The Alcestis is the first surviving play by Euripides, but by this stage he was an experienced dramatist, seventeen years from his first competition. The story it treats – the self-sacrifice of Alcestis to save her husband, and her rescue from death by Heracles – is not one of the central heroic myths of Greek tradition: in its domestic scope no less than its miraculous ending, it is tangibly different from the plays which dramatize the grim events of the Trojan or Theban wars. There is a flavour of ‘fairy-tale’ or naive story-telling about it, especially in the personification of Death as a monstrous physical abductor, but also in the concept of Admetus being allowed to live if he can find a substitute. Parallels of various kinds have been found in other cultures, and it seems likely that Euripides has taken a simpler and more magical myth, intensified the emotional content and given the characters greater dignity. It is also possible that he was innovating in bringing Heracles into the tale. If so, the effect is to connect the story with the larger world of heroic legend, and to give an almost timeless fable a more precise chronological niche in relation to the labours of Heracles.
We happen to know, from a summary which precedes the play in our manuscripts, that the Alcestis was produced as the fourth of a tetralogy of plays, occupying the slot normally filled by the single ‘satyr-play’, a shorter, more frivolous and boisterous type of drama which featured the wild and bawdy antics of Silenus, drunken companion of Dionysus, and of his company of goat-footed satyrs. The replacement of the satyr-play by a tragedy is exceptional, and we have no way of knowing what motivated this change of normal practice. The ‘pro-satyric’ role of the Alcestis has sometimes been invoked to explain some of its curious features, but the only convincing point concerns the lively scene in which the gluttonous Heracles is seen drunk and inappropriately cheerful, a common motif in lighter genres. Even here, however, the humour is kept within bounds: when Heracles learns the actual situation he sobers up at once, and his thoughts turn to how he can aid his friend in his hour of need.
The sequence of events is handled with characteristically Euripidean flair. The situation is already well advanced, with Admetus and Alcestis married for some time, and with children; the play opens on the day on which it has been determined that Alcestis must die. The prologue presents a clash between light and dark, the kind Apollo, friend of Admetus, confronting the implacable and hideous figure of Death. On the human plane, the first part of the play movingly portrays, in both song and dialogue, the self-sacrifice of Alcestis: through their reactions we see what she means to the Maidservant, to Admetus, to the household. Finally the moment comes: she is dead. Admetus must now try to come to terms with his loss.
At this point Heracles appears on the scene. The audience has been expecting this, since Apollo mentioned his approach in the prologue; but it comes as a surprise and an unwelcome development to Admetus, who feels he must conceal his grief and allow Heracles the hospitality that he naturally expects of a friend. The simple drama of Alcestis’ sacrifice and its aftermath thus becomes complicated by delicate questions of tact and morality. Much more serious moral questions are brought into the open, and explored in vicious argument, in the scene which follows, between Admetus and his father Pheres. This is clearly a Euripidean innovation: he has taken the assumptions of the story (that others refused to die for Admetus, then Alcestis agreed), and subjected them to realistic scrutiny: what would the consequences be for the surviving members of the household? His answer is dramatically effective: bitter resentment on Admetus’ part, scorn and rejection of his complaints by his father. But it is typical of a tragic debate of this kind that there is no clear winner: it is inevitable that the audience must ask further questions about Admetus’ character, and about his acceptance of Alcestis’ sacrifice. The debate temporarily shifts the emphasis of the play from plangent emotions to animated and articulate argument.
We have already considered the lively scene between the boozy Heracles and the outraged servant, which serves to inform Heracles of his host’s loss. While he sets out to remedy that loss, the procession of mourners returns to the house, and both Admetus and the chorus are overwhelmed by grief. Now at last it is clear to the bereaved king how fruitless is the life which Alcestis has won for him: ‘This truth has just come home to me’ (940). The chorus, sharing his grief, sing of necessity and death: but, as they end their ode, Heracles appears on the scene with a veiled figure. As he gently reproaches Admetus for failing to be open with him, and goes on to explain about his business elsewhere, the audience are conscious that this figure must be Alcestis; but Heracles does not simply announce this. Instead he plays a game with Admetus, delaying the revelation of the joyous truth. Greek audiences obviously relished scenes of this kind: there are close parallels in the Odyssey as well as in other tragedies. The conclusion is never in doubt, but the way in which Admetus has first to go back on his resolve and allow another woman into the house is curious and may seem disturbing. Condemnation of Admetus as a weak or cowardly character would be misguided, but it does seem that the playwright has introduced complexities and nuances which were surely alien to the story as he found it.
The Alcestis is a play much concerned with the themes of harmony and hospitality within the house. Alcestis is devoted to her husband and her children, but her supreme act of devotion must be to leave them. In return for her self-sacrifice she asks that he will never remarry (remarriage in the event of a wife’s early death would seem normal to an Athenian audience), and he pledges eternal devotion. In contrast stands the bitter invective which Admetus directs at his father, who replies in the same terms. Pheres will not be welcome at the funeral; Admetus goes so far as to reject and sever relations with both his parents (esp. 734ff.). The extraordinary situation has drawn Admetus closer to his wife and set him at odds with his surviving family; moreover, his future will be a life of mourning, almost a living death. As for the other theme, Admetus’ hospitality to Apollo won him a gift which proved to be a cause of misery; his hospitality to Heracles seems at first ill-judged but leads to his wife’s salvation; his reluctant agreement to take care of the unrecognized Alcestis during Heracles’ absence is again inappropriate in a house of mourning, yet precedes the revelation that restores his life to its former state. Although it is possible for a Greek tragedy to end happily, with the issues resolved (witness the Oresteia and the Helen among others), the preceding events normally involve deep and prolonged suffering. Here the misery is short-lived, and, exceptionally, the inevitability of death itself is averted. With the original terms of the bargain forgotten, Admetus and Alcestis are allowed a cloudless future. The end of the play reminds the modern spectator of the similarly miraculous reunion in The Winter’s Tale, where the statue of the dead Hermione turns out to be the woman herself, alive. This gentler and un-tragic finale dispels the misery of earlier scenes, and probably also softens the effect of the conflict between father and son; we are not intended to think of Admetus’ household as sundered irreparably. Euripides has created a varied and emotionally satisfying play, one which certainly touches on moral questions (especially in the debate between Admetus and Pheres), but which does not treat them with the same painful intensity as in his later and more ambitious dramas.
APOLLO
DEATH
CHORUS of elders of Pherae
MAIDSERVANT of Alcestis
ALCESTIS, wife of Admetus
ADMETUS, king of Pherae
YOUNG BOY AND GIRL, children of Admetus
HERACLES
PHERES, father of Admetus
SERVANT of Admetus
[The scene is set before the house of ADMETUS, king of Pherae. The god APOLLO emerges, wearing his bow and quiver.]
APOLLO: House of Admetus! Here I brought myself to accept such food as a common labourer gets, yes, I, a god! This was caused by Zeus: he had killed Asclepius, my son, flinging a fiery thunderbolt at his chest, and in my anger at this I killed the Cyclopes who fashion Zeus’ fire; to punish me for this my father forced me to work in the employ of a mortal man. I came to this country and tended cattle for a stranger and to this day I have kept this house free from harm.
10 In the son of Pheres I found a man whose goodness matched his servant’s loyalty and I forestalled his death by playing a trick on the Fates.1 These goddesses granted my request that Admetus should escape imminent death if he gave another dead person in exchange to the spirits below. He went round all his kinsfolk, sounding them out, but only in his wife did he find a willingness to quit this light and die for him. She is
20 inside the house now, supported in his arms as she struggles for breath, for on this day fate has ruled she must die and bid farewell to life.
Now I must leave this house where I have known such kindness or risk pollution2 from death within its walls. [Enter DEATH, a black-robed, winged figure with a sword. As yet he does not see APOLLO.]
Already I see Death3 drawing near, priest of the dead, who means to lead her down to the house of Hades. He is punctual; he has kept watch for this day that must end her life. DEATH [suddenly noticing APOLLO and uttering a cry of frustration]: What brings you to the palace? Why do you
30 frequent this place, Phoebus? Is this more of your flouting of the law, limiting and putting a stop to our infernal rights? Was it not enough for you to prevent Admetus’ death by using a cunning trick to entrap the Fates? Have you now even armed your hand with a bow to mount guard over this woman in turn, Pelias’ daughter, who promised to ransom her husband’s life by giving her own?
APOLLO: No need for alarm; justice and sound arguments are my weapons.
DEATH: Justice is your weapon? Then why the need for a bow?
40 APOLLO: It has always been my custom to carry this weapon.
DEATH: Yes, and to give this house your protection whether justified or not.
APOLLO: Yes, my protection: it is a friend whose sufferings touch my heart.
DEATH: Do you really mean to rob me of this second life?
APOLLO: Did I use force to take the first one from you? I think not.
DEATH: Then before the house why is he in the land of the living instead of below the earth?
APOLLO: He gave his wife in his place, the woman you have come now to fetch.
DEATH: And I will carry her off, make no mistake, into the land beneath the earth.
APOLLO: Take her and go! I doubt if I will persuade you …
DEATH: To kill my allotted victim, you mean? That’s my office, surely!
50 APOLLO: No, to defer the penalty of death for your intended victim.
DEATH: Now I understand your argument and your interest in this!
APOLLO: Then is there any possibility of Alcestis reaching old age?
DEATH: There is not; you must realize that I, too, take pleasure in receiving due respect.
APOLLO: And yet you would gain a single life, no more.
DEATH: When my victims are young, the prize I win is greater.
APOLLO: Even if it is an old woman who dies, her funeral will be costly.
DEATH: Why, Phoebus, it’s for the benefit of the rich, the law you advocate!
APOLLO: What do you mean? Have I underestimated your intelligence?
DEATH: Those with the means would pay for the privilege of dying old.
60 APOLLO: You are determined, then, to refuse me this favour?
DEATH: I am; you know my nature.
APOLLO: Yes, one that men and gods regard with loathing.
DEATH: Not everything to which you have no right is yours for the having!
APOLLO: You will do as I say, yes, for all your cruelty! [Aside:] Such is the man who shall come to Pheres’ house, sent by Eurystheus to fetch a team of mares from Thrace’s wintry regions.4 He shall indeed wrest this woman from you by force, once he has received hospitality in this house of Admetus. [He again addresses DEATH directly:] And as for any gratitude
70 you might have had from me, there shall be none; you will surrender her just the same and you will have my hatred. [Exit APOLLO.]
DEATH: No lack of words there but little good will they do you! The woman will descend to Hades’ dwelling, come what may. I am advancing on her now to initiate the ritual with my sword. For once this weapon has shorn a lock of hair from the victim’s head, so consecrating it, that life is sacred to the gods below.
[Exit DEATH into the palace. As he disappears, the CHORUS makes its entrance. They are elderly citizens of Pherae. In the first half of the ode there are various changes of speaker, indicated by a dash at the start of the line.]
CHORUS: What does it mean, this stillness before the palace? Why has a hush fallen on the house of Admetus?
80 – Moreover not a friend is at hand to tell us if we shouldmourn the queen as one already dead or if she yet lives and sees this sunlight, the daughter of Pelias, Alcestis, whom I and all men think the noblest wife a husband ever had.
[Strophe:] – Does anyone hear the sound of mourning inside the palace or of hands beating breasts or of wailing, as if all were over?
90 – Why no: there is not even a servant posted at the door. O healing apollo, show yourself amid the waves of ruin!
– They would surely not be silent if she were dead.
– No corpse has yet left the house.
– How do you know this? I am not so sure. What makes you so confident?
– Would Admetus have buried such a noble wife with none to mourn her? I think not.
[Antistrophe:] – I see no bowl of spring-water before the door
100 as custom prescribes when someone dies.
– And there is no shorn lock of hair lying on the threshold in token of mourning for the dead or any sound of women beating their breasts.
– And yet this is the appointed day –
– What’s that you say?
– When she is bound to pass beneath the earth.
– You touch my heart; you touch my mind.
110 – When the good suffer ruin, tears are owed by those whose loyalty has stood the test of time.
[Strophe:] There is no land where a pilgrim might voyage, be it Lycia or the waterless tract where Ammon has his shrine,5 to win release for this poor lady’s life. Relentless is her fate and it draws near. I know of no altar of the gods where I
120 should go with sheep for sacrifice.
[Antistrophe:] She alone, if only Phoebus’ son6 yet lived to look upon this light, would have escaped the murky abode and gates of Hades and returned to us; for he used to raise the dead, until the flaming thunderbolt hurled by Zeus ended
130 his life. But now what hope of her life can I still entertain?
[Enter from the house a MAIDSERVANT.]
CHORUS-LEADER: But here comes one of the servants from the house, her eyes full of tears. What shall I hear has happened? It is excusable to grieve if one’s master meets any misfortune;
140 but we would like to know whether the lady yet lives or has perished.
MAIDSERVANT: You may describe her both as living and as dead.
CHORUS-LEADER: How could the same person be both dead and alive?
MAIDSERVANT: She’s already drooping and struggling to breathe.
CHORUS-LEADER: Then there is no more hope that her life will be saved?
MAIDSERVANT: No; this is the day and destiny drives her hard.
CHORUS-LEADER: Is she receiving the proper rites?
MAIDSERVANT: Yes, clothes and jewellery are ready for her husband to set beside her in the grave.
CHORUS-LEADER: Poor man, he has been a fine husband! To lose a wife like this!
MAIDSERVANT: The master doesn’t know this yet; suffering will teach him her worth.
150 CHORUS-LEADER: She can count on this: death will only add to her renown as the noblest wife by far of all beneath the sun.
MAIDSERVANT: None could be nobler. Who will dispute it? What words can describe her, this paragon among women? How would a woman give greater proof of honouring her husband than by freely giving her life for his? This, of course, the whole city knows; but it will amaze you to learn of her behaviour in her own home.
When she realized that the appointed day had come, she
160 washed her white body with water from the river, then, selecting garments and jewellery from her cedar-wood chambers, she dressed herself worthily of the occasion and, standing before Hestia’s altar,7 she made this prayer: ‘Lady, I now take my journey below the earth and so kneel before you for the last time. Care for my children, I beg you, who will have no mother. Join them in wedlock, my boy to a loving wife, my girl to a noble husband. Spare them an untimely death such as their mother’s and grant them happiness so that they end their lives untouched by sorrow in the land of their forefathers.’
170 Then she approached all the altars in Admetus’ house and, covering them with garlands, she made her offering of prayers, breaking off shoots of myrtle from their branches. She gave way to no tears, no sighs; there was no loss of colour in that lovely face at the thought of the horror to come. She rushed next into her bedroom and up to her bed; then it was the tears came and with them these words: ‘O my bed of marriage, where once I gave myself, a virgin, to the husband for whom I now die, farewell! I do not hate you. Yet you and you alone
180 have caused my death; for it is my reluctance to betray you and my husband that brings about my death. Some other woman will become your owner – she could not be more true to her husband, but perhaps she may be more fortunate.’
She threw herself on the bed, kissing it, and the whole coverlet grew wet from the tears that streamed from her eyes. But when she had had her fill of weeping, she tore herself away from the bed and stumbled out with head lowered. Many times she tried to leave the chamber and turned back, flinging herself again upon the bed. Her children were clinging
190 to their mother’s dress, crying. Then she picked them up and hugged them as she made her farewells to each in turn, telling them she had to die. All the servants throughout the palace were shedding tears of pity for their mistress. But she held out her right hand to each of them and there was none so humble that she refused to address him or hear his reply. Such, then, is the scene of misery in Admetus’ house. Had he been the one to die, he would be gone from us, but now that he has eluded death, he has inherited such anguish as he shall never forget.
CHORUS-LEADER: No doubt this misfortune is reducing
200 Admetus to tears, if fate is to rob him of his noble wife?
MAIDSERVANT: He weeps all right and holds his dear wife in his arms, begging her not to abandon him, but what he asks is impossible; she is dying, worn down by her malady. She languishes, a pitiful weight in his arms, but still with the meagre breath left to her she wants to gaze upon the sun’s
210 rays. I will go with the news that you are here; not everyone feels such regard for a royal master that he stands loyally by him when disaster strikes. Yours is a friendship my master and mistress have known for many a long year.
[The CHORUS now sings a short ode to which, as before, different members contribute, before the entry of the royal couple. In the duet that follows these lyrics are prolonged pathetically by the singing of ALCESTIS, which contrasts with her husband’s spoken appeal to her not to die.]
CHORUS [Strophe]: O Zeus, can there be any way out of our troubles, any release from the fate that has befallen our king and queen?
– Will someone announce the news or should I already take a knife to my hair and wrap myself in grief’s black clothes?
– A terrible predicament, friends, yes, terrible, but still we
220 will pray to the gods; mighty indeed is their power.
– Lord Healer,8 devise some plan for Admetus to thwart this evil!
– Grant this prayer, yes, grant it! In the past you did this; this day also be our rescuer from death and keep bloody Hades at bay!
[Antistrophe:] – Son of Pheres, I pity you! What ill-fortune is yours, robbed of your wife!
– Ah! This is enough to make a man fall on his sword, more than enough to make him end his life in a swinging noose!
230 – Aye, this very day you will see dead the woman you loved as no husband ever loved a wife.
– Look! Look! She is coming now from the palace, she and her husband!
– Cry out, O land of Pheres, make lament for the finest of womankind wasting away from sickness to infernal Hades below the earth!
[The KING and QUEEN and their children begin to enter slowly. Attendants follow behind, bringing on a couch for ALCESTIS.]
Never shall I say that marriage brings more joy than pain.
240 Past experience is my evidence and the sight of what the king is suffering here; he is about to lose the best of wives and to endure in the years left to him a life that is no life.
[ALCESTIS sings an ecstatic monody. She shows no awareness of ADMETUS’ desperate appeals.]
ALCESTIS [Strophe]: O sun and light of day! Eddies of cloud that race across the heavens!
ADMETUS: They look on you and me, two sorry creatures, who have done the gods no wrong to make them want your death.
ALCESTIS [Antistrophe]: O earth and high-roofed palace in my native Iolcus, with its marriage bed!
250 ADMETUS: Rouse yourself, my poor lady, do not desert me! Beg the mighty gods to show pity!
ALCESTIS [Strophe]: I see it, the two-oared boat, I see it on the lake! He has his hand on the pole, Charon, the ferryman of the dead! Already he is calling me: ‘Why do you linger? Make haste! You hold usback!’ So he impatiently urgesme to hurry.
ADMETUS: Oh, no! This voyage you tell me of is one that wounds my heart! My wretched lady, what a fate we endure!
[ALCESTIS rises from the couch as if under some compulsion.]
ALCESTIS [Antistrophe]: Someone is leading me, leading me
260 away (do you not see him?) to the hall of the dead, staring at me from under dark-gleaming brows, a winged figure – Hades!
[To the vision:] Oh, what will you do? Let me go! What a journey I am going on! How it appals me!
ADMETUS [attempting to calm her]: A pitiful one for those who love you but most of all for me and our children; they too share in this sorrow.
[ALCESTIS sinks back wearily on the couch and addresses the servants, who have been trying to restrain her during the stress of her trance.]
ALCESTIS [Epode]: Let goof me, let go of me now; lay me down, I have no strength to stand. Hades is near and night’s darkness
270 steals over my eyes. O children, children, you have a mother no more, no more! Look long upon the light, children, and fare you well!
ADMETUS: Oh, what misery! These are words that wound my ears, worse to bear than any death! In the name of the gods, in the name of the children you will turn into orphans, do not bring yourself to abandon me but rise up, be brave! When you are dead, I can have no life; on you depends my life, my death, for I cannot be untrue to the love we share!
280 ALCESTIS: admetus, you see how things stand with me.9 I want to tell you my wishes before I die. Because I put you first, because I chose that you should look upon this light at the cost of my own life, I am dying, for your sake, though I might have lived, marrying any man of Thessaly I wished and enjoying the luxury of a royal home. But I had no desire to live without you at my side, with children who were orphaned, and I did not grudge the loss of my youth with all the joys it
290 brought me. And yet they betrayed you, the parents who gave you life, though they were of a good age to die and to save a son’s life – a glorious end to their days. They had no other child but you, no hope of producing other children after you had died. We could then have gone on living, we two, for the rest of our years; you would not be grieving as now, a husband turned widower, a father with motherless children. No, some god caused this to turn out as it has.
Very well; it is for you now to remember what I have done
300 for you. What I shall ask of you is not in any sense an equal return (for nothing is more precious than life) but it is fair, as you yourself will grant.
These children are loved as much by you as by me, for you are a responsible father. Allow them to become masters in my house. Do not marry again and give them a stepmother to ill-treat them, your children and mine, someone who will love them less than I and eye them with jealousy. Do not do such
310 a thing, I beg you! A stepmother approaches the children she inherits like an enemy, yes, a viper would show them more affection. A boy, of course, has a tower of strength in his father; [turning to her daughter:] but what of you, my child, how will you grow happily from girl to woman? What kind of woman will you find your father’s new partner to be? I fear she may spread some scandalous report about you when you are on the verge of womanhood and blight your marriage. For never will you have your mother to prepare you on your wedding day, to speak words of encouragement in your ear during childbirth, when nothing can match a mother’s care.
320 For I must die; and this evil comes upon me, not tomorrow or the day after, no, in a moment you will speak of me as one already dead. [To the whole family:] Goodbye! Be happy! You, my husband, can be proud that you won a noble wife, and you, my children, that you were born of a noble mother.
CHORUS-LEADER: Have no fear; I do not hesitate to speak on his behalf. He will do this, unless his wits desert him.
ADMETUS: So it shall be, never fear, so it shall be! For while you lived, no other woman had my heart and in death you
330 alone shall be called my wife. No woman of Thessaly shall ever take your place or speak to me as bride to husband. There is none so noble in birth, none of a beauty to match your excellence. I am well content with the children I have and I pray to the gods I may have some joy in them; in you my joy has been little enough. Not merely for a year will I endure my grief for you; no, my lady, as long as my life continues, it shall be my burden and I shall loathe the woman who gave me birth and I shall hate my father. Theirs was a love that lived in words, not actions. But you, you have saved
340 me by sacrificing in return for my life your most precious possession. Should I not then weep to lose such a wife as you?
I will put an end to them,10 the noisy gatherings of guests, the dancing and drinking, the garlands and music that used to fill my house. Never could I now touch my lyre, never follow the heart’s prompting to sing to the Libyan flute; you have taken away my joy in life. I shall have sculptors fashion with cunning hands a statue in your image11 and on our bed it shall lie outstretched. This I will clasp and fold in my arms;
350 I will call your name and imagine it is my darling wife I hold in my embrace, when it is not – cold comfort, it is true, but yet I would be easing the burden on my heart. In my dreams you would flit to and fro, bringing me joy; for joy it is to see a loved one, even in dreams, for as long as the vision lasts.
Oh, had I Orpheus’12 words and music, so that I might charm Demeter’s child or her lord by my songs and so win
360 you back from Hades, I would make the descent and neither Pluto’s hound would stop me nor spirit-guiding Charon at his oar until I had set you, living, in the light above! But at least wait for me to join you, when I die, and prepare a home for us to share together. I will instruct these children to place me in the same cedar coffin as you and to lay my body side by side with yours. I have no wish to be parted ever from you, the only one who was true to me, not even in death.
CHORUS-LEADER: And be sure that I will share your bitter load
370 of grief for this woman, as friend to friend; it is her due.
ALCESTIS: Children, you heard your father, you heard him say that never would he marry another woman to be a second mother to you, never would he dishonour me.
ADMETUS: And I repeat it now, and will be true to my word.
ALCESTIS [releasing the children from her embrace]: On these terms receive our children from my hands.
ADMETUS: I do receive them, a precious gift from precious hands.
ALCESTIS: Now you must take my place and be a mother to our children.
ADMETUS: Indeed I must do this, now that you are to be taken from them.
ALCESTIS [losing control]: O children, the very time I should be living, I depart for the world below!
380 ADMETUS: Oh, then what shall I do, alone without you?
ALCESTIS: Time will soften the blow for you; one who is dead is as nothing.
ADMETUS: Take me with you, in heaven’s name, take me below!
ALCESTIS: It is enough that I am dying in your place.
ADMETUS: O spirit that guides my fortune, how noble a wife you will be taking from my side!
ALCESTIS: Darkness is coming upon my eyes, they grow heavy.
ADMETUS: Then my life is finished, if you really mean to leave me, my lady!
ALCESTIS: You may speak of me as gone, dead and gone!
ADMETUS: Lift your face! Do not abandon your children!
ALCESTIS: It is not by my wish, assuredly. Goodbye, children!
390 ADMETUS: Look at them, look!
ALCESTIS: My life is over.
ADMETUS: What are you doing? Are you deserting us?
ALCESTIS: Goodbye! [She dies.]
ADMETUS: Oh, misery! I am ruined!
CHORUS-LEADER: She has gone, Admetus’ wife is no more. [ONE OF THE CHILDREN13 now sings a short monody of grief.]
CHILD [Strophe]: Oh, what has happened to me? Mama has gone below, she is no longer under the sun, Father. She has left me here to live an orphan’s life – how could she? Look,
400 look at her eyelids and limp hands! Listen to me, Mother, listen, I beg you! It’s me, Mother, it’s me calling you, me, your little chick pressing on your lips!
ADMETUS: She doesn’t hear, doesn’t see; a terrible blow has struck the three of us.
CHILD [Antistrophe]: She has left me, Father, my darling mother; I am young and all alone. Terrible are the sufferings
410 I have known and you, dear Sister, have shared them with me. O Father, all for nothing did you marry, all for nothing; you have not reached the goal of old age with her, for she has perished before then; you are gone, Mother, and so ruin has come upon our house.
CHORUS-LEADER: Admetus, you must bear what has happened here. You are not the first or last man on earth to lose a noble wife. Recognize that we are all death’s debtors.14
420 ADMETUS: I know it; this evil has not swooped upon me without warning; my awareness of it has long been torturing me. But attend on me; I will arrange the funeral for this dead lady. Stay here and sing to the god who rules below the hymn that needs no offerings of wine. I command all Thessalians who are my subjects to share in my grief at this woman’s loss by cropping their hair and wearing the black dress of mourning. And you who harness teams of four or keep single horses, cut back their manes from their necks with your knives. Let there
430 be no sound of flutes or the lyre throughout the town until twelve moons have waxed and waned. For never shall I consign to the grave another so dearly beloved, so loving to me. She deserves my devotion, for she alone has died for me.
[Servants carry the body of ALCESTIS into the palace. ADMETUS follows slowly with the children.]
CHORUS [Strophe]: Daughter of Pelias, fare you well in Hades’ home, when you dwell in that sunless house! Let Hades, the
440 dark-haired god, know, and the old man who sits at oar and rudder as he ferries the dead, that he has taken in his two-oared craft across Acheron’s lake the noblest by far, by far, of womankind.
[Antistrophe:] Many a time will they sing of you, the servants of the Muses, celebrating your name on the seven-toned shell of the mountain tortoise and in songs unaccompanied by the lyre, in Sparta when the cycle of seasons brings round the
450 Carnean month, when the moon rides high the whole night long, and in Athens the brilliant, the fair of fortune. Such a theme for song has your death bequeathed to bards.15
[Strophe:] Oh, would that it lay in my power, would that I could bring you back safe to the light, by boat over the infernal river from the abode of Hades and Cocytus’ stream!
460 For you alone, you, dear lady, had the courage to redeem your own husband from Hades at the cost of your own life. Lightly, I pray, may the earth lie upon you, lady! Should your husband ever choose a new bride, truly he would earn my hate and your children’s!
[Antistrophe:] His mother would not, for her son’s sake, hide her body in the earth, nor would his father; wicked pair, they had not the heart to protect their own son, for all their old,
470 grey hair. But you, a young woman with a young husband, you are gone from us, giving your life for him. Had I but the good fortune to gain such a loving partner in wedlock – seldom in life does this occur – truly, then, would she share my life to the end and bring me only joy.
[As the CHORUS’ song dies away, the hero HERACLES enters abruptly. His club and lionskin cloak reveal his identity to them.]
HERACLES: Friends, good citizens of this land of Pherae, have I the luck to find Admetus here at home?
CHORUS-LEADER: The son of Pheres is indeed inside the palace, Heracles. But tell me, what is the need that sends you to
480 the land of Thessaly, that you should visit our city of Pherae here?
HERACLES: I am performing a task set me by Eurystheus of Tiryns.16
CHORUS-LEADER: Where are you going? What is this errand that binds you fast?
HERACLES: I go to Thrace, to capture Diomedes’ team of four mares.
CHORUS-LEADER: But how will you succeed? Surely you know how he treats guests?
HERACLES: I do not; I have not yet set foot in the land of the Bistonians.
CHORUS-LEADER: You must fight him for ownership of the mares; there is no other way.
HERACLES: No way either for me to turn my back on labours once set.
CHORUS-LEADER: Then it is kill him and return or be killed and remain there.
HERACLES: This will not be the first such contest I have risked.
490 CHORUS-LEADER: What would you stand to gain if you defeated their master?
HERACLES: The mares; I’ll drive them off to Tiryns’ king.
CHORUS-LEADER: No easy task to put a bit between those jaws!
HERACLES: Easy enough, unless it’s fire they breathe from their nostrils.
CHORUS-LEADER: No, but they seize men in their jaws and in no time tear them to pieces!
HERACLES: That’s what beasts of the mountain feed on, not horses!
CHORUS-LEADER: Their stalls spattered with blood, that’s the sight awaiting you.
HERACLES: And the man who bred them, whose son does he claim to be?
CHORUS-LEADER: The son of Ares, master of the Thracian shield in all its gold.
HERACLES: This task you speak of fits well with my destiny (a
500 path ever hard to tread, ever leading uphill), if I am to do battle with all the sons of Ares’ loins; first came Lycaon, then Cycnus, and now a third time I enter the lists, to fight it out with those horses and their master. But no man lives who shall ever see Alcmene’s son tremble to face an enemy.
[Enter ADMETUS from the palace, his head shorn as a sign of mourning.]
CHORUS-LEADER: Why, here is Admetus in person, ruler of this land, coming out of the palace.
ADMETUS: Welcome, son of Zeus, sprung from the blood of Perseus!
510 HERACLES: All happiness to you as well, Admetus, king of Thessaly!
ADMETUS: I wish it could be mine. But you mean kindly, I know it well.
HERACLES: This display of grief with your head shorn, what does it mean?
ADMETUS: I am going to bury this day one who has died.
HERACLES: God keep misfortune from your children’s heads!
ADMETUS: They are alive and inside the house, the children I fathered.
HERACLES: If it is your father who has died, well, the years have been kind to him.
ADMETUS: He lives yet, Heracles, and so does my mother.
HERACLES: It’s not your wife, it’s not your Alcestis who has died?
ADMETUS: There are two answers I might give you about her.
520 HERACLES: What are you saying? Is she dead or still alive
ADMETUS: She is both alive and dead,17 and this is what breaks my heart.
HERACLES: I remain in the dark; your words are confusing.
ADMETUS: Are you aware of the fate she must undergo?
HERACLES: I am; she has undertaken to die in your place.
ADMETUS: How, then, can she still be alive, if she has agreed to this?
HERACLES: Ah, yes! But you musn’t shed tears for your wife before the time. Put that off until the hour comes.
ADMETUS: One that is doomed is dead; he may be here but he no longer lives.
HERACLES: Being alive and being dead are regarded as two separate things.
ADMETUS: That’s your view of the matter, Heracles; I see it differently.
530 HERACLES: But why is it that you are weeping? Which of your friends has died?
ADMETUS: A woman;18 we were just talking about a woman.
HERACLES: An outsider or some relation by blood?
ADMETUS: An outsider but in another sense closely tied to my house.
HERACLES: Well, how did she come to die in your house?
ADMETUS: After her father’s death she lived here as an orphan.
HERACLES: Admetus, my poor fellow, I wish I had not intruded on your grief!
ADMETUS: What are you hinting at? What is it you mean to do?
HERACLES: I have other friends who can give me hospitality; I’ll go to them.
ADMETUS: That is out of the question, my lord; heaven forbid such a disgrace!
540 HERACLES: When a family is in mourning a visit from a stranger is hardly welcome.
ADMETUS: The dead have died; please come into my home.
HERACLES: It does little credit to a man that he sits and eats heartily while his host is in tears.
ADMETUS: The guest rooms where we will take you are in a separate wing.
HERACLES: Let me depart and I will be infinitely in your debt!
ADMETUS: Never; you simply cannot go to another man’s house to find welcome. [To a servant:] You there, take this gentleman to the guest rooms that are away from the house, open them up and instruct the staff to provide a good quantity of food! [To other servants as HERACLES leaves:] Shut the doors to the central court and make them fast! When guests are
550 feasting they should not have their enjoyment marred by the sound of groans.
CHORUS-LEADER: What are you doing? With such a calamity weighing on you, Admetus, have you the heart to entertain guests? Why are you so foolish?
ADMETUS: But if I had driven from my home, from my city, the stranger who came to me, would you have praised me more? Of course not! It would hardly have dulled the edge of my misfortune and I would have been shown up as a bad host. My sorrows would then be crowned by this new one, my house being called inhospitable. In my own experience this
560 man is an excellent host, whenever I visit the parched land of Argos.
CHORUS-LEADER: Why, then, were you trying to conceal what the gods have done to you, when, in your own words, your visitor is a friend?
ADMETUS: He would never have consented to set foot in my house, had he known any hint of my troubles. I imagine some will think me mad for behaving like this and will disapprove. But this house of mine has never scorned a visitor by turning him away and it never will.
[Exit ADMETUS into the palace.]
CHORUS [Strophe]: O house ever welcoming to strangers, house
570 of an ever generous master, in you Pytho’s lord saw fit to make his home, apollo himself, supreme in the lyre; in your pastures he deigned to become a herdsman, piping to your flocks over the sloping hills tunes to stir their hearts to wedlock.
[Antistrophe:] Delighting in this music, spotted lynxes mingled with them as they grazed and a tawny troop of lions
580 came down, forsaking Othrys’ glen; and to your lyre, hoebus, the dappled fawn did dance, stepping dainty-footed from the high-crowned firs, drawn for joy to the spell of your melodies.
[Strophe:] So it is that Admetus dwells in a domain rich in
590 flocks beside Boebe’s lake with its lovely waters; so, that he sets the boundary of his tilled acres and spreading plains where the sun stables his horses under the gloom of the Molossian sky, while eastward his rule extends to the Aegean sea, where Pelion looks down on the havenless shore.19
[Antistrophe:] Now once more he has opened wide his house in welcome to a guest, though tears moisten his eyes as he weeps within his palace over the body of his beloved wife,
600 but lately dead. Such is the man’s noble spirit; it compels my respect even when it leads him astray. All qualities belong to noble men; I wonder at his wisdom. In my heart abides the trust that all will be well with this god-fearing man.
[ADMETUS comes out of the palace with servants, who carry ALCESTIS on a bier. They set this down shortly when PHERES enters to pay his last respects.]
ADMETUS: Men of Pherae, your attendance here shows your goodwill. These servants are now bearing on high my dead lady, together with all that becomes her, to the funeral pyre.
610 I ask you to follow custom and salute the departed as she goes forth upon her final journey.
CHORUS-LEADER: I see your old father approaching at a slow pace and with him men carrying in their hands gifts to adorn your wife, proper offerings for the dead.
[Enter PHERES with servants.]
PHERES: My son, I am here to share with you the burden of this sorrow. You have lost, and no man will deny it, a noble and virtuous wife. But for all its bitterness this is a stroke of fortune you must bear. Accept now these gifts; let them share her journey to the world below. All honour is owed to her
620 body, the woman who gave her life for yours, my son, who saved me from childlessness and would not allow me to waste away in a sorrowful old age, bereft of you. By performing this noble act of sacrifice she has made the lives of all women shine with a greater glory. [He extends a hand towards the body in formal salutation.] Farewell, my lady! You saved this man from death and raised up our family when we were fallen; may it go well with you in Hades’ halls! A marriage such as this profits a man, or he had better avoid marriage.
ADMETUS: It was not at my invitation that you came to this
630 funeral; I do not count your presence here as a friend’s. Never will these gifts of yours be worn by her; she shall go to her grave needing nothing from you. Then was the time for you to share my grief, when I was dying. But you kept your distance and let another die, though she was young and you were old. And will you now weep and wail over her corpse? You are not, then, it seems, my true father, any more than she is my mother, the woman who has this name, who claims she gave me birth; no, some slave has that honour and I was secretly placed at your wife’s breast to be nursed. When it
640 came to the test, you showed your true colours; I no longer regard myself as your son. What man on earth could match your cowardice? Though as old as you are, as close to life’s end, you lacked the will, the courage to die for your son, renouncing this privilege to the woman who lies here, whose blood is not ours! She alone is the one I would be right to think of as my mother and my father.
And yet what honour might have been yours, had you faced
650 the challenge and died for your son, having, in any case, only a brief span of life left? Again, all the happiness a man has the right to expect has been yours. Your best years were spent in kingship and you had in me a son to inherit your house, so that you were not goingto die childless and leavean orphaned home for other hands to pillage. You are in no position to claim it was my lack of reverence for your years that made
660 you give me up to death; I have always treated you with the utmost respect. And this is the thanks you have given me in return, you and my mother!
Well, lose no time in fathering sons to support you in old age, to see to your shroud in death and organize the burial of your corpse. For never will these hands of mine lay you in the grave. Indeed, I am dead, as far as you are concerned. If I look upon the sunlight because I found someone else to deliver me from death, then I say it is that person whose child I am, that person who will receive my loving support in old age. How insincere they are, these prayers for death voiced by the
670 elderly, these complaints they make against old age and the tedious passing of the years! If death draws near, not one of them wants to die; old age is suddenly a burden that weighs lightly on their shoulders.
CHORUS-LEADER: That is quite enough from you both! Are our present sufferings not sufficient? Young sir, do not provoke your father’s anger.
PHERES: Boy, who is it you suppose you are heaping these insults on, some slave from Lydia, perhaps, or Phrygia,20 purchased with your money? Do you not know I am a Thessalian and free-born, the true-born son of a Thessalian father? It is too much, this insolence of yours! But you will not get
680 away with it, you will not simply hurl these insults at me, you young puppy, and walk away! I brought you into this world and raised you up to be master of this house; I am under no obligation to die for you. I have inherited no such tradition from my ancestors, that fathers should die for their sons; it is not one recognized by Greeks. For yourself you were born to know misfortune or, it may be, happiness. I have not withheld from you what you were entitled to receive from me. You have many subjects and I will bequeath to you broad acres of land, no less a patrimony than my father gave me.
So, tell me, how have I wronged you? What am I robbing
690 you of? Do not die for me and I shall not for you! You are happy to see the sun’s light; do you imagine your father is not? It’s a long time, I reckon, I’ll be spending dead, a long time, and only a short one alive, but all the more precious for that. You certainly were shameless enough in struggling out of death’s clutches; you are alive, after eluding your appointed fate, but you killed her. And then you talk of my cowardice, you despicable creature, when you have been found inferior to a woman who has given her life for you, her fine young husband! What a brilliant solution to the problem of dying –
700 you simply persuade your wife of the day to die for you each time! And then, when your relatives refuse to do this, do you turn it into a criticism of them, when you are a coward yourself?
[ADMETUS can no longer contain himself and tries to speak.] Be quiet! Think about this: you love your own life; well, so does every man. You can heap insults on my head but they will return, multiplied, to vex your ears with their truth!
CHORUS-LEADER: You have both uttered quite enough abuse against each other, now and before. Pheres, you are advanced in years; check this torrent of abuse against your son.
ADMETUS: Talk away; I have had my say. If it distresses you to hear the truth, you should not have treated me the way you did; you are at fault.
710 PHERES: It would be a greater fault, if my life had been given for you.
ADMETUS: Is there no difference between a man dying in his prime and in old age?
PHERES: It’s one life we have to make do with, not two.
ADMETUS: Well, I wish you a longer life than Zeus!
PHERES: What? Cursing your own father when he’s done you no wrong?
ADMETUS: Yes; I noticed you were in love with longevity.
PHERES: But isn’t she taking your place, this dead lady you mean to bury?
ADMETUS: Proof of your spinelessness; how I despise you!
PHERES: I’m not responsible for her death; you can’t say that.
ADMETUS: Oh, hasten the day when you will need help from me!
720 PHERES: Try wooing many more girls, so you can cause more deaths!
ADMETUS: You are the one who refused to die, so yours is the shame there.
PHERES: It is precious, this light the god sends, yes, precious.
ADMETUS: And yours is a craven spirit, unworthy of a man.
PHERES: But this is no old man’s corpse you are carrying out to burial – no chance for you to mock that!
ADMETUS: But death will claim you one of these days and what a shameful spectacle that will be!
PHERES: Men’s rebukes will not concern me when I am dead.
ADMETUS: Oh, excellent! Do the old have any sense of shame?
PHERES: She was not shameless but witless in your hands.
ADMETUS: Leave me! Let me bury my dead!
730 PHERES: I will leave you. You are the one who took her life and you will bury her. But there will be a reckoning; you will yet answer to her relatives. Acastus is surely a man no longer if he fails to avenge his sister’s blood.
[He turns abruptly and starts to leave, together with attendants.]
ADMETUS [shouting after him]: Yes, go on your way, you and the woman who shares your home! Go to enjoy a childless old age though you have a child of your own, for this is what you deserve! Never will the pair of you ever more come under the same roof as me! If the law permitted me to disown you, to deny by proclamation any tie of hearth or home between us, this I would have done. But now let us proceed – the
740 misery facing us must be borne – so that we may set the dead on the pyre.
[ADMETUS and the cortége begin to leave in procession.]
CHORUS: Ah, my lady, so steadfast in your courage, so noble that you surpass all other women, farewell! May Hermes of the nether world and Hades give you kindly welcome, and, if even there virtue has its reward, may you benefit from this and attend upon Hades’ bride!
[They turn and leave, following ADMETUS and the funeral procession. When the scene is empty a SERVANT comes out of the palace and addresses the audience.]
SERVANT: I’ve known many strangers to come to Admetus’ house before now, from every sort of place, and I’ve served
750 them at dinner; but I’ve never yet shown hospitality to a greater rogue than today’s guest. In the first place, he saw the master was in mourning but in he came, crossing the doorstep bold as you please. Then, realizing our situation, did he show any tact and put up with whatever we served him? Not a bit of it! Anything we didn’t put in front of him, he insisted on having it produced. He took the ivy-wood cup in his hands and gulped down neat the dark grape’s juice until the wine’s flame wrapped him in its warmth. He crowned his head with myrtle sprays and began crooning in a tuneless bray. Two
760 strains could be heard: he kept singing away, caring nothing for the troubles in Admetus’ home, while we servants wept for our mistress but kept our tear-stained cheeks hidden from the guest, remembering Admetus’ instructions. So here I am now, waiting upon a stranger in the house, some damned thief or brigand, while she has left this house, my own dear mistress, and I didn’t even follow her body or stretch out a hand in farewell or join in the voices of lament! To me and
770 all who serve in this house she was a mother; she calmed her husband in his angry moods and saved us from trouble time and again. Who can blame me for hating this stranger who has intruded on our sorrow?
[HERACLES emerges from the palace, garlanded and drunk.]21
HERACLES: Here, my man, why do you look so solemn? What’s troubling you? It’s not sour looks a guest should get from servants but a decent, affable greeting. Now here I stand before your eyes, a friend of your master, but what’s your welcome? Scowls and frowning looks – you’re too wrapped up in someone else’s trouble! Come over here and I’ll improve
780 your education. You know how it is with life on this earth? I doubt it – how should you? Just listen to me. Death’s a debt all men must pay; there’s not a living soul knows for sure if tomorrow’s morn will see him alive or dead. As to how fortune’s plans will turn out, it’s far from clear – no amount of teaching or practice can give you that knowledge. So heed my words and learn from me: be happy, drink, think each day your own as you live it and leave the rest to fortune. Give
790 honour, too, to Cypris,22 kindest, sweetest of deities to mortal men; she is a gracious goddess. As to everything else, pay it no attention and do as I say, if you think I’m talking sense; I think I am. Let’s have no more of this extravagant grief. Come and drink with me! I know just the thing to shake you out of this tense frame of mind, these frowning looks – sinking a good few cups of wine, that’ll change your attitude! We’re
800 mortal men and ought to think mortal thoughts. Life for all you sour-faced enemies of pleasure, if you want my opinion, is not really life, it’s a chapter of sorrows.
SERVANT: I know this; what we’re going through at the moment doesn’t call for laughter and celebration.
HERACLES: But the woman who died wasn’t a member of this family. Your mourning is excessive: the master and mistress of this house are still alive.
SERVANT: How do you mean, alive? Don’t you know what has happened in this house?
HERACLES: Of course, unless your master has misled me somehow.
SERVANT: His hospitality goes too far, too far, I say!
810 HERACLES: Should a stranger’s death have made him refuse me the welcome of his house?
SERVANT: Stranger? Oh yes, indeed, absolutely; she was a stranger!
HERACLES: Nothing serious has happened, surely, that he has not told me of?
SERVANT: Go on your way and good luck to you! It is for us to care about our master’s misfortunes.
HERACLES: These words do not indicate the troubles of a stranger.
SERVANT: Otherwise I should never have resented the sight of you making merry.
HERACLES: What? Have I been deceived by my host?
SERVANT: When you came here this house was in no position to give you welcome.
820 HERACLES: Is it one of his children he has lost, or his old father?
SERVANT: It is his wife Admetus has lost, stranger.
HERACLES: What are you saying? And after that you gave me the hospitality of the house?
SERVANT: Yes; he was ashamed to show you the door.
HERACLES: Poor man, what a wife you have lost!
SERVANT: It is not just the queen who has perished, so have we all.
HERACLES: Of course I did notice; I saw the tears in his eyes, his shorn head, his expression. But he convinced me with his explanation that it was a stranger’s corpse he was taking to burial. Despite my own misgivings I went blundering inside
830 and began drinking in the house of my hospitable friend, when this had happened to him! And do I now feast and drink with a garland on my head? [He throws down his drinking-cup and tears off the garland he is wearing, disgusted with himself, then rounds on the servant.] And you, to think that you kept quiet, when such a disaster had fallen on your house! Where is he burying her? Where shall I go to find him?
SERVANT: Straight along the road that leads to Larisa, just as you leave the outskirts of the city, you will see a tomb of dressed stone.
[He leaves the stage.]
HERACLES: Come, my heart, that has endured so much, come hand of mine, now show what kind of son Electryon’s
840 daughter, Alcmene of Tiryns, bore to Zeus! Now must I save the woman who has lately died; now must I give Alcestis her place once more in this house and pay this debt of gratitude to Admetus. I will go and keep watch for Death, the blackwinged lord of the dead; I fancy I will find him near her tomb, drinking the blood of beasts sacrificed there. And if I rush upon him from my place of ambush and seize him, pinning him in my encircling arms, no man shall free him from that rib-crushing hold until he gives the woman up to me. But if I
850 fail to catch my prey and he does not come to taste the gory offering, I will go to the sunless dwelling of the Maid and her lord23 and there ask for Alcestis to be returned. I have no doubt I will bring her back to this world and place her in the hands of my host, who welcomed me into his home. Fortune had dealt him a heavy blow but he refused to turn me away. Out of respect for me and because he has a noble heart he kept me in the dark. What man of Thessaly could have greater regard for guests? Who that lives in Greece? Admetus has a
860 generous soul; he will have no cause to say his kindness met with ingratitude.
[Exit HERACLES. The funeral procession with ADMETUS returns.]
ADMETUS:24 Oh, how hateful to me is this homecoming, how hateful the sight of these widowed halls! Ah, the pain, the misery I feel! Where should I go? Where remain? What shall I say? What not? Oh, if only I might die! It was a grim fate that my mother brought me into the world for. I envy the dead; theirs is the lot I crave, theirs the home where I long to dwell. For it gives me no pleasure to look upon the sun’s light
870 or to feel the ground under my feet. Such is the hostage that Death has stolen from me and handed over to Hades.
CHORUS [Strophe]: Go forward, go forward; enter your home.
ADMETUS: Oh, misery!
CHORUS: Your sufferings merit such groans.
ADMETUS: What pain!
CHORUS: Yours has been a painful path, I know it well.
ADMETUS: I am so wretched!
CHORUS: You are not helping the one who is below.
ADMETUS: I cannot bear this!
CHORUS: Never again to look into the face of a beloved wife! It is cruel.
ADMETUS: There you touch on what has wounded my heart; what greater sorrow can a man endure than the loss of a
880 loving wife? I should never have taken her as my wife, never shared this home with her! How I envy them, those men who have never married, never had children! They have only one life; bearing its sorrows is a burden a man can endure. But to have to witness disease striking down one’s children, or bridal beds marred by death, is past enduring, when a man can live his whole life childless and unwed.
CHORUS [Antistrophe]: Fortune has come upon you, fortune the wrestler that none can throw.
ADMETUS: Oh, misery!
890 CHORUS: There is no boundary that you can set to your sorrows.
ADMETUS: What pain!
CHORUS: They make a heavy burden, and yet –
ADMETUS: I am so wretched!
CHORUS: Endure! You are not the first man to lose –
ADMETUS: I cannot bear this!
CHORUS: – a wife. Disaster in mortal life has many forms; she crushes now one man, now another.
ADMETUS: Ah, the long days of sorrow and grief for those we love below the earth! Why did you stop me from flinging myself into the hollowed trench that is her grave, from lying dead beside her whose worth no other woman can match?
900 Then Hades would have had not one life but two, most faithful souls who crossed his infernal lake together.
CHORUS [Strophe]: I had a relative whose son, an only child, died in his house, a youth well worth the weeping. But in spite of all, he bore his misfortune with restraint, childless though
910 he was, though he was now declining towards grey hair and no longer in his prime.
ADMETUS [pausing at the entrance to his palace]: Ah, house of mine, how am I to enter you, how live under your roof, now that fortune has dealt me this new blow? What misery! This is a transformation indeed! On that day I went inside you with Pelian torches and wedding songs, clasping my dear wife’s hand in mine, and a happy, shouting throng accompanied us, congratulating the dead woman and me: ‘What a
920 well-born pair they are! How splendid a match!’ But now those wedding songs have given way to cries of sorrow, those bright clothes to mourning’s dusky garments that usher me inside, to the embrace of my empty bed.
CHORUS [Antistrophe]: This grief has come upon you suddenly, in the midst of your happiness, when you did not know what sorrow was. Yet you have saved your own life. Your wife has
930 died but left her love behind. This is not strange; many men have already lost their wives to the strong arms of death.
ADMETUS: Friends, I count my wife’s fate happier than my own, though it may not seem so. No pain will ever touch her now, nothing tarnish her good name, no more troubles weigh her down. But I, the man who cheated fate, who should not be
940 living, will drag out my days in anguish. This truth has just come home to me. For how will I find the strength to enter this house? And if I should, is there anyone to gladden my heart by our exchange of greetings? There is none. Where shall I turn? The loneliness inside will drive me out, whenever I see our bed with no wife to share it and the chair she used to sit on and, throughout the house, the floor unswept. The children will fall at my knees, weeping for their mother, and the servants sigh for the kind mistress they have lost.
950 So much for what will happen in my house. Outside there will be Thessalian weddings and gatherings full of women to drive me indoors once more. I will not be able to bear the sight of them, my wife’s friends, all as young as her. And this is what will be said about me by someone who wishes me ill: ‘There he is, the one who flouts decency by still living! The man who lacked the courage to die, who gave in exchange the woman he married and, like a coward, has given Hades the slip! And now should he be called a man? He hates his parents, though it was he who refused to die!’ This is the kind of talk I will be subjected to, crowning my other sorrows.
960 Why, then, my friends, should I choose to live rather than die, hen both fortune and men’s tongues deal me such wounds?
CHORUS [Strophe]: Much learning have I perused, high in the heavens let my thoughts soar, with many a doctrine grappled, but nothing have I found stronger than Necessity.25 And there is no remedy, either in the Thracian texts that the voice of Orpheus26 prescribed or among the herbs that Phoebus
970 shredded as antidotes and gave to the sons of Asclepius27 to cure the many ills of man.
[Antistrophe:] This goddess alone has no altars, no images for men to approach; to sacrifices she is indifferent. Dread lady, I pray you may not visit me with greater force than my years have so far seen. For whatever purpose Zeus sets in
980 motion, he accomplishes with your aid. Even the iron the Chalybes forge you tame by force, while nothing earns respect from your unbending will.
[Strophe:] You, also, Admetus, the goddess has caught in the grip of those hands from which there is no escape. But be resolute; for never by weeping will you bring the dead up
990 from the world below. Even children of the gods pass away into the darkness of death. She had our love when among us and will not forfeit that love now that she is dead. Noblest of all her kind is the woman you took as your own dear wife.
[Antistrophe:] Not as a mound covering the dead and gone must men think of your lady’s tomb; no, let her be honoured as are the gods, winning reverence from the wayfarer. As he
1000 sets foot on the winding path, he shall say these words: ‘This woman once died for her husband and now belongs to the company of immortal spirits. Hail, gracious lady, and grant me your blessing!’ Such will be the prayers addressed to her.
[ADMETUS has remained motionless throughout this ode of consolation. The chorus now alerts him to the return of HERACLES, who is leading a veiled woman.]
But here, it seems, is Alcmene’s son, making his way towards your home!
HERACLES:28 A man should speak freely to a friend, Admetus; if he nurses any grievances, he shouldn’t keep them to himself
1010 and say nothing. Now, when I arrived in your hour of need, I expected to be counted as a friend. But you did not reveal that the body you had to bury was your wife’s, oh no, you entertained me in your home, saying it was some neighbour’s misfortune that touched your heart. And I wore a garland on my head and poured libations to the gods in a house where disaster had struck! I hold you to blame, yes, I do, for treating me like this. Yet I do not want to cause you pain when you are in enough distress. I will tell you why I turned back and am here again.
1020 Take this woman and keep her safe for me until my return with the Thracian mares, once I have killed the ruler of the Bistonians. Now if things turn out for me as I trust they won’t, for I hope I do return here, I give you this woman to serve in your house. It was hard work that caused her to come into my hands; I discovered that some men had organized a public competition, a proper trial of strength for athletes, in which I won this woman and carried her off as the prize of victory. The winners in the lighter events had horses to lead off, while
1030 those who came first in the heavy events, such as boxing and wrestling, were awarded cattle, and with these came a woman for good measure. As I was in this fortunate position, it would have shown a lack of propriety to forgo this honourable prize. So now, as I said, you must take care of this woman. It was no act of theft on my part that brings her here with me; I won her at the cost of some effort. Perhaps in time you will actually thank me.
ADMETUS: It was not out of disrespect to you or because I thought it any cause for shame that I concealed from you my wife’s wretched fate. But it would have been crowning one
1040 sorrow with another if you had left my house to seek hospitality under another man’s roof; it was enough that I should weep at my own misfortune. As to this woman, if at all possible I beg you, my lord, bid some other man of Thessaly take charge of her, someone who has not known suffering such as mine. You do not lack friends among the Thessalians; do not remind me of my miseries. I would not be able to see her in my house and hold back the tears. I am sick at heart; do not add a further sickness to this one. For my calamity is a burden I can scarcely bear.
Where would a young woman live in my house, anyway?
1050 She is young, as her clothes and jewellery indicate. Is she to live under the same roof as men, then? How will she keep her virginity if she consorts with young men? It is no easy thing, Heracles, to restrain a young man in his prime. It is your interests I am thinking of here. Or am I to admit her to my dead wife’s chamber and keep her there? How am I to allow her a place in that lady’s bed? I fear a double reproach: some Thessalian may charge me with betraying my benefactress in seeking the arms of another young woman, while she who
1060 has died (who deserves my devotion) haunts me; I must show the utmost care in what I do.
Whoever you are, lady, let me tell you that you are the same in stature as Alcestis and resemble her in form. Oh no! In heaven’s name take this woman out of my sight! Do not wound a wounded man! In looking at her I seem to see my own wife. She makes my heart start pounding; tears break in springs from my eyes! Oh, this is wretchedness, only now do I taste the real bitterness of this grief!
1070 CHORUS-LEADER: I cannot speak well of what has befallen you; but we must bear with patient hearts whatever gift the god has bestowed.
HERACLES: If only I had the power to bring your wife from the dwellings of the dead into the light and to do you this kindness!
ADMETUS: You would wish it so, I have no doubt. But how can this be? The dead cannot return to the light.
HERACLES: Then set limits on your grief; endure as a man should.
ADMETUS: It is easier to give counsel than to suffer and be strong.
HERACLES: What good would it do you, if you are bent on mourning for ever?
1080 ADMETUS: I know this for myself, but a kind of passion drives me on.
HERACLES: Yes, love for a departed one compels tears.
ADMETUS: She has made a ruin of my life, more than I can say.
HERACLES: You have lost a noble wife; who will deny it?
ADMETUS: And with her lost any further pleasure in life.
HERACLES: Time will soften the blow of this grief; now it is still reaching full strength.
ADMETUS: Time will do this, if by time you mean my death.
HERACLES: Marriage to a new woman will cure you of this longing.
ADMETUS: Stop there! What a thing to say! I would never have thought it of you!
HERACLES: What? You’re not going to marry? You will sleep alone?
1090 ADMETUS: There is no one who will ever share my bed again.
HERACLES: You don’t imagine you are helping your dead wife at all, do you?
ADMETUS: Wherever she is I must honour her.
HERACLES: Admirable! Admirable! But people will think you a fool.
ADMETUS: May I die if I ever betray her, dead though she is.
HERACLES: Show your generous heart now; receive this woman into your home.
ADMETUS: I beg you, by Zeus who fathered you, no!
HERACLES: You will be making a mistake if you don’t do this.
1100 ADMETUS: And if I do I will be putting my heart on the rack.
HERACLES: Do as I say; perhaps this kindness will turn out to your advantage.
ADMETUS: Ah, I wish you had never won her in that contest!
HERACLES: But I did win her and you share the victory with me.
ADMETUS: You are kind; but let the woman go on her way.
HERACLES: So she shall, if she must; but first consider if she must.
ADMETUS: She must, unless this means that I incur your anger.
HERACLES: I know what I’m doing; that’s why I’m insisting like this.
ADMETUS: Well, have it your way; but you are doing me no kindness by behaving like this.
HERACLES: One day you’ll thank me for it; just humour me.
1110 ADMETUS [to servants]: Take her inside, if I am to receive her into my house.
HERACLES: I would rather not entrust the woman to your servants.
ADMETUS: Then escort her into the house yourself, if this is what you think best.
HERACLES: No, I’ll place her in your hands.
ADMETUS: I will not touch her; my house stands there; let her enter.
HERACLES: To your right hand and no other I entrust her.
ADMETUS: My lord, you force me to do this against my will!
HERACLES: Be brave! Stretch out your hand and touch the stranger.
ADMETUS: [extending his hand with eyes turned away]: There, I am reaching out, as if I were beheading the Gorgon.29
1120 HERACLES [approaching the woman and lifting her veil]: Look at her and see if she bears any resemblance to your wife. Forget your sorrow and be happy.
ADMETUS: Gods! What shall I say? This is a wonder beyond hope! Is it my wife I see here, truly my wife, or merely a vision of joy, sent by a god, that mocks me and fills me with wonder?
HERACLES: No vision is before you; it is your wife you see.
ADMETUS: I fear this may be some phantom from the shades.
HERACLES: Do not make your guest out to be a conjurer of spirits!
ADMETUS: But am I looking at my wife, the woman I buried?
1130 HERACLES: You must not doubt it; but I do not wonder at your distrusting this turn of events.
ADMETUS: May I touch her, speak to her as to my living wife?
HERACLES: Speak to her. You now have all your heart desired.
ADMETUS: O my dearest wife! That face, that form I love! You re mine again, when I had lost all hope and never thought o see you more!
HERACLES: She is yours; I pray the gods do not grudge you this joy.
ADMETUS: Noble son of sovereign Zeus, all happiness be yours! May the father who sired you keep you safe! For you and you alone have raised my fortunes from misery. How was it you succeeded in restoring her from the shades to this light?
1140 HERACLES: I fought for her in combat with the god who governs the dead.
ADMETUS: This duel with Death, where do you say you fought it?
HERACLES: Hard by her grave; I leapt out at him and held him fast.
ADMETUS: But the lady stands here speechless. Why is this?30
HERACLES: It is forbidden for you to hear her words until her dedication to the gods below has been annulled and the third day has come. But lead her inside and continue, Admetus, to do what is right in treating your guests as the gods would wish. And now farewell; I shall go and perform for the royal
1150 son of Sthenelus31 the task prescribed.
ADMETUS: Stay with us and share the hospitality of this house.
HERACLES: And so I shall – another day; for the moment I must press on.
ADMETUS: Well, I wish you success and a speedy homecoming. To the citizens of Pherae and all the rest of my kingdom I proclaim that dancing is to be held in honour of this happy outcome and altars are to steam with oxen sacrificed in thanksgiving to the gods. For now we have found the way from our past ill-fortune to a better future. Good fortune is mine and I will not deny it.
[He turns and, holding ALCESTIS, makes his way into the palace.]
CHORUS: Many are the forms the plans of the gods take and
1160 many the things they accomplish beyond men’s hopes. What men expect does not happen; for the unexpected heaven finds a way. And so it has turned out here today.32