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.
INTERPRETATION.
The slaughter of the Centaur by Hercules signifies the dissipation of vapors by the sun. Dejanira, “the destroying spouse,” is daylight, Iola the beautiful twilight, and the bloody robe a sun cloud, now concealing, now revealing, the mangled body of the sun. Hercules ends his career in one grand flame, the emblem of the sun setting in a framework of blazing crimson clouds.
ART.
This spirited group by Canova, in the Torloni Palace, Rome, represents Hercules throwing Lichas into the sky. The poisoned garment clings most painfully to his body. The lion skin and club have slipped to the base of the altar upon which he was about to offer sacrifice.
