The viper's bite, impregnating his veins
With poison, rack'd him with its bitter pains.
And therefore he cries out, desiring help, and wishing to die,
Oh! that some friendly hand its aid would lend,
My body from this rock's vast height to send
Into the briny deep! I'm all on fire,
And by this fatal wound must soon expire.
It is hard to say that the man who was obliged to cry out in this manner, was not oppressed with evil, and great evil too.
VIII. But let us observe Hercules himself, who was subdued by pain at the very time when he was on the point of attaining immortality by death. What words does Sophocles here put in his mouth, in his Trachiniæ? who, when Deianira had put upon him a tunic dyed in the centaur's blood, and it stuck to his entrails, says,
What tortures I endure no words can tell,