlet with his feet. But Heracles set his force against them, and grasped them with his hands, holding them as in a bond, having got them by the throat, wherein lies the evil venom, detested even by the gods, of baleful snakes. Then the serpents, in their turn, wound their coils about the young child, the child unweaned, who never wept in his nursling days; but again they relaxed their spines on account of the pain, and strove to find some issue from the grasp of iron. Alcmena awoke first, hearing the cry. “Arise, Amphitryon, for numbing fear lays hold of me: arise, nor stay to put on thy shoes! Dost thou not hear how loud the younger child is wailing? and though it is the depth of night, the walls are all plain to see as in the clear dawn? I know there is some strange thing within the house, my dearest lord!” Thus she spoke, and at his wife’s bidding Amphitryon stepped down out of his bed of cedar, making for his richly ornamented sword which he always kept hanging on a pin above his bed. Just as he was reaching out for his new woven belt, and lifting with his other hand the mighty sheath of lotus wood, lo! the wide chamber was filled again with night. Then he called aloud to his servants, who were sleeping soundly. “Lights! Bring lights as quick as may be from the hearth, my servants, and thrust back the strong bolts of the doors. Arise, serving-men, stout of heart. Your master calls you.” Then quickly came the serving-men with burning torches, filling the whole house. When they saw the young child Heracles clutching the two snakes in his tender grasp, they all cried out and smote their hands together. But Heracles displayed the creeping things to his father, Amphitryon, and leaped on high in his childish glee, and laughing, at his father’s feet he laid them down, the dread monsters fallen on the sleep of death. Then Alcmena took Iphicles, dry-eyed and wan with fear, and laid him in her own bosom; but Amphitryon placed the other child beneath a lamb’s wool coverlet, and betook himself again to his rest. The cocks had barely sung their third welcome to the earliest dawn, when Alcmena called forth the seer Tiresias, who cannot lie, and told him of the new portent, and bade him declare what things should come to pass. “Nay, even if the gods devise some mischief, do not in pity conceal it from me; let me remind thee what thou well knowest, that mortals may not escape the doom that Fate speeds from her spindle.” Thus the Queen spoke, and he answered: