Distract his heart with madness: let his soul More fiercely burn than that hot fire which glows On Aetna's forge. But first, that Hercules May be to madness driven, smitten through With mighty passion, I must be insane. Why rav'st thou not, O Juno? Me, oh, me, Ye sisters, first of sanity deprive, That something worthy of a stepdame's wrath I may prepare. Let all my hate be change To favour. Now I pray that he may come To earth again, and see his sons unharmed; May he return with all his old time strength. Now have I found a day when Hercules May help me with his strength that I deplore. Now let him equally o'ercome himself And me; and let him, late escaped from death, Desire to die... And so at last I'll help Alcides in his wars. MILLER. She is clearly a near relative of that Oedipus who, in the _Phoenissae_, begs Antigone to lead him to the rock where the Sphinx sat of old (120): dirige huc gressus pedum, hic siste patrem. dira ne sedes vacet. monstrum repone maius. hoc saxum insidens obscura nostrae verba fortunae loquar, quae nemo solvat. ... saeva Thebarum lues luctifica caecis verba committens modis quid simile posuit? quid tam inextricabile? avi gener patrisque rivalis sui frater suorum liberum et fratrum parens; uno avia partu liberos. peperit viro, sibi et nepotes. monstra quis tanta explicat? ego ipse, victae spolia qui Sphingis tuli, haerebo fati tardus interpres mei. Direct me thither, set thy father there. Let not that dreadful seat be empty long, But place me there a greater monster still. There will I sit and of my fate propose A riddle dark that no man shall resolve. * * * * * What riddle like to this could she propose, That curse of Thebes, who wove destructive words In puzzling measures? What so dark as this? _He was his grandsire's son-in-law, and yet His father's rival; brother of his sons, And father of his brothers: at one birth The grandame bore unto her husband sons, And grandsons to herself_. Who can unwind A tangle such as this? E'en I myself, Who bore the spoils of triumph o'er the Sphinx, Stand mute before the riddle of my fate. MILLER. There is no need to multiply instances; each play will supply many. Only in the _Troades_[184] and the _Phaedra_ does this declamatory rhetoric rise to something higher than mere declamation and near akin to true poetry. In these plays there are two speeches standing on a different plane to anything else in Seneca's iambics. In the _Troades_ Agamemnon is protesting against the proposed sacrifice of Polyxena to the spirit of the dead Achilles (255).