“Till the god, the earthly part forsaken,
From the man in flames asunder taken,
Drank the heavenly ether’s purer breath.
Joyous in the new unwonted lightness,
Soared he upwards to celestial brightness,
Earth’s dark, heavy burden lost in death.
High Olympus gives harmonious greeting
To the hall where reigns his sire adored;
Youth’s bright goddess, with a blush at meeting,
Gives the nectar to her lord.”
--_Schiller._
When Hercules’ twelve labors were ended he married Dejanira and lived
in peace with her for three years. One day when they were traveling,
in crossing a river, the ferryman, a Centaur by the name of Nessus,
endeavored to carry away Dejanira, but Hercules heard her cries and
pierced the Centaur through the heart with one of his poisoned arrows.
With dying accents Nessus professed repentance and begged Dejanira to
take his robe and keep it for its magic power.
“Take
This white robe. It is costly. See my blood
Has stained it but a little. I did wrong:
I know it and repent me. If there come
A time when he grows cold--for all the race
Of heroes wander, nor can any love
Fix theirs for long--take him and wrap him in it
And he shall love again.”
--_Wm. Morris._
Soon afterwards the news was brought to Dejanira that Hercules was in
love with Iola and she sent to him by his page, Lichas, the robe given
her by the Centaur. When Hercules donned the robe poison seized upon
his frame.
“Clasping each limb the tunic racked each joint,
Convulsive pains, but when he felt the accurst
Fell serpents’ venom batten in his flesh
He cried aloud for Lichas, the ill-starred.”
Lichas vainly denied all knowledge of the treacherous deed, but
Hercules, maddened by his agony, seized him by the foot and hair and
hurled him into space. “Lichas congealed like hail in mid air and
turned to stone, then falling into the Euboic sea became a rock which
still bears his name and retains the human form.” Hercules wrenched off
the garment, but it stuck to his flesh and with it he tore away whole
pieces of his body. In this condition he ascended Mt. Œta, where he
built a funeral pyre, and laying himself upon it, commanded his son
to apply the torch. The flames soon put an end to his suffering and
his spirit passed in a thunder cloud to Olympus. Dejanira, seeing the
calamity she had unwittingly caused, took her own life.