Essay

The Alcestis is wondrous and challenging, subject to many interpretations about its themes, characters, tone, and overall meaning. In this essay, I discuss some of its more striking features in the hopes of exploring various interpretations and opening up more. Each reader, like each member of the original audience, will have their own experience of the drama.

“Death is a debt all mortals must pay.” (782) So explains Heracles to the servant before learning the identity of the recently deceased woman in Admetus’s house. The inevitability and universality of death is highlighted in the play (e.g., 418-9, 988-9), and these clear assertions underscore Greek literature’s fundamental awareness of human mortality: mortals die; only gods live forever. We see this acute awareness of death in the Homeric epics and in almost all subsequent literature. And yet . . . this play is both premised on and carries out a narrative that undermines this central tenet of Greek thinking. In order to do so, it works with two fantastical story elements—first, Admetus escaping immediate death through Apollo’s trickery and Alcestis’s self-sacrifice and second, Heracles rescuing Alcestis from death. These two supernatural interventions create the framework for exploring the value and limits of friendship, family, reputation, and mortality.

Euripides frequently introduced gods at the start of his plays, either to deliver a monologue or to have a short monologue segue into a dialogue. In Alcestis, he chooses the latter format, both providing essential background information and illustrating the contrasting forces of life (Apollo) and death (Thanatos, death personified). The back story is concisely delivered: Zeus forced Apollo to become a servant in Admetus’s house as a punishment for killing the Cyclopes, the fashioners of Zeus’s lightning bolts. Apollo had done this in anger at his father killing his own son Asclepius for the crime of resurrecting the dead. Apollo then explains that he found Admetus to be such an exceptional host that, by tricking the Fates, he arranged for him to escape death, with the proviso that he find someone to die in his place. There’s the rub: as Apollo goes on to explain, Admetus found no one willing to die for him, not even his parents, except his wife. Euripides has chosen to start the play on the day of Alcestis’s death, which he makes clear with the arrival on stage of Thanatos (Death) to take her away. The magic of Admetus’s escape from (imminent) death, his wife’s willingness to die for him, and his acceptance of this willingness are all placed in the past. Relegating these elements to the past focuses the play on the consequences of Admetus accepting his wife’s sacrifice. And no one in the play questions whether he ought to have rejected Apollo’s gift. As Paris remarks in the Iliad (3.65), “the gifts of the gods are not to be cast aside.” That Admetus’s parents refused to die on their son’s behalf is an element of the story developed throughout the play.

In all likelihood, Apollo arrives on stage from the skênê building, representing the house of Admetus, and his first words are an address to it. Admetus’s house features prominently in the play, and attention is drawn to it with these opening words. With exaggeration, it has been referred to as the “hero” of the drama. But this exaggeration contains some truth. The Greek theater by our standards was very bare, with few decorations or props. In most plays, the skênê received no special emphasis but it had the potential to be prominent. In Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy (458), Agamemnon’s house and the control of entrances into it are visually and thematically central to the dramas, as the battle between the sexes and across generations is played out through the physical house. In Euripides’ Bacchae, produced posthumously, the power of the stranger/Dionysus in disguise is made manifest by the shaking of the palace. In Alcestis, the house is emphasized first by Apollo’s opening address to and departure from it, followed by Death’s entering it to take Alcestis; then the female servant describes at length Alcestis’s actions within. Admetus insists on welcoming Heracles into the house, despite the former’s grief and the latter’s considerable reluctance, and the chorus elaborately celebrates the virtues of the house after Heracles has been received into it. Admetus is unable to enter the house when he returns from the burial, filled with the memories of it from the earlier, happier occasion of his wedding day; and, finally, he accepts the veiled woman/Alcestis into the house. While the various words for house are common in Greek tragedy, they appear with impressive frequency in this play. The house is linguistically and visually a focus of the drama.

The word oikos can refer to both the physical house as well as the household. It is thus related to xenia, which means something like “host-guest friendship.” For us today, the guest-host relationship is not unimportant, and we may satisfy it by providing flowers or a bottle of wine to our host who offers a lovely meal or a weekend stay at their house. For the ancient Greeks, however, it was fundamental and presided over by none other than Zeus himself, with the title Zeus Xenios. Paris’s crime that set into motion the Trojan War was not just that he made off with Menelaus’s wife, but that he did so while a guest in his house.

The abstract noun xenia, the personal noun xenos, and related nouns and verbs are interwoven with great frequency throughout the play and establish a symmetry of actions. It is Admetus’s most salient attribute. Apollo is treated exceptionally well by his xenos Admetus (he refers to him in his opening speech as “host,” 8), and this leads to Admetus’s escape from imminent death. Admetus, even when overcome with grief at his wife’s death, feels obliged to entertain his guest-friend Heracles. In response to the chorus’s incredulity at his entertaining Heracles when his wife has just died, he explains that his house does not know how to thrust away guests (566-7); the chorus’s song in praise of his house begins with the adjective “most-hospitable” (568); in their exchange, Heracles and the male servant both describe Admetus with the adjective philoxenos (“fond of guests,” 809, 830, 857). While the servant acknowledges that Admetus might even be “too fond of guests” (809), Heracles, who has been deceived, uses it twice in a positive sense, even affirming his host’s nobility of spirit (857). Heracles, even though vexed by his friend’s duplicity in bringing him into his house of mourning, goes forth to rescue Admetus because of his extraordinary display of xenia, while his concluding admonition at the end of the play is that in the future Admetus should respect his guests (1148).

Xenia, however, as important as it was, was not the only virtue championed by the Greeks. Tragedy thrives on conflict, and the play demonstrates how xenia comes into conflict with other values. To his dying wife, Admetus has promised that he not only will not remarry, but he will also halt all music and revelry in the house. And yet even though clearly in mourning, he fights against Heracles’ efforts to go to another host’s house and insists that he be received and entertained. More strikingly, in a scene more fully discussed below, when Heracles returns with the veiled woman, Admetus ultimately succumbs to persuasion and accepts the woman into his house as his new bride, violating his promise to Alcestis.

The acceptance of Apollo’s gift also undermines his house in other ways. With Alcestis’s death, the house is ruined (415). The children will live without their mother and the family that had been created has been ruptured. Admetus also cuts himself off from his natal family. While the audience has heard of the unwillingness of all his philoi (“near and dear ones”), including his parents, to die on his behalf (and this seems a central part of the tale), Euripides introduces Pheres onto the stage so that father and son can engage in a bitter debate. Both characters land rhetorical blows in this contest of words, and Admetus’s willingness to accept his wife’s sacrifice is even more painful as this debate is carried out with the corpse on stage. But this scene also shows Admetus’s deracination from his family. He denounces his father, excludes him from his near and dear ones (630), and makes the bold claim that he now considers Alcestis his mother and father (646-7) and, if needed, he would have disowned his paternal hearth (737-8). Admetus’s marital family has been destroyed and he has cut all ties with his natal group.  The semantic range of the word philos included both blood relatives and those whom we would call “friends.” It referred less to affective values than to relationships governed by reciprocal obligations. In a sense, xenia was a subcategory of philia, the abstract noun of philos—and in the case of Admetus the two conflict. Admetus’s excessive devotion to the former leads him to neglect the obligations of the latter. His xenia and its consequences have left him, it seems, all alone.

Visually, the opening of the play poses the theme of life against death in the characters of Apollo and Death. The two quarrel, Apollo arguing for an extension of Alcestis’s life, while Death insists on his prerogatives. Death, we are reminded, has a claim on mortals’ lives, even when gods have intervened. Alcestis must die. (And even Admetus, having avoided death now, will eventually die.) But she will also be rescued: Heracles, Apollo predicts, will come and rescue Alcestis from Death. We should bear in mind that while the gods are responsible for setting up the play’s backstory (Zeus, the Fates, and Apollo all playing key roles), they do not control the action. Apollo tricked the Fates into allowing Admetus to escape death (temporarily), but the responses to this gift—Admetus’s, his parents’ and other friends’, and his wife’s—were their own, not forced on them. Even the prediction of Heracles’ rescue of Alcestis is just that, a prediction. He says what will happen, but his prediction does not make it happen. It is also worth noting that in Euripides’ plays divine predictions in prologues do not always happen quite the way the words might suggest. Gods predict (imperfectly) but do not control the events. A useful parallel is the Hippolytus, produced ten years later, where Aphrodite has set things in motion by making Phaedra fall in love with her stepson, Hippolytus, but does not cause Phaedra’s response to this passion, Hippolytus’s response to learning of it, or Theseus’s response to what he believes is his son’s assault on his wife. Nor do events happen quite how the goddess predicted. The stage actions in Alcestis are significant. Apollo abandons the house, explaining that he wants to avoid death’s pollution, and at the end of the scene he departs for good, while Death enters the house. After this, the gods have no further role to play; the focus is on the human action. Heracles, although he had Zeus as his father and eventually underwent an apotheosis, is not a god. The play’s focus is on the mortals and how they deal with the seemingly impossible and the inevitable.

The drama consistently plays with a seemingly fluid boundary between life and death. It does so at the macro level of plot—the substitution of Alcestis’s death for Admetus’s—and in smaller ways throughout, starting with the debate between Apollo and Death over the timing of Alcestis’s death. When the chorus arrives on stage, they focus, as did Apollo in his opening words, on the house and wonder whether the queen is alive or dead. They neither see nor hear any of the standard signs of death and mourning (lamentation, beating of hands, lustral bowl, lock of hair) and yet they know that this is the day she is to die. They also proclaim that prayer cannot prevent her death and wish that Asclepius, who used to raise the dead, were still alive. When they see the female servant emerge from the house, they ask if their mistress is alive or dead. The servant’s reply neatly captures the ambiguity of her status: “You could say she is alive and is dead” (141). She explains that Alcestis is as good as dead, breathing her last and preparing for her own funeral. The description of her washing and picking out her funeral garb inverts the standard situation: these acts are typically done for the corpse by a female member of the household. Here, in the topsy-turvy world of our play, the woman about to die does it for herself. She is, as the servant says, both alive and dead. Admetus engages in this same ambiguity about his wife’s status. Coming upon a scene of obvious mourning, Heracles questions his friend about the identity of the dead. When he finally asks directly whether Alcestis has died, Admetus replies, “There are two responses I can give about her” (519). In response to Heracles’ following request to clarify this ambiguity, he says, “She both is and is no more, and this grieves me” (521). The scene between the male servant and Heracles also, initially, plays off this ambiguity, until the servant finally reveals the truth to his guest (821). At the conclusion of the play a just-returned-from-the-dead Alcestis is returned to life with Admetus, but only after considerable confusion and disbelief that the veiled woman is in fact his wife.

Everyone in the play extols the virtue of Alcestis. The chorus (repeatedly), Admetus, the female servant, and Alcestis herself proclaim that she is the best woman/wife. It is asserted as a given: “who will say otherwise?” the servant asks (152), and Pheres uses the same rhetorical trope at 615. Repeatedly throughout the drama characters praise her extraordinary self-sacrifice for her husband. The chorus rhetorically asks what words could describe the one who surpassed her and what more could one do than to sacrifice one’s life (153-5). Alcestis is aware of the magnitude of her actions and needs little effort to get Admetus to agree not to remarry, explaining that she is not asking for something that could equal her life in value (300-2). In the song immediately after her death, the chorus imagines that in generations to come poets in Sparta and in Athens will hymn her virtue (445-54). Immediately before she returns with Heracles as the veiled woman, the chorus concludes their song by imagining her in death receiving reverence as a blessed spirit (995-1005).

Through her self-sacrifice, Alcestis will achieve glory (kleos). The chorus readily asserts this (150), as does Admetus (623, 938). Kleos is central to male Greek culture. It is what motivates the warriors in the Iliad, most prominently Achilles, who explicitly chooses death as the cost of fame. Etymologically, kleos was related to a verb meaning “to hear,” and thus fame was what one heard about you, even upon your death. In a culture with virtually no positive picture of an afterlife, achieving kleos brought some mitigation to the nothingness of death. At least this was what men could hope to achieve. For women, however, this was not the case. In the funeral oration attributed to him by Thucydides (dramatic date 430), Pericles famously stated, “and great also is her [reputation] of whom there is among men the least report of excellence or fault” (2.45). Alcestis usurps a male prerogative. In his descriptions of Alcestis, Euripides even hints at the conventions of epinician poetry, odes sung in honor of victors in the pan-Hellenic games, songs that conferred kleos on the victors (see Garner, 1988). In the harsh exchange between father and son, Admetus declares that his father will die “without honor” (725), the opposite of having kleos, just as Alcestis had said that his parents passed on the chance to die with glory (292), and Pheres mocks Admetus for being “bested by a woman” (697) in letting his wife die for him. Admetus also imagines that in letting his wife die on his behalf, he will incur a bad reputation (955-61). The fantasy world set in motion by the play’s premise allows for a woman to trump men in securing a good name.

Weddings and marriages have a recurrent role in the drama and add to the ambiguity of Alcestis’s status. The Greek wedding involved the transfer of the woman (often in fact a teenager), from the authority of one male to another male, relocating her from her father’s house to her husband’s. The purpose of the marriage was the procreation of legitimate offspring. Love in a modern sense was neither required nor expected, and the bride had no formal say in the matter. The bride was not of the husband’s household but became part of the household through the marriage. This fact is what aids the verbal quibbling in the two scenes between Admetus and Heracles. In that first exchange Heracles inquires about the status of the deceased:

Heracles: Someone from outside the family or kin to you?

Admetus: From outside, but otherwise very much connected to the household. (532-3)

This same ambiguity reappears in the exchange between Heracles and the gloomy male servant later in the play. Heracles explains that he was willing to be entertained by Admetus because the grief he suffered was from “outside the family” (778), a point Heracles repeats (805 and 810) until he is corrected by the servant (811) and begins to understand her status as a member of the family (814). He emphasizes later in this scene that he acted only having been persuaded that the dead woman was from outside the family, a point he makes yet again when he confronts Admetus in the concluding scene (1014). A further ambiguity facilitates the obfuscations of Alcestis’s status in the play: the word gunê means both “woman” and “wife.” This term’s dual meaning is seen slightly in Admetus’s deception of Heracles (531) and then repeatedly in Heracles’ deception of Admetus (e.g., 1061, 1064-6, 1087, 1104, 1111).

The ambiguity surrounding the dead woman’s identity and the status of the gunê does more than allow for verbal sparring. More importantly, it emphasizes Alcestis’s special position. Not originally “of the family,” she becomes very much part of it. And while not a philos by blood, she shows herself superior to Admetus’s blood relatives in that she is willing to do what none of them would do. This point is made several times. Apollo makes this clear at the start of the play (15-8), and Alcestis (290-2) and Admetus (338-9) condemn his parents for being unwilling to die on their son’s behalf. Admetus reiterates his point more fully in his encounter with his father: Alcestis, who has joined the family, is the one willing to save it. At the same time in the course of the play, as observed above, Admetus has functionally removed himself from his natal family, cutting himself off from his mother and father, while with Alcestis’s death, his own household is ruined.

Weddings, both remembered and imagined, permeate the play. First, there is the original wedding of Admetus and Alcestis. Alcestis invokes her marriage bed during the kommos with the chorus (248-9), and Admetus, returning from the funeral, contrasts his approach to the house now with the earlier happy entrance into it with his new bride (914-25). In narrating Alcestis’s actions within the house, the female servant poignantly details Alcestis bursting into her marriage chamber, addressing her wedding bed, filling it with her tears and then several times leaving and returning to it (176-88). When she explains to Admetus her motivation, Alcestis makes it clear that, had he died, she could have taken another husband (285). And then she makes the key request of Admetus, that he not remarry, and she does so in the context of charis (299), the reciprocal obligation that comes from the gift of her self-sacrifice. Since, as we saw above, the purpose of marriage in Greece was the procreation of legitimate offspring, she points out that as a father already, Admetus has no need to remarry. In his reply, Admetus immediately asserts that he will not remarry (336-7), even though it would have been common for an Athenian widower to remarry, and readily acknowledges that he needs no more children (334). He then goes a step further (many would say a step too far) and proclaims that he will have craftsmen fashion an image of her, which he will place in their bed so that in holding it he might think that he’s holding her (348-56). Later (950-2), Admetus foresees being unable to endure the weddings of other Thessalians.

Having heard about the original marriage between Admetus and Alcestis, the counter-factual marriage of Alcestis to another Thessalian, and the bizarre assertion that Admetus will attempt to in some sense continue his marriage via a crafted simulacrum of his wife, the audience is presented with a final wedding, both symbolic and unifying. In the Greek betrothal and wedding ceremonies, the bride’s kurios (the man with authority over her, typically but not always her father), handed her over, veiled, to the groom. She was unveiled, and the groom took her by the hand and led her into the house they would now share. This is exactly what happens in the play’s final scene. Heracles has wrested Alcestis away from Death, who, we are told, is her kurios (1140), leads her while veiled (her identity still unknown to Admetus but clear to the audience), and insists that Admetus himself take her by the hand and bring her into the house. Euripides draws out this moment. Heracles needs to apply a considerable amount of pressure since it becomes progressively clear that this woman will not simply be a maidservant but will serve as a new wife (or concubine) for Admetus. The significance of Admetus’s taking this woman by the hand is further emphasized in two ways. First, the line in which Heracles finally and literally places Alcestis into Admetus’s hands (1119) involves two changes of speakers:

Heracles: Do you have her?

Admetus: Yes, I have her.

Heracles: Keep her safe now . . .

Having two changes of speaker within a single line of dialogue was exceedingly rare. There are only five other examples in all of Euripides, but one of them occurs earlier in this play, at the very moment of Alcestis’s death (391):

Admetus: What are you doing?

Alcestis: Fare well.

Admetus: I’m ruined, wretched me.

A further similarity links these two scenes: the recurrence of the same imperative “look at” (390 and 1120). In short, the symbolic wedding at the end of the play overturns Alcestis’s death earlier. The miracle of her being able to rescue her husband through her own death destroyed their household; the miracle of her return restores it. But this restoration involves the twist of Heracles’ deception and Admetus’s betrayal of the promises he made to his dying wife.

Heracles’ deception of Admetus at the play’s conclusion echoes the earlier one of Heracles by Admetus. On one level, the two deceptions help to drive the plot—Heracles being entertained in Admetus’s house in the first instance and the restoration of Alcestis in the second. The two scenes also deeply engage the audience, as they are in on the deceptions, while the deceived characters are not. Furthermore, in each instance, xenia is foregrounded, and this similarity allows the playwright to pursue a larger purpose. Admetus deceives Heracles because of the pull of xenia: he cannot imagine turning away a xenos, even under the grief of his wife’s death, and even after he has vowed to her that he will stop all music and revelry in his halls. He recognizes that some may think ill of him, but his house does not know how to thrust away and dishonor guests (566-7). His same (over-)devotion to xenia makes possible the second deception. Heracles did not have to deceive Admetus; Euripides could have simply had the hero arrive in triumph with the rescued wife and return her to his host. But the playwright is making a point: Admetus should not have deceived his friend. Heracles expressly states upon his return that he should not have been treated by Admetus in this way. As a friend, he argues, he should have been allowed the opportunity to share his grief with him (1010-1), echoing the scene with Pheres, whose stated purpose of wanting to share in his son’s grief was rebuffed (614 and 629-30). He blames Admetus for this treatment, amplifying his criticism with the repeated word “blame” (1017). The poet constructs this second scene of deception to echo the earlier one and to show that Admetus went too far in his devotion to xenia. Near the conclusion of Heracles’ lengthy effort at persuasion (Admetus does try to hold off on carrying out the request to accept the veiled woman), Admetus’s underlying motive is bared when he says: “She [Alcestis] must [leave], unless you’re going to be mad at me” (1106). This betrayal both highlights the limits of xenia, while at the same time reinforcing its value, as Alcestis is rejoined to her life with Admetus.

All dramas have a pace (or paces) to their movement and an evolving structure. In this regard, the Alcestis can be described in several ways. One critic (Burnett 1971, 22-46) describes the play as comprising two dramatic patterns—a sacrifice drama and a rescue drama. Like numerous other plays, Alcestis pivots around a sacrifice. But unlike those others, where the sacrifice is on behalf of an entire community (often city-state), Alcestis’s sacrifice is to benefit only an individual. And, as we have seen, although he escapes imminent death, Admetus is unable to enjoy the full benefit of his wife’s death and thinks his life and house are ruined. The rescue drama is initiated first with Heracles’s arrival and then when he has learned the identity of the corpse and rushes off to free her from Death’s hold. Each of these mini-dramas, it should be observed, are predicated on Admetus’s xenia: his entertainment of Apollo led to his escape from death, effected through his wife’s self-sacrifice, while the rescue story is similarly triggered by his act of xenia in hosting Heracles while still living through the mourning of the sacrifice.

Structurally, Alcestis seems to be two plays, with two prologues, two parodoi, and two exodoi, with verbal echoes between the two repeated elements as well (Castellani 1979; and see notes on 747ff. and 861ff.). When Admetus, accompanied by the chorus, leaves to bury Alcestis, the stage is empty mid-play. This is extraordinarily rare in Greek drama and allows for Euripides to create strong parallels between the two halves (roughly) of the play. The first prologue scene initially involves a single male character (Apollo), emerging from the house, joined then in dialogue by a newly arriving male character (Death). The second begins with a lone male servant, entering from the house, then joined in dialogue by another male character (Heracles). The first ends with the second character exiting to claim Alcestis in death, the second with the second character exiting to rescue her from Death. In each scene Admetus’s hospitality is discussed, first by Apollo and then by Heracles. In the initial parodos, the choral song begins with “marching” anapestic meter followed by sung rhythms in which the chorus does not sing with one voice only (as usual) but with several. A second parodos is possible only because of the departure from the stage of all characters, including the chorus. When the chorus returns with Admetus from the funeral, they employ initial marching anapests, followed by a hybrid composition of their song and Admetus’s lamentations. Just as in the first parodos the focus of the chorus is on the house, so too, when they return from the funeral, is their and Admetus’s focus again on the house.

What might be called the first exodos (606-746) displays two speakers, one who has just entered the acting area (Pheres) and Admetus, who is already there, with the dead Alcestis before them. The second one starts with the arrival of Heracles accompanied by a veiled and silent Alcestis, just rescued from death. In the first, Admetus dismisses Pheres as not being his philos, while in the second, Heracles starts off chastising Admetus for not treating him as a philos. The first concludes with the departure of Admetus and the dead Alcestis towards her burial, the latter with the entrance of the married couple into the house.

Another way to consider the play’s structure is as a triptych. The first and third panels focus on Alcestis, her death and separation from Admetus, and her return to life with him. These two panels surround a central one that focuses primarily on Admetus in three modes, first in his reception of Heracles, then in his bitter argument with his father, and finally broken and unable to continue after the funeral. He has learned the lesson that without his wife he will lead a bitter life (“Just now I realize this,” 940) and concludes that his reputation is ruined (955-61). Strikingly, contrary to standard dramaturgical practice, no one exits at the end of this scene. It is as if the play is frozen, and the final panel of this triptych then refocuses on Admetus’s life with Alcestis.

Admetus’s character has drawn the attention of many critics. To most modern audiences, he seems distasteful: self-centered, cowardly, cold, and unfaithful. It is certainly true that he does not command respect or sympathy, as do Phaedra, Medea, Amphitryon, or Philoctetes, and at several points he seems at best morally obtuse. His wife, by comparison, is consistently and repeatedly praised as the best of all wives. In addition to other positive traits, she has done what no one else would do: she has been willing to die on his behalf. It is hard to compete with that. The contrast with Alcestis is deliberate and pointed, but I think Admetus would not have struck a fifth-century audience as negatively as a modern one. Let’s examine some of the chief complaints that are lodged against him. First, he let his wife die on his behalf. No one in the play, however, seriously questions whether he should have refused Apollo’s gift. It is suggested in varying degrees by Apollo, Alcestis, Admetus, and Heracles that one of his parents might have been willing to die for him, but their unwillingness is not meant to imply that he should not have accepted his wife’s self-sacrifice. Rather, this unwillingness underscores the singularity of her action (not even his parents were willing). Alcestis herself most reasonably believes that her self-sacrifice gives her a claim on her husband (that he not remarry) but she does not state or imply that he should have refused her offer. The one character who attacks Admetus is his father, but he does so only after Admetus has attacked him. He arrives to share in Admetus’s grief, extols the virtue of Alcestis, and expresses his gratitude at her rescuing his family (his son did not have to die). But once his son has viciously criticized him for being unwilling to die for him, Pheres replies in kind with a biting assault on his son’s cowardice in not dying (694-8). Pheres’ arguments are not without merit, but overall, the play presents Admetus as the recipient of an extraordinary gift, which only one person was willing to effect for him. It is also important to recall that the acceptance of Apollo’s gift and Alcestis’s willingness to sacrifice herself occur before the events of the play; they are, if you will, the “givens” of the situation.

When Admetus is first on stage, we see him begging his wife not to leave him, pleading that she not abandon their children, saying he is destroyed without her, and that her death is painful to him. The point of Alcestis’s death was that her husband would have life. But from the very beginning, he shows that life without Alcestis is no life at all (explicitly stated by the chorus at 243). This awareness demonstrates a profound irony, one central to the play, but the fact that the life she leaves him with is not a life he wants does not imply insincerity on his part. He also begs that his wife not abandon/betray him. The verb prodidômi (202, 250, 275), with its two senses of “abandon” and “betray,” captures the ambiguity and irony of his request. She is dying on his behalf and yet he frames it as betrayal. Admetus uses the same word to characterize his own betrayal of his wife if he were to accept the veiled woman (1059, 1096). The extreme mourning he promises (not only the responsive agreement not to remarry, but also no banquets or music, the cutting of horses’ manes, and his eternal grief) all surpass what would have been expected from a widower. And this is precisely the point—Alcestis’s extraordinary sacrifice is met with excessive promises of mourning, promises that her husband does not, and perhaps cannot, keep. One other aspect of Admetus’s grief many find repellent—the fabricated likeness of her that he will embrace. While there may be a mythological parallel for this—Laodameia, the widow of Protesilaus, the first Greek casualty at Troy, had a bronze statue made in his image and kept it in her room—it is still an amazing, and perhaps macabre, promise. He cannot offer adequate compensation, but he will go beyond what his wife asked for and beyond what any contemporary would have imagined. Again, we are in the realm of the fantastic, where the unexpected, even the uncanny, rules.

The strongest criticism of Admetus is that at the end of the play he accepts into his house the veiled woman with the clear expectation that she will share his bed, a violation of the promise he made to his dying wife less than an hour before in real time. One can quibble, as several have, that this woman is not going to share his bed, or that he has been unduly forced by Heracles, or that he in fact has a sense that she is his wife, but the lengthy scene of persuasion and the strong echo of the wedding ceremony make clear that he is breaking his promise. Admetus has failed to live up to her one specific request. There is no getting around this fact. But the violation of his vow is the very moment of his reunion with his wife. In breaking his vow to Alcestis not to remarry, he remarries her. The fantasy element of restoration from the dead may mitigate his transgression, but he does transgress.

Alcestis’s silence upon her return from the dead is puzzling. The formal reason provided within the play is that Admetus is not permitted to hear her voice for three days, until she is purified from her consecration to the nether gods (1144-6). It might have made intuitive sense to the audience that a period of transition between the lower and upper worlds was necessary, and the number three is commonly associated with rituals. Of course, we have no records of proper procedure in such cases, as they did not occur. As noted in the Introduction, this play could have been performed with only two actors, and some have suggested that the character Alcestis is silent here because there was no third actor to play the part. This is possible, but I am reluctant to think that if only two actors were available, Euripides could not have handled the situation in a different way. It is interesting to imagine what Alcestis might have said to her husband, having died on his behalf, only now to be returned to him after he has violated his promise not to remarry. While all plays come to an end, the ending can be more by way of conclusion than resolution, and many plays end with a deliberate ambiguity as to what comes next. Alcestis, although she has usurped the male role of gaining kleos (“what is heard about you”) through her heroism, is mute at the play’s end. A woman in Greek society was an object of exchange by men—from father to husband—and at the conclusion of this play Alcestis is again an object of exchange in a symbolic wedding. At the same time, the audience is invited to imagine what she will say to her husband three days hence.

You cannot bring someone back from the dead. That rule is simple and ironclad. From the play’s very early lines, when we are told that Asclepius was killed for raising the dead, we are repeatedly reminded that death is final. The example of Orpheus is also introduced to make this point. Famously, the poet Orpheus was able to use the power of his song to (almost) win release of his wife Eurydice from Hades. (That this rescue failed—Orpheus disobeyed the order not to look back at his wife and she fell back into Hades—is not mentioned.) Admetus proclaims that if he had Orpheus’s power, he would have gone below into Hades and rescued her (357-62), and the chorus sings that even the remedies left on Orphic tablets cannot overcome Necessity (965-7). The final choral song before Heracles appears with the veiled Alcestis (962-1005) is in fact an ode to the power of Necessity. The chorus observes that even the children of gods (a single divine parent did not render the offspring immortal) are not spared death. Admetus is suffering as do all other mortals, who must witness the death of loved ones. As he hears several times, “not to you alone” has the pain of death fallen (e.g., 417-8, 892-3, 988-90). Immediately after this song’s powerful pronouncement of the inevitability and permanence of death, Heracles arrives with Alcestis, overturning the song’s certainties and the play’s frequent assertions: death, we will see, can be overturned. The Introduction observed that the juncture of song and entrance (or exit) of characters can be powerful. Here, as with Sophocles in several salient examples, a song is overturned by the events immediately following it. Such contrasts create strong theater. But in this case, more is accomplished. The return of Alcestis from the dead overturns not only the thrust of the previous song, but also what has been proclaimed throughout the drama, and the experience of all mortals: death is final. But is it?

Apollo’s gift to Admetus, earned by his most generous hospitality, disrupts the basic fabric of human life by postponing Admetus’s date with death. This gift comes at considerable cost. Alcestis dies for him, and yet his oikos is destroyed, and he is left desolate, wishing to die himself. In addition, keeping his promise not to remarry means that he cannot re-establish his household. His excessive promises made to his dying wife, ending banquets and music in the house, impinge on his identity as host so that he must deceive Heracles in order to entertain him. This gift also precipitates a complete rift with his father and the severing of all ties to his natal family. His life, he realizes, is not worth living, and when he returns from the funeral, he recognizes the full extent of the emptiness he faces, with his wife dead and his reputation shattered. If the play had ended here (it does not, course), one might consider it a play of late learning—death is inevitable and when this inevitability is overturned, a different sort of ruin results and recognizing this hard fact is Admetus’s tragedy. As noted above, at the end of this scene of recognition, no one leaves the stage. This result is, as it were, put on hold; the play is not over. Euripides superimposes on this result another—Alcestis’s rescue and renewed life with Admetus restores life to the status quo ante. But this happens with one final twist: In accepting this woman, Admetus reveals one further way in which Apollo’s gift is compromised—he cannot fulfill the promise he made to Alcestis. And yet in accepting this woman into the house, he symbolically remarries his wife Alcestis. The play abounds in contradictions, doublets, and ironies. Life has certain rules and violating them brings painful consequences. But the play is not a conventional tragedy. Restoration and marriage, not dissolution and death, hold sway at the end. The sacrifice, death, grief, and strife the play presents are all real. But in this drama, at least, they are not the last word.