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Alcestis: The Play

The play is set in Pherae, a town in southeastern Thessaly. The characters in the play are Apollo, Death, chorus of male citizens of Pherae, female servant, Admetus, Alcestis, child of Alcestis and Admetus, Heracles, Pheres, male servant, and others with non-speaking parts. The skênê at the rear of the orchêstra represents the palace of Admetus, and entrances into and exits from the acting space include the central door of the skênê and two entrance ramps leading into the orchêstra. (See more on the ancient stage in the Introduction.) In this play, it seems that one ramp leads away to the palace and city, while the other leads to areas beyond the city proper.

Prologos, 1-76 

The action of the play up to the arrival of the chorus was called the prologos (“prologue”). Most Euripidean plays begin with a longish speech (rhêsis), identifying the location, providing essential background to the action, establishing expectations (to be fulfilled or thwarted), and adumbrating key themes. In Alcestis, the opening scene is shared by two gods, one giving a short speech, which leads to a dialogue and conflict between the two, representing the play’s fundamental struggle between life (Apollo) and death personified. As suggested already in an ancient commentary, Apollo enters from the palace, and not from on high.

(Apollo enters from Admetus’s palace.)
Apollo:  Admetus’s house:[1] here I put up with
a laborer’s board, even though I’m a god.

Zeus[2] was to blame: he killed my son

Asclepius, striking him in the chest with a blast of fire,

and enraged at this, I killed the Cyclopes, 5

who fashion Zeus’s lightning. As punishment for this

my father forced me to be a laborer[3] for this mortal man.

I came to this land and tended cattle for my host,[4]

and I have kept this house safe up to this very moment.[5]

For pious myself, I came upon a pious[6] man, 10

Pheres’ child, and I saved him from dying

by tricking the Fates.[7] For the goddesses granted me

that Admetus could escape his impending death[8]

if he could give to those below another corpse instead.

Going around and questioning all who were near and dear,[9]15

his father and his aged mother who bore him,

he didn’t find anyone except his wife

willing to die for him and no longer see the light.

Now he’s in the house supporting her with his hands

as she breathes her last. For on this day 20

she is destined to die and depart from life.

As for me—so that no contagion[10] reach me inside—

I’m leaving the dearest shelter of this home.

Already I see Death nearby here,

the priest of the dead, who is going to lead her down to 25

Hades’ house. He’s arrived exactly on time,

watching for this day on which she must die.

Lines 28-76. In this scene between the two gods there are, as critics frequently have observed, some (at least modestly) comic elements, including the fight between the Olympian god of light and music and the equivalent of the Grim Reaper; Death’s concern about Apollo’s weapons; and the sophistic arguments of both participants. That Death, a kind of bogeyman, and not Hades, a full-fledged god, plays this role adds to this tone. This scene not only replays the arrangement that Apollo originally secured from the Fates, it also underscores that this is not Apollo’s standard behavior but stems from what he believes he owes Admetus. At the same time, this scene opens out the theme of dying young/old and reminds us that Alcestis’s death, like Admetus’s postponement of his, is unnatural.

The meter changes at 28, concluding with the end of Death’s opening speech at 37, to anapestic dimeter, a chanted rhythm (often used upon entrances), providing variation and a greater sense of urgency.

(Death arrives from one of the entrance ramps, the one that will be used later for Apollo’s exit, Heracles’ arrival, and the going to/coming from the burial.)

Death: Ah, ah!

Why are you near the house? What are you doing here,

Phoebus? Are you again wronging the rights of those below, 30

claiming them for yourself and putting an end to them?

Wasn’t it enough for you to prevent

Admetus’s death when you tripped up the Fates

with your craftiness? No, for again now,

armed with a bow, you’re on guard for her,

she who promised when she had freed her husband 35

to then die on his behalf herself, Pelias’s child.

Apollo:  Don’t worry. My cause is just and my words honest.

Death:  So why do you need the bow and arrows if your cause is just?[11]

Apollo:  It’s my habit to always carry them.

Death:  And also to help this house unjustly. 40

Apollo:  Yes, for I am weighed down by my friend’s misfortunes.

Death:  And you’ll rob me of this second corpse?

Apollo:  But I didn’t even take him from you by force.

Death:  So how is he above the ground and not below it?

Apollo:  He gave his wife in exchange, whom you’ve now come for.[12] 45

Death:  And I will take her down to the earth below.

Apollo:  Take her and go. I don’t know if I could persuade you to do otherwise.

Death:  To kill those whom I must? That’s our job.

Apollo:  No, but to postpone death for those who are going to die. 50

Death:  I understand your argument and what you want.

Apollo:  So, is it possible for Alcestis to reach old age?

Death:  No! Realize that I also enjoy my honors.[13]

Apollo:  But you wouldn’t get more than one life.

Death:  When they die young, I win a greater prize. 55

Apollo:  And if she dies an old woman, she’ll be buried extravagantly.

Death:  Phoebus, you’re proposing a law to benefit the wealthy.

Apollo:  What do you mean? I didn’t realize that you were clever as well.

Death:  Those who could do so would buy dying in old age.

Apollo:  So, you’ve decided you’re not going to do me this favor.[14] 60

Death:  Not at all. You know my ways.

Apollo:  Yes, hated by mortals and loathed by gods.

Death:  You can’t have everything that you shouldn’t have.

Apollo:  Still, you’ll comply, even though you’re very cruel.

Such a man will come to Pheres’ house, 65

sent by Eurystheus to go

after a team of horses from wintry Thrace.

After he’s been entertained here in Admetus’s house,

he’s the one who will take this woman from you by force.

And you’ll get no thanks from me, 70

and you will do this anyway and be hated by me.[15]

Death:  No matter how much you talk, you wouldn’t get any more.

The woman will go down to Hades’ house in any case.

I’m going after her and will start the rites with my sword.

This one is dedicated to the gods below, 75

the one whose hair this blade cuts from his head in consecration.[16]

(Death exits into the house.  Apollo leaves either now or at the end of his words at 71, via the ramp from which Death had arrived.)[17]

First choral song (parodos), 77-135
As was the standard structure in Greek plays, after the opening scene, we have the first song of the chorus, sung, if they are not already on stage (as they sometimes are), upon their entrance. The chorus comprises men of Pherae, friendly to Admetus. Working with traditional material, the playwright had several freedoms, none greater than whom to present as the chorus. The male chorus expresses great sympathy for Alcestis and her heroic death, and later, reservations about Admetus’s actions. These men of Pherae likely enter from the ramp opposite the one used by Apollo for his exit (see the opening note). The song presents a common metrical pattern, namely chanted anapestic rhythm followed by lyrics. (Anapests could be either chanted or sung.) But, atypically, here sung sections of anapests are also interlaced between the pairs of strophes/antistrophes (93-9 and 105-11) and these sections are shared by individual members of the chorus. (Changes in speakers are indicated with a dash in the translation.) The motivation for their arrival is to learn what is happening in the house, and this allows the playwright further opportunity to explore the living/dying motif and to focus our attention on the house.

(The chorus, comprising men of Pherae, enters from the ramp opposite the one used by Death.)

Chorus:  What is this stillness before the palace?

Why is Admetus’s house[18] totally silent?

—And there is no friend nearby

to say whether the queen is dead 80

and we should mourn her or whether Pelias’s child

lives and still sees this light,

Alcestis, who seems to me

and to everyone

the best wife[19] to her husband.85

 

Strophe Α[20]

—Does anyone hear groaning  

or hands beating throughout the house  

or lamentation as if it’s all over? 

No, and no servant 

stands at the gates.  90

Paean[21], may you appear  

—If she were dead, they would not be silent.   

—How do you know this?  I am not so confident.  What encourages you? 95

—How could Admetus have held his noble wife’s  

funeral bereft of mourners? 

 

Antistrophe A 

—Before the gates I see no  

bowl of spring water, as is customary  

at the gates of those who have died. 100

—And no lock of hair before the door,  

which befits grief for the dead,  

and no beating is heard  

of young women’s hands. 

 

—But this is the appointed day. 105

—What do you mean? 

—When she must go beneath the earth. 

—You’ve touched my soul, you’ve touched my heart. 

—When the good are totally worn away,  

whoever has been loyal from the beginning 110

must mourn.

 

Strophe Β  

Nor is there any place  

on earth where one could make  

a voyage—either to Lycia[24]

or to the waterless lands 115

of Ammon— 

and rescue this poor woman’s  

life; sheer death  

comes near. No longer do I know

what altar of the gods where sheep are slaughtered I should approach. 120

 

Antistrophe B 
If only[25] Phoebus’s child
saw this light with his eyes,  

she would have left behind the gloomy realms 

and the gates of Hades 125

and come back. 

For he used to raise up the dead,  

until Zeus killed him  

with a lightning bolt.   

But now, how can I still expect her to be alive?130

Everything is over

for the king and his family.

Sacrifices teeming with blood

fill the altars of all the gods,

but there’s no cure for these ills.[26] 135

First Episode, 136-212 
The action between choral songs was called an episode (epeisodion). Since the action of Greek tragedy occurs outdoors in front of a structure, here representing Admetus’s house, what occurs within (or beyond the play’s setting) is not directly seen and only rarely heard by the audience but is conveyed by others. Alcestis’s servant describes those interior actions (note “but what she did inside the house you’ll be amazed to hear,” 156). Material in tragedy is often presented in two modes—sometimes in lyric and then in speech; at other times, as here, first by second-hand description and then by first-hand observation. By choosing Alcestis’s household servant for this role, Euripides presents the intimate details of her final moments and her powerful attachment to her marriage bed, a symbol of what drives her action—devotion to her husband (“reluctant to betray you and my husband, / I’m dying,” 180-1).

Chorus: But here comes one of the servants from the house,

in tears. What fortune will I hear?

It’s excusable to grieve if something has happened

to your masters. But whether the woman is still alive

or is dead, we’d like to know. 140

(A servant has emerged from the house.)

Servant:  You could say she is alive and is dead.

Chorus:  How can the same person be both dead and alive?

Servant:  She’s already stooped forward and breathing her last.

Chorus: There’s no longer any hope of saving her life?

Servant:  No, for the appointed day is working its violence. 145

Chorus:  So, isn’t what is fitting being done for her?

Servant:  The finery is ready in which her husband will bury her.

Chorus:  Miserable one, what a man you are and what a wife you’re losing!

Servant:  My master won’t know this until he feels it happen.[27]

Chorus:  Let her know that she will die with glory,[28]150

and is by far the best woman under the sun.

Servant:  How is she not the best? Who will say otherwise?

What would the woman who surpassed her

be called?  How could anyone show better

that she honors her husband more than by willingly dying for him?  155

This the whole city knows,

but you’ll be amazed to hear what she did inside the house.

When she realized the appointed day

had arrived, she washed her white skin with water

from the river, selected from the cedar chambers 160

her clothing and finery, dressed appropriately,

stood before Hestia[29] and prayed:

“Lady, since I am going beneath the earth,

supplicating you for the last time, I will ask

that you care for my orphaned[30] children—to him join 165

a loving wife and to her a noble husband.

And may my children not die before their time,

just as I, their mother, am doing, but may they be prosperous

and live out a joyous life in their fatherland.”

She approached and wreathed all the altars

throughout Admetus’s house, breaking off leaves 170

from myrtle[31] branches, and prayed

with no tears, no groaning, and the impending doom

did not change her skin’s beautiful color.

Then she burst into the bedroom and onto the bed

and there she broke into tears and said this:  175

Marriage bed,[32] where I gave up my maiden

virginity to this man for whose sake I’m dying,

farewell. I don’t hate you. You have destroyed me

only; for reluctant to betray you and my husband, 180

I’m dying. You another woman[33] will possess,

not more virtuous, but perhaps more fortunate.”

She fell onto the bed and kissed it, and all the bedding

was wet with the flood from her eyes.

But when she had her fill of many tears, 185

she staggered from the bed and walked stooping forward,

and often, as she was leaving the chamber, she turned around

and threw herself back onto the bed again.

Her children, as they clung to their mother’s robes,

were weeping. She would take first one and then the other 190

into her arms and kiss them since she was about to die.

All the household servants were weeping throughout the house,

pitying their mistress. And she stretched out

her right hand to each of them,[34] and none was so lowly

that she didn’t speak to them and was spoken to in turn.  195

Such are the ills in Admetus’s house.

If he had died, he’d be gone, but escaping, he has

so great a grief that he’ll never forget it.[35]

Chorus:  Certainly, Admetus is grieving at these ills

if he must be deprived of such a noble wife? 200

Servant:  He’s weeping at least, holding his dear wife in his arms

and imploring her not to betray him,[36] seeking

the impossible. For she’s fading and wasting away from her illness.

Exhausted, a piteous weight for his arms,

but nevertheless still breathing, if only a little, 205

she wishes to look at the sun’s rays

[since she will never again but now for the last time

she will look at the rays and circle of the sun].

But I’ll go and announce that you’re here.

For not everyone is well disposed to the rulers 210

so that they stand by them with good will when they suffer,

but you’ve been a friend to my masters for a long time.[37]

(Servant exits into the house.)

First Stasimon, 213-37
Although the servant has already prepared for Alcestis and Admetus’s entrance from the house, Euripides first has the chorus sing a short, emotional song of distress and prayer to underline the royal couple’s piteous situation. There are several changes of speaker within this song; whether this indicates a split (semi-) chorus or individual speakers is uncertain. In either case, this device dramatizes their collective distress. A dash indicates the changes in speaker within this song.

Chorus
Strophe Α

—O Zeus,[38] what way out from these ills could there be

and what release from the fortune

that confronts the rulers?

Will someone emerge or should I cut my hair 215

and should we already be putting on

—It’s clear, my friends, clear,[41] but still

let’s pray to the gods;

for the gods’ power is greatest. 220

find some contrivance for Admetus against these ills.

—Yes, provide a way, provide it. For also before this[43]

you found one, and now

become a savior from death

and stop murderous Hades.[44]225

Antistrophe A 

—Ah!

Child of Pheres, what you have suffered

in being deprived of your wife!

—Ai, ai!

This is worth cutting your throat

and not just hanging by your neck

from a suspended noose.[45]

—For not a loving wife 230

but the most loving

you will see die today.

(Alcestis, supported by Admetus and with servants, and accompanied by her children, begins to enter from the house.)

—Look, look:  

she’s coming out of the house with her husband. 

—Shout out, land of Pherae,  

bewail the best woman,  235

wasting away in her sickness,  

going down below the earth to Hades of the world below. 

Never will I say that marriage brings more delight

than pain, judging from the past

and seeing these fortunes 240

of the king, who has lost

this best of wives and from now on
will live a life that is no life.[46]

Kommos, 244-79 
A kommos was a song of lamentation, shared between chorus and actor. (The word kommos came from a word meaning “to beat,” this type of song being frequent in lamentation, often accompanied by beating the breast.) This song has an unusual, but not unparalleled, structure, in which amidst the matching (strophic) sung rhythms are found spoken (iambic) verses. This alternation produces a sharp contrast between the heightened lyrics of Alcestis, who, weak and gasping for life, describes a powerful vision of her imminent death, and the ordinary spoken iambic verses of Admetus pleading that she not betray him and declaring how painful her death will be for him and their children.

Strophe A 

Alcestis:  Sun, and light of the day,  

and heavenly swirlings 245

of the racing clouds. 

Admetus:  He sees you and me, two who have suffered terribly,

although we’ve done nothing to the gods to warrant your death.

Antistrophe A 

Alcestis:  O land and palace  

Admetus:  Raise yourself up, miserable one, don’t betray me, 250

but ask the gods who hold power to show pity.

Strophe B

Alcestis:  I see, I see[48] the two-oared boat  

on the lake; and the dead’s ferryman,  

Charon[49] with his hand on the tiller  

is already calling me: “Why do you delay?  255

Hurry up! You’re slowing me down.” He hastens me along  

with these words in his hurry. 

Admetus:  Oimoi! This is a bitter voyage for me

that you speak of. Unfortunate one, how we are suffering!

Antistrophe B 

Alcestis:  Someone is leading[50] me, leading me, leading me 260

(don’t you see?) to the halls of the dead— 

winged Hades[51] looking 

from beneath his gleaming dark brows.   

What are you doing? Let me go! What a journey  

I embark on, most unhappy! 265

Admetus:  Pitiful to your friends and especially to me

and our children, we who share this grief in common.

Epode 

Alcestis:  Let me go, let me go now!   

Lay me down. My legs have no strength.   

Hades is near, and dark  

night creeps over my eyes.   

Children, children, your mother 270

is no more, no more.   

Children, may you fare well and continue to see this light.

AdmetusOimoi! These words are painful to hear

and greater to me than any death.

Don’t by the gods, don’t by the children you will orphan, 275

don’t have the heart to betray me.

No, get up, endure!

For if you are gone, I would be no more.

We depend entirely on you—whether we live or not.

For it is your love we venerate.[52]

Second Episode, 280-434 
The intensity of Alcestis’s description of her immediate death is now followed by argument, first from Alcestis, then from Admetus. Overall, this scene is akin to, if not properly, an agôn (see note on 606-860). Each of two characters delivers an argument in a set speech (rhêsis), separated by a two-line choral comment; the two speakers then engage in stichomythia. Most scholars do not consider this set of speeches an agôn because the two are not really making opposing arguments. The common agôn structure, however, underscores that Admetus not only does not seek to rebut Alcestis but goes far beyond her requests.

280-324. Alcestis’s speech has two core sections, first (280-98) laying out the extraordinary nature of her action and second (299-322) explaining what she wants in return from her husband for her sacrifice. After a brief introduction (“I want to tell you . . . , ” 280-1), Alcestis makes clear that she did not have to die on his behalf and could have married any other Thessalian (282-6), but she did so unwilling to live without him (287-9). She continues to say that his parents betrayed him when they might well have died for him (290-8). She then (299-324) dismisses the argument (So be it.) and moves on to her request of Admetus, namely that he not remarry, detailing the ills awaiting their children, especially their daughter, from a stepmother (299-319).  She concludes by referring to her imminent death and with farewells to her husband and children (320-5).

Alcestis:  Admetus, since you see my situation, 280

I want to tell you before I die what I wish.

I honored you and arranged

for you to see this light at the cost of my life

and I’m dying on your behalf, although I didn’t have to die,

but could have gotten as a husband[53] any Thessalian I wanted, 285

and dwelt in a prosperous and royal house.

But I was unwilling to live torn away from you

with our children fatherless, and I didn’t spare

my youth, although I had what I enjoyed.

And yet your father and mother betrayed you, 290

when they could have fittingly stopped living

and fittingly saved their son and died in glory.

For you were their only child, and there was no hope

of producing other children if you were dead.

And I would be alive and so would you for the rest of our time, 295

and you would not be bereft of your wife, lamenting her

has caused these things.[54]

So be it. Remember that you owe me gratitude for this.

I will never ask you for what’s of equal value 300

(for nothing is more valuable than a life)[55]

but what’s just, as you’ll admit. For you love these

children no less than I do, if you have any sense.

Endure, rearing[56] them to be masters of the house,

and do not marry and bring in a stepmother over these children, 305

some woman inferior to me, who in envy will raise

a hand against your and my children.[57]

Don’t do this! I’m begging you.

For a stepmother coming in later is an enemy

to the former children, no milder than a viper.  310

And a son has his father as a great tower of defense,

[whom he spoke to and was spoken to in turn,]

but you, my child, how will you pass honorably from your maidenhood,

when your father has taken who knows what sort of wife?

May she not spread some ugly rumor about you 315

at the peak of your youth and destroy your marriage prospects![58]

For your mother will never attend you at your wedding

nor be present to give you encouragement in childbirth,

when nothing, child, is kinder than one’s mother.

For I must die. And this ill comes to me 320

not tomorrow or the day after,

but immediately I’ll be counted among those who are no more.

Farewell and enjoy life, my children! You, my husband,

may boast that you married the best wife,[59]

and you, children, that she was your mother.  325

Chorus:  Be assured of this.  I do not shrink from speaking on his behalf.

He will do this unless he’s lost his mind.[60]

Lines 328-68.
Admetus’s response to Alcestis’s speech is almost identical in length (42 lines, compared with 45). He immediately accepts her request with his first words (“don’t fear”) and then expands it greatly. Not only will he not remarry, but he will mourn his wife for all time, put an end to all revelry and music in the household, and himself never again engage in song, but he will have fashioned for his bed an icon in her shape and image. He will also instruct their children to place him in the same coffin as hers, so that he may never be separated from her, even in death. Critics have wondered about the tone of this speech: with its extreme and even bizarre promises, was it meant to be taken seriously? There is no question that Admetus goes much further than simply granting Alcestis’s request that he not remarry and that especially to a modern audience the statue of Alcestis for his bed seems macabre. But the extraordinary proclamations are congruent with the overall tenor of the drama, in which the overturning of norms and extraordinary actions abound.

Admetus:  This will be, this will be—don’t fear—since both

while I had you when you were living, also in death you alone

will be called my wife, and no Thessalian bride[61] 330

instead of you will ever address me as her husband.

There is no woman from such a noble family

nor so surpassingly beautiful either.

I have enough children. I pray to the gods that I may take delight

in them; for I didn’t take such delight in you.[62]  335

I will bear my grief for you not for a year

loathing her who bore me and hating

my father. For they were dear in word, not in deed.

But for my life you offered up what was dearest 340

and saved me. May I not grieve

when I’ve lost such a wife as you?[64]

I will put an end to revels and gatherings of banqueters

and wreaths and the music that used to resonate through my house.

For never again would I touch the lyre 345

nor raise my spirit to sing loudly to the

Libyan pipe. For you have taken from me the joy of living.[65]

But your figure fashioned by the hands

of skilled craftsmen will be laid out in my bed,

and falling upon it, enveloping it in an embrace, 350

and calling your name I will think that I’m holding my loving wife

in my arms, even though I won’t be holding you.

A frigid pleasure, I realize, but even so

I might relieve the weight on my soul. And visiting

in my dreams you would gladden me. For it’s sweet 355

to see loved ones even in the night, however long we can.

And if I had the voice and music of Orpheus[66]

so that I could enchant with songs Demeter’s daughter

or her husband and get you out of Hades,

I would have gone below, and neither Pluto’s[67] dog 360

nor soul-ferrying Charon at the oar would have prevented

me from bringing you alive to this light.

But as things are, wait for me there whenever I die,[68]

and prepare a house where you will live with me.

For I will instruct these children to place me 365

in the same cedar coffin as you and to lay me side by side

next to you. For not even in death may I ever

be apart from you, the only one faithful to me.
Chorus:  I, too, will bear this painful grief for her with you,

as friend to friend.  For she is worthy of this.370

Alcestis:  Children, you yourselves have heard

your father say that he won’t ever marry another woman

over you and won’t dishonor me.[69]

Admetus:  Yes, I affirm this now and I will accomplish it.

Alcestis:  On these conditions, receive these children from my hand. 375

Admetus:  I receive them as a dear gift from a dear hand.

Alcestis:  Now become the mother for these children in my stead.

Admetus:  I absolutely must since they have been deprived of you.

Alcestis:  Children, when I ought to be living, I am going below.

Admetus:  Oimoi! What am I to do bereft of you? 380

Alcestis:  Time will soothe you.[70] The dead are nothing.

Admetus:  Take me with you,[71] by the gods I pray, take me below.

Alcestis:  My dying on your behalf is enough.

Admetus:  Divine power,[72] what a wife you’re taking from me!

Alcestis:  And now my vision is growing weak and dark. 385

Admetus:  I am no more, if you’re really going to leave me, my wife.

Alcestis:  You should speak of me as one who is no longer anything.

Admetus:  Lift up your face, don’t leave your children![73]

Alcestis:  Not willingly.[74] But fare well, my children.

Admetus:  Look at them, look.  Alcestis: I am no longer anything. 390

Admetus:  What are you doing? Are you abandoning us?

        Alcestis:  Fare well.

Admetus:  I’m ruined, wretched me.

 

Chorus:  She’s gone,[75] Admetus’s wife is no more.[76]

Monody, 393-415 
Speaking (or singing) roles for child characters were uncommon in Greek tragedy and may have been a Euripidean innovation. Here, Alcestis and Admetus’s son (unnamed in the play but called Eumelus in myth), sings a short strophic song (interrupted by two lines of spoken verse by Admetus). Its pathos is underscored by the child’s direct appeal to his mother, his language (note “mommy” and “I am your chick”), and his repeated laments of his now motherless life. It is worth noting that, while their children were part of the basic myth, they did not need to be emphasized, did not need to be presented on stage, and certainly did not have to be given a (singing) role. The children not only add pathos to Alcestis’s death but complicate her sacrifice. She is simultaneously saving her husband and putting her children at risk.

Child:

Strophe 

Oh, for my fortune. Mommy has gone  

below and is no more 

under the sun, father, 395

but unfortunate one, she has abandoned me to an orphan’s life.   

Look at her eyes  

and her arms stretched out beside her.   

Listen, listen, mother, I beg you. 400

I, mother, 

I am your chick, falling  

on your lips as I call on you.

Admetus:  She can’t hear or see you. And so, you two

and I are struck by a heavy fortune.405

Antistrophe

I am young, father, and sent off on my own,  

I am left without my dear mother.   

I have suffered horribly  

and you, my sister, have shared this suffering with me. 410

<     

> Father,                                                

in vain, in vain you married and didn’t reach 

old age with her.   

For she died first. And with you gone,  

mother, the house is ruined.[77]415

Chorus:  Admetus, you must bear these misfortunes.

Not at all are you the first nor the last mortal

to have lost a noble wife.[78] Realize

that death is a debt we all owe.

Admetus:  Yes, I know this, and this ill has not swooped upon me 420

suddenly. Knowing this, I’ve been tormented for some time.

But since I am going to hold the funeral procession for this corpse,

stand near and stay here singing

a paean without libation[79] to the god below.

And I command all the Thessalians I rule over 425

to share in my grief for this woman

by shaving your heads and donning black robes.

Those who yoke four-horse teams and those who ride single

horses, take a blade and cut your horses’ manes.

Let there be no sound of pipes or lyre throughout the city 430

until twelve moons have come and gone.[80]

For I’ll bury no corpse dearer

than this one or better to me. She’s worthy

of honor from me since she alone is dead instead of me.

(Admetus and his children enter the palace, accompanied by attendants carrying the corpse of Alcestis.)

Second Stasimon, 435-475
The first large movement of the play, culminating in Alcestis’s death, is rounded off by a song praising her virtues, mixed with lamentation. It is addressed to Alcestis throughout and echoes several of the motifs already struck in the first part of the drama, extending her (exceptional) fame even to other lands and future times.

Chorus:

Strophe A 

Daughter of Pelias, 435

may you fare well as you dwell  

in the sunless house of Hades.   

Let Hades the dark-haired god know 

and the old man who sits  

at the oar and the rudder,  

the ferryman of the dead, 440

that he has carried by far, by far the best of wives  

across the lake of Acheron  

on his two-oared boat.

Antistrophe A

and in songs not sung to the lyre  

when at Sparta the recurring season  

of the Carnean month[83] comes ’round  

and the moon is full all night long, 450

Such is the theme of songs you have left  

for poets in your death.   

Strophe B 

I wish I had the power to send you to the light 

out of Hades’ dwelling  

and Cocytus’s[86] streams,  

rowing over the waters below.    

For you, only you, dear among women, dared, 460

<dared> to exchange your life  

to keep your husband  

out of Hades. May the earth[87]

fall lightly on you from above, woman. And if  

your husband should take a new wife,[88] he would be 

by me and by your children.465

Antistrophe B 

His mother was not willing  

to cover her body in the earth  

on her son’s behalf, nor was his aged father  

<                                                               >  

and they didn’t dare to rescue the one they gave birth to,  

heartless ones, even though their hair was already white.  470

But you, a young woman  

in her prime, dying on behalf of a young man, are gone.   

May I find such a union  

with a loving wife. For this  

is a rare lot in life. Indeed,  

she would live with me causing no pain  

throughout my life. 475

Third Episode, 476-567 
With the death of Alcestis and the following full-throated song of praise, the drama now moves in a new direction.  Admetus has just exited into the palace with clear plans to bury his wife, and so the audience might expect him to enter after this song with the funeral bier.  The audience also knows from Apollo in the prologue, albeit without details, that Heracles will come to rescue Alcestis. It is the latter movement that follows from the just-completed song. With Heracles’ arrival, the motif of hospitality (xenia) returns to the fore as he is persuaded to be entertained by Admetus, despite the latter’s grief. In fact, the word xenia, in various forms, occurs 14 times in this scene, is Heracles’ very first word when he arrives on stage, and the very last one from Admetus at the scene’s end. See more in note 553ff.

476ff. The brisk dialogue between the chorus leader and Heracles highlights the latter’s fearless nature (he takes on all challenges, even if he must risk death), and prepares us for the huge challenge he will shortly undertake.

(Heracles entersfrom the same ramp as Death used.)[89]

Heracles:  Strangers, townsmen of this land of Pherae,

do I find Admetus at home?

Chorus:  Pheres’ child is at home, Heracles,

but tell me what need brings you

to the land of the Thessalians, to this city of Pherae? 480

Heracles:  I’m carrying out a labor for Eurystheus of Tiryns.[90]

Chorus:  Where are you going? What wandering are you bound to?

Heracles:  I’m going after Thracian Diomedes[91] four-horse chariot.

Chorus:  How then will you be able to? Do you really not˙ know this host?

Heracles:  No, I don’t. I have not yet gone to the land of the Bistonians.[92] 485

Chorus:  You can’t subdue the horses without a fight.

Heracles:  Nor can I refuse labors.

Chorus:  Then you’ll either kill him and return or die and remain there.

Heracles:  This wouldn’t be the first race I run.

Chorus:  If you prevail over their master, what would you gain? 490

Heracles:  I will bring the horses back to the ruler of Tiryns.

Chorus:  It isn’t easy to get a bit in their mouths.

Heracles:  Yes, it is, unless they breathe fire from their nostrils.

Chorus:  But they butcher men with their agile jaws.

Heracles:  You’re talking about the fodder for mountain beasts, not for horses. 495

Chorus:  You would see their mangers stained with streams of blood.

Heracles:  The one who reared these horses, whom does he boast as his father?

Chorus:  Ares. He’s the lord of the gold-rich Thracian shield.

Heracles:  This labor you mention matches my destiny

(which is always hard and goes uphill) 500

if I must do battle with all of

Ares’ children, first Lycaon,

then Cycnus,[93] and now going on this third

contest to engage with these horses and their master.

But there is no one who will ever see Alcmene’s child 505

shudder before an enemy’s hand.

Chorus: Look, he himself comes from the house,

Admetus,[94] ruler of this land.

(Admetus has entered from the palace.)

Admetus:[95] Good wishes,[96] son of Zeus and from the line of Perseus.[97]

Heracles:  And good wishes to you, Admetus, lord of the Thessalians. 510

Admetus:  I wish it could be so. I know you mean well.

Heracles:  Why have you cut your hair in mourning?

Admetus:  I am going to bury a corpse today.

Heracles:  May god keep harm away from your children!

Admetus:  The children I’ve fathered are alive in the house. 515

Heracles:  Your father at least was of the right age[98] if he’s gone.

Admetus:  He is alive and so is the one who gave me birth, Heracles.

Admetus:  There are two responses I can give about her.

Heracles:  Are you saying she’s dead or still alive? 520

Admetus:  She both is and is no more, and this pains me.[100]

Heracles:  I know nothing more. You’re speaking obscurely.

Admetus:  Don’t you know the fate she had to meet?

Heracles:  I know: she promised to die on your behalf.

Admetus:  How then is she still alive if she agreed to do this? 525

Heracles:  Ah! Don’t weep for your wife in advance; put it off until then!

Admetus:  The one about to die is dead,[101] and although not yet dead is no more.

Heracles:  Being and not being are thought to be distinct.

Admetus:  You judge in this way, Heracles, and I in that.

Heracles:  Why then are you lamenting? Who of your dear ones is dead? 530

Admetus:  A woman. We were just talking about a woman.

Heracles:  Someone from outside the family[102] or kin to you?

Admetus:  From outside, but otherwise very much connected to the household.

Heracles:  How then did she die in your house?

Admetus:  After her father died, she was raised here as an orphan.[103] 535

Heracles:  Alas!

I wish I had found you not in mourning!

Admetus:  What are you intending to do when you stitch your words so craftily?[104]

Heracles:  I will go to the hearth of other hosts.[105]

Admetus:  You can’t, my lord! May such an ill not come to me!

Heracles:  A guest is a bother to mourners if he arrives at that time.[106] 540

Admetus:  The dead are dead.[107] So, go inside the house.

Heracles:  It’s disgraceful for guests to feast alongside mourners.

Admetus: The guest quarters we’ll lead you to are separate.[108]

Heracles:  Let me go and I’ll owe you a thousand thanks.

Admetus:  It’s not possible for you to go to another man’s hearth.  545

You,[109] lead the way for him and open up the guest quarters

that are set off within the house, and tell the servants

to lay out food in abundance. And close

the inner doors tightly. For it is not appropriate for guests

as they feast to hear lamentations and be pained. 550

(A servant leads Heracles inside the palace.)

Chorus:[110]  What are you doing? With so much misfortune pressing upon you,

Admetus, how do you dare to entertain guests? How are you so obtuse?

Admetus:  But if I had driven this guest[111] from the house and city

when he arrived, would you have praised me more?

No, you wouldn’t have, since my misfortune would have been no 555

smaller, and I would have been less of a host.[112]

And there would have been this further ill in addition to the current ones,

that my house would be called hateful to guests.

And I myself have him as the best of hosts

whenever I go to the arid land of Argos.[113] 560

Chorus:  So why did you hide your present misfortune,

when, as you yourself say, it is a friend who has come?

Admetus:  He would never have been willing to enter the house,

if he had known anything of my miseries.

And in doing this, I realize, someone will think I’m not in my right mind 565

and he won’t commend me. But my house does not know how
to thrust away
[114] and dishonor guests.

(Admetus returns into the palace.)

Third Stasimon, 568-605 
This song celebrates the munificent hospitality of Admetus’s house and the king’s expansive domain. It contains two strophic pairs, the first devoted to a vivid description of the house’s liberality and Apollo’s stay there; the second turns to the result of this hospitality and then the current situation, with each of the stanzas in the second pair marking a development, with “therefore” and “and now” as the first word respectively of the stanzas.

Chorus:

Strophe A 

O most hospitable house[115] of an always generous man,  

even Pythian[116] Apollo with his splendid lyre[117]570

deemed worthy to dwell in you,  

and endured becoming a shepherd  

in your pastures,  

playing on his pipe 575

pastoral marriage songs to your flocks 

throughout the sloping hills. 

Antistrophe A  

Spotted lynxes delighting in his songs also joined his flocks,  

and the tawny pride of lions[118]580

came, leaving the valley of Othrys.[119]

Phoebus, the dappled fawn  

danced to your lyre,  

coming out beyond the tall pine trees 585

with a light step,  

delighting in your joyful music.   

Strophe B

Therefore,[120] he lives in a house  

teeming with flocks beside the beautiful-flowing  

lake of Boibe.[121] He sets the boundary 590

for his arable land  

and for his plains  

at the dark stables of the sun  

and holds sway up to the harborless Aegean 595

sea coast of Pelion. 

Antistrophe B 

And now, he has opened up his house  

and received a guest-friend, while his eyes were filled with tears  

weeping over the corpse of his loving wife,  

who had just died in the house. For nobility of birth 600

Everything is found within the noble.   

I am in awe of their wisdom.   

Strong confidence[124] abides in my soul  

that the god-fearing man will fare well. 605

Fourth Episode, 606-860
Pheres, while frequently mentioned in the play, was not necessarily expected to appear, and, like Heracles, he comes from outside the palace. Thus, although not a surprise, he is unexpected, expands the scope of the action, and forces Admetus to confront from a different perspective the acceptance of his wife’s sacrifice. He also literally interrupts the action: Admetus is leading his wife’s corpse from the house, when Pheres appears. While the earlier scene of Admetus and his wife was not fully an agôn (see above on 280-434), this scene has all its classic elements. After a brief introduction (Pheres’ opening speech), the scene is composed of two set speeches of roughly equal length (629-72 ~ 675-705) from the “contestants,” with the arguments made in the first being challenged or rebutted in the second. A two-line choral buffer intervenes after the first speech (673-4) and follows (706-7) the second, and the two characters then continue their arguments almost exclusively in stichomythia, with slightly longer remarks to mark their respective departures. Euripides favored the agôn structure and almost every one of his extant plays has one (or more). Generally, the character who speaks second (the “defendant” from the judicial perspective) gets the better of the contest, and this seems to be the case here as well.

One should bear in mind, as is sometimes lost on readers, as opposed to viewers, of the play, that throughout this scene Alcestis’s corpse is on stage, a visible “commentary” on the debate played out before it. It has been suggested that this scene of an argument before the house between a young man, who has just entered from the palace, and an old man, who comes from outside, echoes the prologue with the typically youthful Apollo and the commonly depicted old Death. In the first instance, the two characters fight over Alcestis’s life; in the second, the two argue before her corpse.

(Admetus emerges from the palace with a retinue carrying out Alcestis’s corpse.)

Admetus:  Kindly men of Pherae,

attendants are now carrying aloft the body

with everything it needs to the grave and pyre.[125]

You, as is the custom, address her in death

as she exits on her last journey. 610

(Pheres enters with attendants from the same ramp used by the chorus.)

Chorus:  Look, I see your father coming at an old man’s pace,

and his attendants carrying in their hands

finery for your wife, ornaments for the dead.

Pheres:[126]  I have come to share in your misery, child.

For you have lost a noble and virtuous wife; 615

no one will deny this. But it’s necessary

to bear these things, even though they are hard to bear.
Take this finery and may it go
beneath the earth. Her body should be honored,

since she died to save your life, child, 620

and she did not make me childless nor allow me

to waste away in mournful old age deprived of you.

But for all women she made life

more glorious by enduring this noble deed.

You who saved this man[127] and stood us up 625

when we fell, fare well, and in the house of Hades

may it go well for you. I say that such marriages

benefit mortals; otherwise, it’s not worth getting married.

nor do I consider your presence that of a friend.   630

She will never wear this finery of yours;

for she will be buried not needing anything from you.

You ought to have shared in my grief then when I was dying.

But you stood out of the way and allowed someone else,

who was young, to die, while you were old. Now you will lament this corpse?  635

nor did she who claims to have begotten me and is called

my mother give me birth, but from a slave’s blood

I was surreptitiously placed on your wife’s breast.

When you faced the test, you showed who you are, 640

and I don’t consider myself to be your child.

In truth, you stand out beyond all in cowardice,

since, although of such an age and having reached the end of life,

you were unwilling and did not dare to die 645

on your child’s behalf, but you two allowed

this woman from outside the family[130] to do this, whom I would justly

consider both mother and father, her alone.

And yet you could have engaged in this fine contest

if you had died on your child’s behalf, and in any case

the remaining span of your life was short.  650

[And she and I could have lived the rest of our time,

and I would not be bereft and grieving at my ills.]

Furthermore, whatever a fortunate man should experience,

you’ve experienced. You lived the prime of your life as ruler,

and had me, your child, as a successor of your house,[131] 655

so that you were not going to die childless

and leave an orphaned house for others to plunder.

Certainly, you won’t say that you handed me over to die

because I dishonored your old age, when I was especially

respectful of you. And this is the thanks 660

both you and the one who bore me gave in return.

who will care for you in old age, dress your corpse

and lay you out when you die.

For I will not bury you[133] with this hand of mine!  665

I am dead[134] as far as you’re concerned. And if I came upon someone else

as my savior and see the rays of light, I count myself
that one’s child
[135] and loving support in old age.
Pointlessly, then, the old pray for death,[136]

complaining about old age and the long span of life.  670

But if death comes near, no one wants

to die, and old age is no longer a burden to them.

Chorus:  Stop, you two! The present misfortune is enough.

Child, don’t provoke your father’s mind.

Pheres:[137] Child, whom do you think you’re harassing with your abuse, 675

some Lydian or Phrygian of yours bought with silver?

Don’t you know that I am a Thessalian[138] and legitimately born

as a free man from a Thessalian father?

You insult me excessively, and hurling a young man’s words

at me you will not, when you’ve struck me, get off just like that.  680

I begot you and reared you to be ruler of this house,

For I didn’t receive this as a custom from our ancestors—

for fathers to die for their children—nor is it Greek.

It’s your own doing whether you are unfortunate or fortunate.  685

You have the things you should get from me:

you rule over many and I will leave you vast acres of land;

for I received the same things from my father.

So, what is the injustice I’ve done you? What am I depriving you of?

Don’t die for me,[140] and I won’t die for you.  690

Do you enjoy seeing the light? But you think your father doesn’t enjoy this?

Yes, I consider that the time below is long,

and living brief, but sweet nevertheless.

See how you were fighting shamelessly not to die,

and you are alive escaping your destined lot, 695

by killing this one.[141] Then you talk about my cowardice,

basest one, when you’ve been bested by a woman,[142]

who died for you, the fine young man?

Cleverly you found a way to never die,

if you will always persuade your successive wives 700

to die on your behalf. And then you abuse your dear ones

because they’re not willing to do this when you yourself are a coward?

Be quiet.[143] And if you love your own life,

imagine that everyone loves theirs. And if you revile us,

you will be reviled frequently and truthfully.  705

Chorus:  Too many nasty things have been said, both now and before.

Stop, sir, insulting your child.

Admetus:  Speak after I have spoken. And if you are pained hearing

the truth, you shouldn’t have wronged me.

Pheres:  But if I died for you, I would be committing a greater wrong.[144] 710

Admetus:  Is it the same thing for a man in his prime and an old man to die?

Pheres:  With one life, not two, we are obliged to live.

Admetus:  Fine, may you live longer than Zeus![145]

Pheres:  You curse your father, although he’s done you no injustice?

Admetus:  Yes, since I realized that you desire a long life. 715

Pheres:  But aren’t you carrying out this corpse instead of yourself?

Admetus:  This is the sign of your cowardice, most vile man.

Pheres:   At least she didn’t die at my hands. You won’t say this.

Admetus:  Alas!

May you come to need me at some point!

Pheres:  Woo many women, so that more may die.[146] 720

Admetus:  This reproach is yours since you weren’t willing to die.

Pheres:  Dear is this light from the god, dear.

Admetus:  Your spirit is base and not what men possess.

Pheres:  You’re not laughing at me as you carry out an old man’s corpse.

Admetus:  Even so, you will die without honor whenever you die. 725

Pheres:  Being reviled won’t concern me when I’m dead.[147]

Admetus:  Alas, alas. How full of shamelessness is old age!

Pheres:  This one was not shameless; this one you found lacking good sense.[148]

Admetus:  Go away and let me bury this corpse.

Pheres:  I’m going. And you will bury her, yourself her murderer, 730

and you will still pay a penalty to your in-laws.[149]

Surely Acastus is no longer to be considered a man

if he doesn’t exact vengeance on you for his sister’s blood.

(Pheres, along with his servants exits via the ramp he entered from.)

Admetus:  Go now, you and the woman who lives with you,

grow old, childless, although your child lives, 735

as you deserve.  For you will not again come into the same house as me.

And if I needed to disown[150] your paternal hearth

by heralds, I would have disowned it.

But, since we must bear the ill before us,

let us proceed, so we may place the corpse on the pyre. 740

(The chorus, following Admetus and his attendants carrying Alcestis’s corpse, begins to depart at 741 chanting the next six lines;[151] they all exit by the ramp used by Death and Heracles.)

Chorus:  Oh, oh, resolute in your daring,

noble and by far the best,

fare well! May both Hermes of the underworld

and Hades receive you kindly. And if in that place also

the good have something more, may you share in it 745

as you sit beside Hades’ bride.

747ff. With the entrance of the servant from the palace, what might be called the second half of the play begins. Underscoring this movement is a new structural beginning, as in several ways this scene resembles a second prologue, echoing the first. A character (Apollo/servant) enters from the palace to a bare stage and engages with a second character who arrives shortly thereafter (Death/Heracles). In the first scene, we learn how Apollo enjoyed the xenia of Admetus; in the second, the servant describes how Heracles abuses this xenia. In the first, the necessity of Alcestis’s death is confirmed, while in the second Heracles declares his plan to overturn it. The first scene concludes with Apollo’s prediction that Heracles will come to take Alcestis away from Death by force, and here Heracles himself makes that claim and leaves to fulfill it. See more on these structural echoes in Essay.

(Servant emerges[152] from the palace.)

Servant:  I know many men[153] from every sort of land

who have come before now as guests to Admetus’s house,

and I have served them dinner. But never yet have I received

into this hearth anyone worse than this guest, 750

who first of all, although he saw that our master was in mourning,

entered the house and had the nerve to pass through the doors.

And then, even after he learned of the misfortune,

not at all temperately did he receive the meal he was offered.

Rather, if we neglected to bring something, he would urge us to bring it.  755

And taking in his hands the ivy-covered cup

he drank the unmixed[154] wine of the dark mother,

until the flame from the wine spread through him with its warmth.

He wreathed his head with myrtle branches[155]

and was howling off-key. There were two songs to hear:[156] 760

he was singing, showing no concern for the ills

in Admetus’s house, while we servants were weeping

over our mistress, keeping from the guest’s view our faces

as we shed our tears. For such was Admetus’s order.

And now I am entertaining this guest in the house, 765

some malicious thief and brigand,

while she is gone from the house, and I did not follow her

nor stretch out my hand,[157] bewailing

my mistress, who was a mother to me and to all

the household servants. For she would rescue us from countless ills 770

by softening her husband’s anger. Do I not justly

loathe the guest who has arrived during our misery?

(Heracles,[158] now wreathed, enters from the house.)

Heracles:  Hey you, why are you looking solemn and troubled?

A servant shouldn’t be gloomy towards guests

but receive them with a friendly heart.  775

But you, when you see that a friend of your master is here,

you receive him with a grim expression and frown,

concerned about a grief that doesn’t involve the household.

Come here so you may become truly wiser.

The affairs of mortals, do you know their nature? 780

I think not. How could you? But listen to me.

Death is a debt all mortals must pay,[159]

and there is no mortal who knows for certain

if he will be alive tomorrow.

For it’s unclear where fortune will proceed, 785

and it can’t be taught or captured by skill.

So, hearing this and learning from me,

enjoy yourself, drink, and consider today’s living

yours, and the rest belongs to fortune.[160]

And also honor Cypris,[161] the very sweetest of the gods 790

for mortals.  For this goddess is kindly.

All else, leave it alone, and heed my words,

if you think what I say makes sense.

And I think it does.  So, won’t you put aside your excessive sorrow

and drink with me [overcoming these fortunes[162] 795

and putting a garland ’round your head]?  I know for certain

that the drink from the cup will come upon you

and free you from the harbor of your gloomy, contracted mind.[163]

Being mortal, we must also have mortal thoughts.

Know that for all those who are solemn 800

and frown, at least if I’m the judge,

life is not truly life but misfortune.

Servant:  We know this. But our current situation

doesn’t warrant revelry and laughter.

Heracles:  The dead is a woman from outside the family.  Don’t grieve 805

too much. The masters of this house are alive.

Servant:  What do you mean they’re alive?  Don’t you know the ills in the house?

Heracles:  I do, unless your master deceived me somehow.

Servant:  He is too fond, too fond of guests.[164]

Heracles:  Should I not be treated well when the corpse is not from the family?[165]  810

Servant:  Very much she was of the family, even too much so.

Heracles:  Did he fail to tell me about some present misfortune?

Servant:  Go and fare well. The masters’ ills are our concern.

Heracles:  This word is the start of misery that doesn’t come from outside the family.

Servant:  Indeed; otherwise, I would not have been at all bothered seeing you revel. 815

Heracles:  Can it be that I’ve been terribly treated by my host?

Servant:  You didn’t come at the right time for us to receive you in the house.

[We are in grief.  And you see our shaved heads

and black robes.

Heracles:  Who has died?]

<Heracles>:  Can it be that one of his children or his aged father is gone?   820

Servant:  No, but Admetus’s wife is dead, sir.

Heracles:  What are you saying? You then still received me as a guest?

Servant:   Yes, he was ashamed to thrust you away[166] from his house.

Heracles:  Miserable man, what a spouse you have lost!

Servant:  We have all died, not her alone.  825

Heracles:  Yes, I noticed, seeing his eyes filled with tears,

his shorn hair, and his face. But he persuaded me[167]

by saying that he was burying someone from outside the family.

Against my feelings, I entered these gates

and was drinking in the house of this guest-loving man, 830

even though this was how he fared. And then I was reveling

with my head wreathed? But you, you didn’t tell me,

even though so great a calamity was pressing on the house!

Where is he burying her?  Where can I go to find him?

Servant:  You will see from the outskirts of the city a fashioned tomb 835

beside the straight road that goes to Larisa.[168]

Heracles:  My heart,[169] which has endured so much, and my hand,

now show what sort of child Tirynthian Alcmene,[170]

Electryon’s daughter, gave in birth to Zeus.

For I must save this woman who just died, 840

Alcestis, and restore her to this house

and render gratitude[171] to Admetus.

I will go and wait for Death,

the black-robed lord of the dead, and I think I will find him

drinking from the sacrifices near the tomb.  845

And if I rush him from my hiding place

and capture him, encircling him in my arms,

there is no one who could free him

suffering pains in his sides until he hands the woman over to me.

If by chance I miss my prey and he doesn’t come 850

to the blood offering,[172] I will go to the sunless home

of those below, of Kore[173] and her husband,

and beg them. And I’m confident that I’ll bring Alcestis up

so that I can place her in the hands[174] of the host

who received me into his house[175] and didn’t drive me away, 855

even though he was struck with a heavy misfortune,

but he hid this in his nobility of spirit, showing me respect.

Who of the Thessalians is more guest-loving than this man,

who among the Greeks?  Therefore, he will not say

that being noble in spirit, he did a good turn for a base man.   860

(Heracles exits[176] by the ramp taken by Admetus and attendants carrying out the dead Alcestis; the servant returns into the palace.)

861ff. The stage is empty (again) when Admetus and attendants return from the burial. They perform a kommos (see above on 244-79), after which Admetus delivers a speech in standard spoken iambic trimeters. The form of the kommos is as follows: Admetus begins with recited anapests (861-71), after which there is the first of two strophic lyric pairs (878-7 and 888-94), with the chorus singing and Admetus intermittently crying out in pain and grief. Following each of these stanzas Admetus reverts to chanted anapests (878-88 and 895-902). The second lyric pair (903-911 and 926-34) does not include Admetus’s cries, but again his chanted anapests break up the strophic pair (912-25). This varied metrical combination gives range and depth to the expression of grief and desolation that dominates Admetus’s return home. If the previous episode suggests a second prologue, this scene might be thought to be a second parodos, as the chorus arrives to an empty stage singing a song. In each instance the focus is on Admetus’s house, its eerie silence in the first case, Admetus’s inability to approach it in the latter.

(Enter Admetus and chorus.)
Admetus:  Oh,

the hateful approaches to, the hateful sight of

this bereft house!

Woe is me, woe, woe!

Where am I to go?  Where to stand?  What to say?  What not?

I wish I might die!

My mother bore me to a heavy doom indeed.  865

I envy the dead, I long for them,

I wish to live in those houses.

For I rejoice in neither seeing these rays

nor walking on the earth.

Death robbed me of such a hostage[177] 870

and handed her over to Hades.

Strophe A 

Chorus:  Go forward, forward, enter the recesses of the house. 

Admetus:  Aiai! 

Chorus:  What you have suffered deserves lamentation. 

Admetus:  Oh, oh!

Chorus: You have gone through pain, I know this clearly. 

Admetus:  Aah, aah!

Chorus:  You are bringing no help to her below. 875

Admetus:  Woe is me!

Chorus:  Never to look directly at the face  

of your loving wife is painful. 

Admetus:  You’ve reminded me of what has wounded my soul.

For what ill is greater for a man than to lose

his faithful wife. I wish I had never married 880

and lived with her in this house!

I envy mortals who don’t marry and are childless.

They have one life,[178] and to grieve for it

is a tolerable burden.

But it’s not bearable to see the illnesses of one’s children 885

and one’s marriage bed

pillaged[179] by death, when it’s possible

to be childless and unmarried always.

Antistrophe A 

Chorus:  A fortune, a fortune hard to wrestle with has come. 

Admetus:  Aiai! 

Chorus:  But you place no boundary for pain.  890

Admetus:  Oh, oh!

Chorus:  Heavy to bear, but nevertheless . . . 

Admetus: Aah!

Chorus:  Endure. You are not the first to lose . . . 

Admetus:  Woe is me!

Chorus:  a wife. Different misfortunes appear  

and crush different mortals. 

Admetus:  O, long mourning and pain for dear ones 895

below the earth!

Why did you prevent me from hurling myself

into the hollow ditch of her grave

and lying there dead with her, by far the best of women?

Hades would have gotten two lives together instead of one, 900

the most faithful to each other,

crossing together the lake below.

Strophe B 

I had a member  

of my family, whose son,  

worthy of lamentation. But even so,  

he bore this ill moderately, although childless  

and already close  

to having white hair  910

and advanced in age. 

Admetus:  O, house[181] that I see before me, how am I to enter you,

how to dwell in you, now that my fortune

has changed? Oimoi! For the difference is great.

and with wedding songs I walked inside,

and a resounding train of revelers followed,

calling us blessed, both the one who has died and me,

since we were a noble couple 920

and both from illustrious families.

But now lamentation in place of wedding songs

and black robes instead of white ones

escort me inside

to the empty marriage bed. 925

Antistrophe B 

While living a life of good fortune,  

this pain has come to you,  

with no experience of ills. But you saved  

your life and soul.  

Your wife died, she left your love behind.   930

What’s new in this? Many men 

has death already separated  

from their wives. 

935-61. Upon the conclusion of the kommos, Admetus delivers a rhêsis in which he formulates his recognition, and towards which the play has been building, namely, that life without Alcestis is not worth living. An episode with only one actor with a speaking part was highly unusual in Greek tragedy and found only here in Euripides. Admetus’s reflection is given special attention, while the climactic restoration of Alcestis is postponed.

Admetus:  Friends, I think that my wife’s lot is more fortunate935
than mine; even though it doesn’t seem so, it is.

For no grief will ever afflict her,

but with a fair name[184] she has ceased from many toils.

But I, who shouldn’t be living but escaped what was destined,

will lead a painful life. Just now I realize this.[185]  940

For how will I endure entering this house?[186]

Speaking to whom, addressed by whom,

would I meet with a pleasant entrance?  Where will I turn?

The emptiness inside will drive me out,

when I see my wife’s empty bed 945

and the chairs she used to sit on, and the dirty floors

throughout the house, and our children falling at my knees

and weeping over their mother, and those

lamenting what a mistress they’ve lost from the house.

This is how things will be in the house. But from outside 950

the weddings of Thessalians and gatherings of women

will drive me away. For I will not endure

seeing my wife’s companions.

And someone who hates me will say this:

“Look at this man living disgracefully, who couldn’t bring himself to die 955

but escaped Hades through cowardice, substituting

the woman he married. Does he then seem like a man?

And he hates his parents, even though he himself was unwilling

to die.” Such is the reputation that I will get in addition to these ills.

Why then is it more profitable for me to live, friends, 960

when I have a bad reputation and suffer badly?

(No one exits the acting area.)[187]

Fourth Stasimon, 962-1005 
The play has reached one conclusion as the sacrifice of Alcestis secured by Admetus has proved hollow. The original overturning of natural events in Admetus’s escaping death has caused, it seems, only misery and regret. This proves, the chorus proclaims, the inexorability of Necessity, the theme of this song. The song is structured in two strophic pairs, the first on the power of Necessity, the second applying the general claims to the particular case of Admetus (“you, also,” 985).

Strophe A 

I have explored the heights of poetry  

and rarefied thoughts  

and have devoted myself to countless discourses, 

and I have found nothing stronger than Necessity,[188]965

not even any drug among the Thracian tablets  

that the poet Orpheus[189] inscribed,  

nor in however many herbs 

Phoebus gave  970

cutting them[191] as remedies 

for much-suffering mortals. 

Antistrophe A 

For this goddess alone[192] it is impossible 

to approach altars or image,  

and she doesn’t listen to sacrifices. 975

Lady, may you not come to me in greater force  

than before in my life.   

with you he accomplishes this.   

And you subdue by force 980

the iron among the Chalybes[194]

and there is no sense of respect  

in your resolute spirit. 

Strophe B  

You,[195] also, the goddess has caught in the inescapable chains of her hands. 985

Endure! For you will never bring  

the dead up from below by weeping.   

Even the gods’ children[196] wither away  

in the shadows of death.   

She was dear while she was with us,  

and she will still be dear in death.  990

You yoked to your marriage bed a wife  

who was the most noble of all women.  

Antistrophe B

May your wife’s tomb be thought of not as a mound for the dead [197]995

who have passed on, but may it be honored equally  

to those of the gods, a site of reverence for travelers.   

And someone stepping  

on the inclined path will say this: 1000

“This one once died for her husband,  

and now she is a blessed spirit.[198]

Greetings, lady, may you treat me well.”   

They will address her with such words. 1005

Exodos, 1006-1163 
We have heard repeatedly that one cannot raise the dead; Admetus has learned that without his wife life is not worth living; and the just-concluded song proclaimed the ineluctable force of Necessity. The chorus has imagined Alcestis as a “spirit,” a future figure of cult. But now Heracles returns with a veiled woman, whom the audience readily assumes is Alcestis, although this is not revealed until later in the exodos. Admetus’s deception of Heracles about the status of the dead woman is echoed in Heracles’ deception of Admetus about the status of the veiled woman. The self-sacrifice drama will now be fully overturned by the rescue drama.

(Heracles enters from the same direction by which he exited, leading a veiled woman.)

Chorus: Look, he’s here,[199] Alcmene’s son, it seems,

approaching your hearth, Admetus.

Admetus, and not hold reproaches in his heart

in silence. I thought I was owed the chance to be proved your friend 1010

by standing with you in your troubles.

But you didn’t mention to me that the corpse laid out for burial

was your wife’s; rather you welcomed me as a guest into your house,

as if you were dealing with a calamity that didn’t involve the family.

And I wreathed my head and poured libations to the gods 1015

while I was in your house as it suffered misfortune.

And I blame you, I blame[201] you for being treated like this.

But I don’t want to pain you in your woes.

I will tell you why I have turned back and come here:

take this woman[202] and keep her safe for me 1020

until I come here leading the Thracian horses,

after killing the ruler of the Bistonians.

But if I suffer what I pray I may not (rather, may I return!)

I give her to serve in your house.

She came into my hands with great labor.[203]  1025

For I came upon some men organizing

a public contest, a worthy labor for athletes,

and I bring this one, getting her as a prize[204] there.

Those who won in the minor contests were given

horses to lead off, but those in turn who won the greater contests, 1030

boxing and wrestling, received herds of oxen.

And the woman followed along with them. And having come upon the contest,

it would have been disgraceful for me to pass over this glorious gain.

But just as I said, you must take care of this woman.

She’s not stolen, but I come here after getting her with much toil. 1035

Admetus:  It was not dishonoring you[206] nor considering you among my enemy[207]

that I hid my wife’s wretched lot.

But this would have been one pain on top of another,

if you had headed out to the house of another host.  1040

It was enough for me to lament my trouble.

But the woman, if it’s somehow possible,[208] I ask you, lord,

bid some other Thessalian[209] to keep her,

someone who’s not suffered as I have. For you have many

hosts in Pherae. Don’t remind me of my woes.  1045

I wouldn’t be able to keep from crying

if I were to see this one in the house. Don’t add a further illness

when I’m already sick. For I’m weighed down enough with misfortune.

For she is young, as is clear from her clothing and jewelry.  1050

Will she then live in the men’s quarters?

And how will she be unviolated living among young men?

For it’s not easy to hold back a young man in his prime,

Heracles.  My concern here is for you.

Or should I lead her into the dead woman’s room[211] and look after her?  1055

And how am I to lead her into that woman’s bed?

I fear blame from two sides, from the citizens,

lest one reproach me for falling into bed with a young woman

and betraying the one who saved me;

and I must have great concern for the dead woman 1060

(she deserves my reverence). But you, woman,

whoever you are, know that you have the same shape

as Alcestis and resemble her in body.

Oimoi! By the gods, take this woman away

from my eyes; don’t slay me when I’m already slain.  1065

For looking at her I think I see my wife.

And she stirs up my heart, and streams of tears break

forth from my eyes. Oh, wretched me,

since just now[212] I am tasting this bitter grief!

Chorus:  I couldn’t say anything good about your fortune.   1070

But one must endure the god’s gift, whatever it is.[213]

Heracles:[214] I wish I had so much power that I could bring
your wife to the light
[215] from the dwellings
below and repay you this favor.

Admetus:  I know clearly that you’d like to. But what good is this wish?  1075

The dead cannot return to the light.

Heracles:  Don’t be excessive then, but bear things appropriately.

Admetus:  It’s easier to give advice than to endure when you’ve suffered.

Heracles:  What would you accomplish if you wish to lament always?

Admetus:  I recognize this myself, but some desire[216] incites me.  1080

Heracles:  Yes, love for the dead incites your tears.

Admetus:  She destroyed me still more than I can say.

Heracles:  You lost a noble wife. Who will deny it?

Admetus:  So much so that I no longer enjoy living.

Heracles:  Time will soothe this hurt,[217] but now it’s still fresh for you. 1085

Admetus:  You could say time if time means death.

Heracles: A wife and a new marriage will end this longing of yours.

Admetus:   Shut up! What a thing you’ve said! I wouldn’t have thought this of you.

Heracles: What? You mean you won’t get married, but your bed will remain empty?

Admetus:  There is no woman who will lie with me.  1090

Heracles:  Do you really think you’re helping the one who died?

Admetus:  She must be honored, wherever she is.

Heracles:  I commend you, I commend you.  But you will be thought foolish.

[Admetus:  You will never call me a bridegroom.

Heracles:  I praise you for being faithful to your wife.] 1095

Admetus:  May I die if I betray her, even though she is no more.

Heracles:  Now receive this one into your house, showing your noble character.

Admetus:  No, I beg you by Zeus who begot you!

Heracles:  And yet you’ll be making a mistake if you don’t do this.

Admetus:  And if I do it, my heart will be stung with pain.  1100

Heracles:  Yield.[218]  For this favor may prove to be timely.

Admetus:  Alas!

I wish you had never gotten her from the contest.

Heracles:  But nevertheless, you are sharing in my victory.

Admetus:  Thanks. But let the woman go away!

Heracles:  She’ll go if she must. But first consider if she must. 1105

Admetus:  She must, unless you’re going to be angry with me.

Heracles:  I know something that makes me eager for this.

Admetus:  Okay, you win.[219] But I’m not pleased by what you’re doing.

Heracles:  There will come a time when you’ll praise me. Just obey me.

Admetus: (To servants) Bring her in if I must receive her into the house.   1110

Heracles:  I would not hand the woman over to your servants.

Admetus:  So, you yourself lead[220] her into the house, if you wish.

Heracles:  No, I will place her into your hands.

Admetus:  I wouldn’t touch her, but she may enter the house.

Heracles:  Only your right hand do I trust. 1115

Admetus:  Lord, you’re forcing me to do this when I don’t want to.

Heracles:  Dare to hold out your hand and touch the stranger.

Admetus:  See, I hold it out, as if cutting off a Gorgon’s head.[221]

Heracles:  Do you have her?[222]

      Admetus:  Yes, I have her.

       Heracles:  Keep her safe now and you will say

that Zeus’s son is a noble guest.  1120

Look at her,[223] see if she seems to resemble

your wife at all. And in your good fortune, be freed of pain.

Admetus:  Gods, what am I to say? This is an unexpected marvel.

Do I truly see my wife,

or does some god’s mocking joy knock me from my wits? 1125

Admetus:  But see that this is not an apparition from those below.

Heracles:  This is no necromancer that you made a guest-friend.

Admetus:  But I’m looking at my wife whom I buried?

Heracles:  Exactly. But I’m not surprised that you don’t believe your fortune.  1130

Admetus:  May I touch her? May I speak to her as my living wife?

Heracles:  Speak to her. For you have all that you wished for.

Admetus:  O face and form of my dearest wife,

I hold you beyond expectation when I thought I’d never see you again.

Heracles:  You hold her, but let there be no envy from the gods![225] 1135

Admetus:  O, noble offspring of greatest Zeus,

may you prosper and may your father who begot you

keep you safe!  For you were the only one to set right my situation.

How did you guide her to this light from down below?

Heracles:  By joining in battle the spirit who controlled her.[226]  1140

Admetus:  Where do you say you engaged in this contest with Death?

Heracles:  Right by the tomb, seizing him in my arms by ambush.

Admetus:  But why in the world does this woman stand in silence?

Heracles:  It’s not yet permitted for you to hear
her voice
,[227] until she is purified from her consecration1145

to the nether gods, and the third day[228] comes.

But lead her inside, and for the rest of time,

Admetus, be just and respect your guests.

Farewell. I will go to carry out

the labor that lies before me for the ruler, Sthenelus’s son.[229]  1150

Admetus:  Stay here[230] and share our hearth with us.

Heracles:  Another time, but now I must press on.
(Heracles departs in the direction he first arrived from.)

Admetus:  Well, good fortune to you, and may your journey bring you home.

And I command the citizens[231] and the whole tetrarchy

to set up song and dance to celebrate this good fortune 1155

and to fill the altars with the smoke from bull sacrifices.

For now we have changed to a better life

than before. I will not deny that I am fortunate.

(Admetus exits with the veiled Alcestis into the palace.)

Many things the gods accomplish beyond expectation.  1160

And the expected was not accomplished,

and a god found a way for the unexpected.

Such is how this matter turned out.

(The chorus departs down the ramp they first entered on.)

 

 

 


  1. The play’s first words not only identify its setting but stress the thematic importance of the house /household of Admetus. Other Greek plays also open with a key word or phrase; cf. Agamemnon (“gods”), Oedipus the King (“children”), and Bacchae (“I’ve come back”). This same phenomenon is prominent in Homer’s epics: Iliad (“wrath”) and Odyssey (“man”).
  2. 3ff. The audience would have been readily familiar with a detail of this myth: Asclepius’s crime leading to Zeus’s punishment was raising the dead to life.
  3. Gods typically did not have to toil at all; here the god is toiling and doing so for a mortal.
  4. This translates the Greek word xenos, the semantic range of which spans “stranger, guest, host, host/guest-friend” and is of central thematic importance to the play. The concept of xenia was fundamental to Greek society, and it implied a reciprocal relationship between those who shared this bond, with an expectation of receiving and being received by one’s xenos at their respective homes.
  5. Apollo makes clear here (and cf. “on this day,” 20) that the play opens at a critical juncture. By a (not always followed) convention, the action of a Greek play occurred on a single day, and frequently the playwright will underscore that this is a day of reckoning. See, for example, Medea 340 and 352-54, and Hippolytus 22.
  6. pious . . . pious. On Admetus’s character, opinions have differed greatly, but it is worth noting that Apollo finds that he shares with Admetus the virtue of piety and that his positive treatment from Admetus while serving his punishment is what wins the mortal his postponement of death.
  7. by tricking the Fates. In Aeschylus’s Eumenides (723-8), performed in Athens twenty years earlier, it is said that Apollo got them drunk; here the method of trickery is not named.
  8. escape his impending death: Apollo’s efforts did not make Admetus immortal but only allowed him to avoid an earlier death. In one ancient source, we hear that the amount of time gained would be equal to his years already lived. Euripides, however, is silent on this issue, which allows greater emphasis on the uncertainty of life and death.
  9. near and dear: The Greek word philos (and its abstract noun philia) has no simple English equivalent, as it encompassed family members as well as friends (both groups being near and dear to one). Most commonly, I translate the word with the simple “dear [one].” This semantic group and other words related to them form a major leitmotif in the play. See Essay.
  10. Contagion (miasma is the Greek word) could result from a variety of events, including birth, death, sex (in some instances), and murder. Even gods are limited in how much they can help even their favorite mortals. Cf. Hippolytus, 1437-39, where Artemis gives a similar explanation for her departure from the scene.
  11. 38ff. This exchange of one-line dialogue is called stichomythia, a frequent form of conversation in ancient drama, allowing for fast-paced and, often, clever give-and-take.
  12. 43-5. This exchange on Admetus’s ambiguous status (dead or alive?) foreshadows the cleverness of Admetus in his dialogue with Heracles later in the play (see 81-83, 141, and especially 518ff.).
  13. enjoy my honors: The gods took pleasure in receiving their honors; Aphrodite states this baldly as a principle at Hippolytus 8.
  14. The concept of charis (“favor”), like that of xenia (note 8) implies a reciprocal relationship. See note on 842.
  15. Gods in Euripidean prologues often predict later developments in the play, even if the later actions do not always turn out as predicted. The story alluded to (Heracles carrying out his labors for Eurystheus) was well known and thus the audience should expect that Heracles will come to the rescue, but the circumstances leading to it and its ramifications are left unspoken.
  16. Blood sacrifice (of animals) in Greek ritual often typically involved an initial offering of the victim’s hair. In Phrynicus’s version of the Alcestis tale (see Introduction), Death apparently appeared with a sword to cut a lock of Alcestis’s hair.
  17. Death exits into and takes hold of the house, replacing Apollo, who had been its protector, the stage action reinforcing the change of circumstance. Apollo may have exited at the end of his prediction (after 71) or now. With this scene, there is the end of direct divine involvement in the drama. Euripides frequently deployed the gods on stage, but almost always only at the periphery of his dramas.
  18. From its very first words, the chorus focuses on the house. With (some) exaggeration, one could say that the “hero” of this play is the house of Admetus.
  19. For the first time, Alcestis is here referred to as “the best wife,” a leitmotif throughout the play; see 151-52, 235, 324, 441, 742, and 899.
  20. 86ff. The chorus sees none of the standard features of mourning—lamentation, beating with one’s hands, or, as mentioned below (99-102 and 216), water for lustration or locks of hair cut in offering to the dead.
  21. Paean is a title of Apollo in his role of healer. This prayer from the chorus, unaware of his recent departure from the house, creates a mild irony.
  22. Euripides uses an exceedingly rare word to create this marine metaphor.
  23. The transmitted text is deeply corrupt; the translation attempts to capture what might lie behind the corruption.
  24. Apollo had a shrine in Lycia (in Asia Minor) and Zeus Ammon (taking this name from the Egyptian god Amon-Ra) was worshipped in Egypt.  The chorus’s point is that no matter how far one travelled, there is no god who could bring back Alcestis.
  25. If only: the text is very uncertain here, but this gives the likely sense. Phoebus’s child: Phoebus was another name for Apollo; his son referred to is Asclepius.
  26. 131-5. Some critics think that these lines were a later addition and not originally in the play; I believe they are authentic.
  27. Late recognition is characteristic of Admetus.
  28. The desirability of achieving glory beyond one’s life was fundamental to Greek thinking, nowhere more fully expressed than in the Iliad. Glory was typically sought and achieved by men; by winning glory in dying for her husband, Alcestis succeeds in the male realm, as Admetus acknowledges at 938. Later, Admetus is concerned by the opposite of glory when he imagines being belittled for allowing his wife to die for him (959-60). See Essay.
  29. Hestia was the goddess of the hearth and household.
  30. orphaned: an uncommon verb but favored by Euripides and thematically important in this play; see 275, 297, 397, and note on 535. With the death of one parent, the children were not formally orphans, but it is rhetorically more effective to use this word in these contexts.
  31. myrtle: a common sacred decoration, also having a special association with Aphrodite.
  32. 177ff. With this remarkable description of Alcestis and her marriage bed compare Sophocles, Women of Trachis, 903-26, likely produced not much before Alcestis.
  33. Alcestis initially imagines a second wife for Admetus, which would have been standard practice in ancient Greece.
  34. 193ff. Such a description of deep affection towards domestics is rare in Greek literature.
  35. The first specific recognition that he will suffer for allowing his wife to die on his behalf.
  36. not to betray him: Betrayal forms an evolving and important leitmotif in this drama. At 180-81, the servant quotes Alcestis as saying she is dying in order to not betray her marriage bed or her husband (180-81). Several times (here and at 250 and 275) Admetus asks that Alcestis not betray him. In dying on his behalf, Alcestis, in Admetus’s eyes, betrays him. It is also used in reference to Admetus’s parents not coming to their son’s rescue (290 and 659) and Admetus employs the same word in the exodos in explaining that involvement with the veiled woman would be a betrayal of his wife (1059 and 1096).
  37. 210-12. As often in Greek tragedy, a speech or a scene concludes with a general statement. The point is not to suggest a particular animosity towards Admetus, but to contrast this (general) observation with the attitude of the chorus of those loyal to Admetus.
  38. Zeus, the most powerful of the gods, is a reasonable recourse, but he has no direct connection to the action.
  39. < Ai, ai!>: As indicated by the slanted brackets, these words were added by the editor, in order that the two halves of the strophic pair (strophe and antistrophe) match metrically, as they must. In this translation, I have attempted to render cries of anguish and pain either with English approximations (“woe is me”, e.g.), which can risk seeming stilted, or by retaining the same sound as in the Greek, as here and elsewhere, in the hope of capturing some of the aural impact.
  40. Black garments were standard for mourning. See 923.
  41. This is the reading of the manuscripts; Diggle prints as a conjecture terrible . . . terrible.
  42. Paean: See on 91 above. The irony of an appeal to Apollo may be lost on the men of Pherae, but not the audience.
  43. Since also before this: Such a condition was a common formula in prayers to the gods.
  44. Hades was a full-fledged deity, not synonymous with Death, who was a kind of bogeyman, but the chorus’s appeal echoes the prologue’s confrontation between Apollo and Death.
  45. Two methods of suicide, the first being more violent and less common and hence more appropriate to the extraordinary situation of Alcestis’s self-sacrificing death. In Greek mythology, women more customarily committed suicide with the noose, men with the sword.
  46. 238-43. The lyric ends with the preceding line (237) and now six lines in a different meter (anapests, not sung, but likely chanted) prepare for the next scene. Anapestic rhythm is often used for introducing the arrival of a tableau, here of Admetus, his dying wife, and their children.  It is noteworthy that these lines not only introduce this tableau, but offer commentary on the action (“never will I say that marriage brings more delight than pain . . . he has lost the best of wives . . .  will live a life that is no life”). This concluding line is the first bald statement that in losing his wife, Admetus’s life will not be worth living, an encapsulation of the drama’s essential paradox. See note on 197-8 and also 274 and 939-40.
  47. Alcestis locates her wedding in her homeland, Iolcus, in contrast to its location in Pherae elsewhere in the play (177 and 915). This inconsistency did not, I suspect, strike members of the audience, especially as in each instance the rhetoric of the moment locates the wedding effectively.
  48. 252ff. Describing what is unseen by others on stage is rare but has precedent in Greek tragedy; see, for example, the end of Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, where Orestes describes the (unseen) pursuing Furies.
  49. Charon was the traditional ferryman, carrying the dead across the river Styx into Hades.
  50. Emphatic in its three-fold repetition, this word calls to mind a key word of the wedding ritual, in which the groom “leads” the bride into his house in marriage. Greek tragedy also frequently conflates wedding and funerary imagery; see R. Rehm 1994, especially 84-96 on Alcestis.
  51. In Greek iconography, Hades was not typically depicted with wings, while Death personified was. And it was Hermes who typically led the dead to the underworld.
  52. 273-9. Just as this song (with spoken interjections from Admetus) was preceded by anapests (238-43), it is followed by Admetus in that same meter, pleading with Alcestis and lamenting his lot.
  53. A contemporary fifth-century Greek woman would have had her husband chosen for her by her kurios, the man, typically her father, who had authority over her. But in the context of this play, no one would challenge this claim, and note that in the Odyssey it is assumed that the “bereaved” Penelope could select a new husband from among the suitors.
  54. The Greeks often espoused “double motivation.” A divinity can be thought to be behind human actions, on one level—Apollo effected the possibility of Admetus eluding impending death—but this does not deny the agency of Admetus, his parents, family, and friends and, finally, his wife.
  55. Alcestis makes the key point that the exchange of her life for his promise (not to remarry) is not commensurate. Her extreme action in overturning the natural order has made standard reciprocity impossible.
  56. I accept Wecklein’s conjecture τρέφων, while Diggle prints the mss. ἐμῶν.
  57. Stepmothers were notoriously unkind in Greek stories, as well as in myths and folktales in many other cultures.
  58. In focusing on her role in her daughter’s wedding and childbirth, Alcestis is also reminding the audience of the importance of her own marriage to Admetus.
  59. This is not a boast, but simply, in the context of this play, a repeated and unquestioned assertion.
  60. Since the quasi-agôn structure (see above on 280-434), requires a choral “buffer” between the two speeches, what is remarkable here is not that the chorus speaks but that, instead of offering the standard anodyne sentiment, it speaks directly for Admetus, pre-empting his response.
  61. Thessalian bride: echoes Alcestis referencing a “husband. . . Thessalian” at 285.
  62. Admetus is not suggesting that he didn’t enjoy his wife, rather that his enjoyment of her living has been cut short.
  63. Admetus now extends beyond agreeing to Alcestis’s request and makes several further claims to show the depth of his grief. In the three claims he makes in this section of the speech (mourning for as long as he lives, ending music and revelry in his house, and having an image of Alcestis fashioned for his bed), the extraordinariness of the claims increases, as does the number of lines dedicated to each (two lines [336-7], five lines [343-7], and nine lines [348-56]). The typical length of mourning in contemporary Athens is uncertain, but a year would have been considered extraordinary, and “for as long as I live” would have seemed extreme, verging on fantastical, again in keeping with the actions of the drama.
  64. There was no expectation that one would stop revelry and music in one’s house as a response to death of a loved one. Admetus is extreme and he chooses a domain that touches on the role of the house and hospitality in the play, which characteristic is challenged in the second half.
  65. Another recognition by Admetus of what his wife’s death (on his behalf!) will mean to him.
  66. Orpheus was the famed singer of Greek myth who was able by the power of his song to persuade Hades and Demeter’s daughter (Persephone) to allow Orpheus’s wife, Eurydice, to leave Hades. That Eurydice ultimately fell back into Hades and did not reach the upper air does not advance Admetus’s rhetoric and is unmentioned.
  67. Pluto (literally “wealthy one”) was another name for Hades as lord of the underworld.  His dog, the three-headed Cerberus, was a familiar and threatening figure of myth.
  68. Admetus is eager to continue his current life with Alcestis, even upon death. Tragic characters often imagined interacting with their deceased family members, but only here is the scene one of presumed domestic harmony. Cf. Iliad 23. 82-91, where Patroclus asks that his bones lie together with those of Achilles.
  69. Alcestis makes no reference to Admetus’s extravagant claims but calls the children to witness that he will not remarry and only then (375) entrusts the children to him on this condition.
  70. The consoling effect of time was a commonplace, but the phrasing here, with the person himself, not his pain or grief, the object, is striking. See 1085.
  71. The verb used here (agomai) was standard for a man taking a woman as his wife (see on 260) and may thus create a subtle ironic inversion of roles in Admetus’s plea. On the wedding ceremony and its manipulation in the play, see Essay.
  72. The word daimôn refers to an unspecified supernatural force, not a full-fledged divinity.
  73. Admetus now appeals to his wife through their children, who have become the surety of their agreement that he not remarry. The engagement of the children in this scene, beginning with Alcestis’s address to them at 371, also prepares for the short monody to follow.
  74. Not willingly: This does not suggest that Alcestis had no choice in dying for her husband (she is consistently praised for doing just that) but rather that, as death approaches, she is not eager to do so.
  75. Sharing a single verse between two speakers (antilabê) was a way to heighten the emotion of the fast-moving exchange in stichomythia. Having two changes of speakers (double antilabê) at 391 is exceedingly rare in Greek tragedy and is a striking climax at the moment of Alcestis’s death. See below on 1119.
  76. It is sometimes (wrongly) asserted that deaths do not occur on stage in Greek tragedy.  While rare, Alcestis dies here, and Hippolytus and Ajax are among other tragic characters who die on stage.
  77. By dying to save her husband and, indirectly, his household, Alcestis’s death is said, ironically, to be its ruin.
  78. A commonplace of consolation (see also 892-3 and 988-9).
  79. A paradoxical phrase as paeans, prayers to the gods for help, were generally accompanied by libations, and were not typically associated with death. Again, the language underscores the unnatural situation. In the following song, the chorus does not actually sing a paean.
  80. Just as Admetus was excessive in his personal response to Alcestis’s death, he here extends his call for mourning to his entire kingdom.
  81. The power of poetry to convey fame was a deeply seated notion, as old as the Iliad. What is remarkable is that a woman will receive such praise. See on 150.
  82. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes contains the iconic narrative of Hermes inventing the lyre from a tortoise shell.
  83. The Carnea festival was held in honor of Apollo annually in Sparta in late summer. The references to Sparta here and Athens (451), the two leading city-states in contemporary Greece, suggest the breadth of her fame.
  84. An ingratiating nod to the audience’s city and a slight self-reference to the play itself being performed. Cf. the lyric “in the greatest city in the world” in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, a musical first produced in New York City.
  85. Admetus expressed the same wish at 358-62. See also the ode on Necessity, 962-1004.
  86. Cocytus was one of several rivers in Hades; the word meant “lamentation.”
  87. This wish, although first found here in literature, was doubtless already a commonplace.
  88. Cf. 1056-61, where Admetus expresses his fear of censure if he were to take another woman to his bed.
  89. A character arriving on stage immediately following a choral song by convention usually received no announcement; it was expected that someone would arrive to move the action forward. Apollo had predicted (64-71) that Heracles would come to the rescue, and the actor’s garb (lion skin and club) presumably made him readily identifiable to the audience.
  90. Angry at Zeus’s infidelity with Alcmene, Heracles’ mother, Hera played a trick resulting in Heracles carrying out (twelve) labors for his cousin Eurystheus, ruler of Tiryns.
  91. A son of Ares, not to be confused with Diomedes, son of Tydeus, who plays a large role in the Iliad.
  92. Thracian tribe.
  93. Lycaon and Cycnus were both sons of Ares, the former with scant surviving mythology, the latter killed by Heracles after he foolishly challenged him in combat.
  94. Admetus’s entrance from the house is announced, as expected when someone arrives in the middle of an episode. His arrival is not a surprise and this scene of the two men face-to-face is essential to the plot.
  95. 509-50. Admetus and Heracles engage in stichomythia in which Admetus employs circumlocution, ambiguity, guile, and even prevarication to persuade Heracles to be entertained in the house despite the recent death of a woman. The tone of the scene is variously interpreted. It contains some light moments of verbal jousting, and the audience can enjoy Heracles being duped, but behind this lightness stands the just-staged death of Alcestis and we begin to see played out the tension between Admetus’s promise to his wife and his devotion to xenia. This episode with Heracles is framed by one song praising the virtues of Alcestis and another championing the xenia of Admetus and his house.
  96. The verb chairein covers two semantic spheres—a simple greeting and a wish of faring well. Admetus takes Heracles’ return greeting and turns it into a comment about not faring well (“I wish it could be so”). The verbal twists have begun. See 391.
  97. Perseus was Heracles’ maternal great-grandfather and a son of Zeus.
  98. Heracles recognizes that Pheres is of an age where death is appropriate. This issue becomes a matter of intense debate between Pheres and Admetus in the following episode.
  99. In asking about the recent death, Heracles’ third question (the third of three, three being a common pattern for emphasis) culminates with Alcestis.
  100. Admetus’s reply pushes language to the breaking point. Euripides became famous for his paradoxical language, and this line was later parodied by the contemporary comic playwright Aristophanes.
  101. The exact text and meaning of this line are uncertain, and I have tried to preserve its ambiguity while translating Parker’s text. Since Admetus is unwilling to admit that his wife is dead, he says, in effect that the one who was/is going to die is as good as dead. It is sophistry bordering on mendacity.
  102. An essential ambiguity. Alcestis was not kin by blood, although she was intimately connected to it by marriage. From a fifth-century perspective, she would upon marriage be considered part of Admetus’s family, but Admetus takes the word in a literal sense to continue his deception. The marriage tie proved greater than that of kinship in saving Admetus’s life. It is also worth noting that the word gunê, appearing twice in 531, means both “woman,” as translated there, and “wife.” The same ambiguity of this word is taken advantage of in the concluding scene between these two men. See Essay.
  103. A striking detail, perhaps invented by Euripides: Alcestis, just as her children will be, was herself raised as an “orphan” in Admetus’s house. See above on 165.
  104. A rare metaphor and ironically used by Admetus on the heels of his extensive verbal duplicity.
  105. The threat of Heracles departing to another host’s hearth is more than Admetus can bear.
  106. Heracles, although often depicted as a lout, as he will be later in this play, recognizes that mourners should not be disturbed by guests.
  107. A most facile dismissal of the dead, made in order to gain Heracles as his guest.
  108. As Admetus describes more fully below (546-50), care will be taken that the guest quarters and their activities will not be beset by the mourning in the house.
  109. Addressed to an attendant who had entered from the house with Admetus.
  110. The chorus’s initial response is disbelief and disapproval. They recognize that xenia has its limits and is not the sole value by which to govern behavior.
  111. Admetus mounts a practical defense: he would have gained nothing by sending Heracles away and would have seemed less of a host. Thematically, his hosting of Heracles echoes his earlier hosting of Apollo. It is what he does. The first results in his receiving from his guest (Apollo) a reprieve from death, by virtue of Alcestis’s sacrifice, while the second leads to that guest (Heracles) rescuing Alcestis from death and overturning the consequences (Alcestis’s death) of the initial act of hospitality.
  112. The adjective axenos is rarely used of persons (typically of things), and echthroxenos (“hateful to guests,” 568) appears only here in Euripides.
  113. Argos was one of several places that were home to Heracles.
  114. An effective summary of the situation and segue to the following song on the hospitality of Admetus’s house.
  115. The house itself is addressed in the first stanza, with a three-fold repetition of the second-person pronoun/adjective (“you/your”). most hospitable: After “less of a host” (556) and “hateful to guests” (558) at the conclusion of the previous episode, here is a third compound adjective including the word xenos.
  116. Apollo’s cult title in connection with Delphi, site of his chief temple.
  117. In this imaginative description of Apollo as shepherd for Admetus, the chorus sings about his music making, which Admetus has just banned from his house.
  118. The song’s fanciful picture of Apollo’s song includes (apparently) peaceful lions among the flocks.
  119. Othrys was a mountain range in southern Thessaly.
  120. In the transition to the second half of the song, “therefore” (an admittedly prosaic word; it appears in Euripidean lyrics only one other time) makes the point that Admetus’s large kingdom is owed to his hospitality to Apollo, even though elsewhere (687) we hear that he inherited his land from his father. The chorus is making a strong rhetorical point about the value of Admetus’s xenia. Admetus is the addressee of this stanza, and, having just witnessed his extreme hospitality in admitting Heracles into his house, the chorus, after initially criticizing him (551-2), sings about the happy results of his hospitality.
  121. Located in southwestern Thessaly.
  122. A serious textual crux here, but the chorus is indicating that Admetus rules far and wide—to the far west (Molossian mountains) and the far east (Aegean promontory of Pelion).
  123. While the chorus acknowledges the rewards won by Admetus’s hospitality, they suggest that nobility might go too far in its sense of respect. Aidôs (“respect”) was an important concept for the Greeks, referring to the emotion that inhibits one from improper action, which, if carried out, would lead one to feel aidôs in its negative sense of “shame.” The sentiment expressed here is peculiar, a further indication of the difficulty in characterizing Admetus’s action.
  124. Having expressed their doubts (in general terms) about Admetus’s behavior, the chorus now concludes with its confidence that the god-fearing man (generalized but with applicability to Admetus) will fare well.
  125. The play is inconsistent on whether burial or cremation is intended for Alcestis. Greater pathos is reserved for references to burial (365-7 and 896-8). See also 740.
  126. Pheres’ initial words attempt to offer solace, praising Alcestis and expressing gratitude to her for her action. His assessment of her heroism is congruent with all that has been expressed earlier in the play.
  127. Pheres now addresses the dead Alcestis.
  128. Admetus’s argument to Pheres runs as follows:  it is too late to show your concern; you should have done so when you had a chance to die instead of this young woman; you are old with not much time left to live; you could have won great glory in dying on your son’s behalf; you have led a good life and received everything from me you should have; I do not consider myself your child but rather hers who died for me. In this speech, Admetus echoes much of what Alcestis had said in her persuasion of him at 290-9. Care of one’s parents (gêrotrophia) was a core part of Greek ethics. In his denunciation of Pheres, Admetus is standing well beyond Greek norms. Admetus begins with a fiery string of negatives (“not . . . nor . . . never,” the first two in Greek being the same repeated word at the start of each verse). He also shows his disdain by using no form of address to his father.
  129. This claim is not meant to be taken literally but only as an expression of his deep anger at and contempt for his father.
  130. See above on 532-3, where the same word (othneios) is used.
  131. For the Greeks of this period, the explicit goal of marriage was the procreation of (legitimate) offspring, allowing the continuation of the household.
  132. This sneering and fanciful command highlights the significance of losing one’s child.  Children were expected to care for their parents in old age and tend to their funeral and burial.
  133. This taut assertion gains power from the scene—he’s about to bury his wife.
  134. Admetus, who was supposed to die and then felt that he was as good as dead with his wife’s death for him, now claims that he’s dead to his father.
  135. Cf. Plato, Symposium, 179b-c, where it is argued that by her sacrifice Alcestis showed that Admetus’s parents were such in name only.
  136. Again, a long speech ends with a general reflection.
  137. Pheres responds to each of Admetus’s arguments with rebuttals. After an introduction challenging his son’s personal attacks, he explains that he was not obligated to die for his son, who has been well treated by his father and suffered no injustice from him; life, though short, is sweet for all; and Admetus is the coward, not him. It is a frontal attack.
  138. Just as Admetus had claimed a new identity by renouncing his parents, so Pheres asserts that Admetus seems to have mistaken his identity—he’s not a slave bought by Admetus.
  139. The core of the argument. Although the play emphasizes that death is an obligation owed by all (see, most forcefully, 782), Pheres was not obligated to die for Admetus.
  140. A mordant formulation questioning Admetus having accepted his wife’s sacrifice.
  141. This is the first time that this assertion has been expressly made; Pheres repeats it at 730.
  142. The charge of being bested by a woman would have had added sting in a highly patriarchal society. In this context, “basest” has the connotation of lacking in manly virtues.
  143. An implicit stage direction, suggesting that Admetus had given indication that he might start to speak here.
  144. An escalation in the argument from the lack of obligation to die for his son to the wrongness of that act.
  145. Likely a proverbial expression.
  146. An echo of Admetus’s taunt that Pheres should hurry up and have more children who will take care of him in his old age (662-4).
  147. Death with glory, greatly prized in male Greek culture, is dismissed here.
  148. The only instance in the play of a negative assessment of Alcestis, but the statement is made only to underscore Pheres’ charge of Admetus’s cowardice.
  149. In contemporary Athens, responsibility for pursuing justice against a murderer fell to the next of kin (here, Acastus), not the state.
  150. The Greek uses the legal word for “disinherit,” literally impossible for a son to do to his father.
  151. To conclude this scene and transition to the next, the chorus changes the rhythm to (chanted) anapests, often used by the chorus at the play’s end. Although it was highly unusual for a chorus to leave the stage mid-play, they do so here, leaving the stage bare until the servant enters from the palace. The third episode thus has a major division created by this emptiness.
  152. A beleaguered servant emerging from the house will become a familiar character in later Greek comedy, and a drunken Heracles was also a common figure in that genre. A key question here is the scene’s tone. While the diction and metrical nuances remain those of tragedy, the scene clearly moves into a new register. What we hear of and then see of Heracles is at least mildly amusing, and the heavy strains of Alcestis’s death and the angry debate between father and son yield to a new key, at least for a while.
  153. A common rhetorical device: I’ve known many, but he is the worst!
  154. The Greeks typically mixed their wine and thus Heracles is depicted as uncouth in this regard as well. Famously, the Maronian wine used by Odysseus to make the Cyclops drunk was mixed at a 20:1 (water: wine) ratio (Odyssey 9. 208-10). dark mother: a poetic locution for the earth.
  155. Compare Alcestis’s actions at 170-3 and contrast her silence with Heracles’ howling.
  156. See the very similar wording at Eur., Cyclops 425-6, of the off-key singing of the Cyclops and the crying of Odysseus’s shipmates.
  157. This was a standard gesture of mourning in the ancient Greek world, found in both literature and art.
  158. Heracles enters wreathed; the text gives no evidence that the actor playing this role gave any indication of intoxication, but the actor playing the part could have suggested such a state through his movements. Heracles calls out the servant, chastises him, and then offers him wisdom. The basis of his speech is the “carpe diem” theme: we do not know the day or the hour of our end, and so we should enjoy life, drink, and honor Aphrodite.
  159. In Greek, lines 782-85 all end with the same sound and accent pattern. Such rhyming is unparalleled in Greek tragedy and underscores this fundamental idea that the play, of course, overturns.
  160. The word tychê is often rendered “fate,” and although at times it means just that, more often it refers to randomness of life, that is “fortune.”
  161. Cypris was another (common) name for Aphrodite, reflecting her connections to the island of Cyprus.
  162. These two half lines seem to have been added by a later actor or scribe, cribbing them from 829 and 832.
  163. A mixed and strained metaphor.
  164. A further xenos-compound adjective; see above on 568.
  165. See above on 532-3. Diggle prints a conjecture here, which would mean the opposite, “not of the family,” and would then require a sarcastic reading of the line.
  166. See 566-7, 600-1, and on 857, where the nominal form of this word appears.
  167. Heracles, whom the servant has roundly criticized for his boorish behavior, explains that he was duped by Admetus. Just as Admetus explained to the chorus that Heracles would not have accepted being a guest under these circumstances, Heracles himself says as much and defends himself (note, e.g., “Against my feelings,” 829).
  168. A neighboring town in Thessaly.
  169. Heracles, having learned the truth of the situation, calls upon his heroic self and proclaims that he will wrestle Death and win back Alcestis. The rescue promised at the end of the initial prologos is now fully set in motion. Whatever degree of lightheartedness was displayed in the first part of this episode has vanished.
  170. Alcmene (a mortal), child of the king of Tiryns, Electryon, was Heracles’ mother; Zeus his (immortal) father.
  171. Charis is more than mere “gratitude” but forms part of a system of reciprocity that was essential to forging mutual bonds in ancient Greek culture. See earlier uses in the play at 60, 70, 299, 544, and 660 and the echo of this line at 1074.
  172. This was part of the funeral ritual.
  173. Korê was another name for Persephone; Hades was her husband.
  174. This detail becomes important in the play’s conclusion. See below on 1191.
  175. Although he initially faulted Admetus when he learned that he had been entertained under false pretenses, Heracles declares that for this very demonstration of xenia and respect he will restore Alcestis to Admetus.
  176. Heracles exits down the same eisodos that Admetus, with attendants, used, as both are heading to the site of Alcestis’s tomb. The audience, accustomed to the conventions of fifth-century theater, did not wonder how the two parties did not run into each other in the off-stage area.
  177. This means no more than substitute here, and not that Alcestis is being used by Hades as some sort of leverage over Admetus. Hades rules over the dead; Death, as we see in the play’s opening, has a less lofty role.
  178. Phaedra’s nurse in Hippolytus (258-60) expresses this same sentiment about her caring for her mistress.
  179. The metaphor is as striking in Greek as in translation.
  180. A tragic chorus will often use an example from myth (commonly) or personal experience (less commonly, as here) to drive home their point.  Ironically, their chosen example corresponds to the situation that would have obtained for Pheres if Admetus had not found someone (his wife) to die for him.
  181. As he had when he first entered the stage after the funeral, Admetus turns his attention to his house and now contrasts this arrival to that of his wedding day. The emphasis on the wedding and its contrast to his present state will become more charged later in the play.
  182. On the site of their wedding, see above on 248-49.
  183. A fundamental part of the Greek wedding ritual; see below on 1119.
  184. See above on 150. Alcestis will have a fair name, Admetus a “bad reputation” (961).
  185. The identical phrase in the same metrical position is uttered by Agave at Bacchae 1296, when she recognizes that it is Dionysus who has destroyed them. Such recognition of one’s changed situation is what Aristotle in the Poetics called anagnôrisis.
  186. The house continues to be the fulcrum of the play, as Admetus expresses his untenable situation in terms of the house: inside it will remind him of his dead wife and drive him out, and outside it (950ff.) reproach will make his life unendurable (“Why then is it more profitable for me to live/ when I have a bad reputation and suffer badly?” 959-60).
  187. Contrary to standard practice, no one leaves the stage at the end of this scene. Admetus cannot enter the house alone; the action on stage is halted—until Heracles arrives at the start of the next scene, following the song about the inevitability of death, to change his fortunes.
  188. A quasi-personification, not a proper divinity; see below on 973.
  189. Orpheus, a mythical figure from Thrace, is doubly appropriate here. Part of his story, alluded to earlier (357ff.), was his nearly, but not quite, successful rescue of his wife Eurydice from the underworld. He was also considered the founder of Orphism, a mystery cult dealing with reincarnation. Writings (“tablets”) attributed to him existed in the fifth century.
  190. Physicians.
  191. This suggests that the remedies were herbal and cut up for application.
  192. Necessity, unlike proper divinities, has no standard modes for propitiation. Similarly, the chorus in their opening song (112ff.) proclaimed that there were no altars they could approach to prevent Alcestis’s death. Although Necessity has no shrine, the chorus will address a prayer to her (976-7).
  193. In Homeric epic, Zeus’s nod indicated that he would grant a request. Even Zeus, the chorus claims, relies on Necessity to effect his will.
  194. A tribe located on the southeastern coast of the Black Sea renowned for their (supposed) invention of iron.
  195. Now the application of the general principle is applied to Admetus, with the emphatic “you, also” at the start of this stanza. As is stressed throughout the play, one cannot bring back the dead; one must endure. The glowing statements about Alcestis in the second half of this song echo what we have heard throughout the drama.
  196. Children from gods and mortals are mortal, and so even they are subject to death.  The chorus makes an abridged a fortiori argument—if even the gods’ children die, so too must Admetus accept that his wife cannot return from the dead.
  197. In the song’s final stanza, the chorus shifts from praise of Alcestis to an imagined future in which she will be treated as something more than mortal.  Contrast these imagined words addressed to Alcestis with those that Admetus fears he will be subjected to (955-9).
  198. With the word daimôn, the chorus imagines that Alcestis will become a figure of cult, a mortal treated after death with special reverence and the expectation of intercessionary power.
  199. Generally, immediately following a choral song, an entrance would not be announced.  A common exception is when the entering parties form a type of tableau, here Heracles and the veiled woman.
  200. Heracles devotes the first part of his speech to rebuking Admetus for not considering him sufficiently a “friend” (philos) to share in his misfortune. Philia, he asserts, extends beyond fulfillment of hospitality obligations.
  201. Such repetition is uncommon in spoken verse in Greek tragedy (but found also at 1093) and rounds off Heracles’ recrimination of his friend.
  202. After faulting Admetus for his duplicity about the woman who died in his house, Heracles gets down to the business of why he’s returned: “take this woman.” Initially he describes her as a servant (“to serve in your house,” 1024), but as the scene develops it becomes increasingly clear that this woman would be more than that and threatens the promise that Admetus made to his dying wife.
  203. Heracles emphasizes that he took great pains to obtain this woman, the manufactured tale covering up for the serious contest he undertook with Death.
  204. In the contests narrated in Homeric epic, women could be prizes and could be valued in relation to other prizes.
  205. An unsubtle hint of what will soon transpire
  206. Faced with the discovery of his deception, Admetus first explains his reasoning to his friend and then attempts to keep this woman, who he increasingly realizes resembles his wife, away from his house.
  207. The manuscripts are split in their readings; I accept ἐχθροῖσιν, while Diggle prints αἰσχροῖσιν.
  208. Admetus is diffident in his request to Heracles.
  209. Earlier determined that no one else host Heracles, Admetus now asks that some other Thessalian keep this woman, since Heracles has many guest-friends in Pherae.
  210. Admetus turns to practical considerations—where could this woman live within his palace?  Neither the young men’s quarters nor his own bedroom would be acceptable.
  211. Admetus had vowed not to remarry, not to avoid sex altogether. The playwright, however, does not bother with this distinction, and Admetus maintains that “falling into bed with a young woman” would be seen as a betrayal by both the servants and Alcestis.
  212. At 940, Admetus had indicated his evolving understanding of his situation with “just now I realize this.”  Here, that same word arti (“just now”) is repeated when he reaches a further understanding of his pain.
  213. The Greek is ambiguous, since the relative pronoun translated as “whatever” is feminine and can thus refer to the feminine noun “gift,” or to the woman (“whoever she is”).
  214. In his exchange with Admetus, almost exclusively in stichomythia, Heracles gradually breaks down his friend: Admetus goes from begging that this woman go away to considering whether she might be received, to allowing someone else in the household to receive her, and, finally, to receiving her himself in a way that strongly suggests a wedding. See further on note 1119.
  215. See 357ff., where Admetus claims he would have rescued Alcestis from the dead, if he had the power to do so. Here Heracles makes a similar claim, with full irony since he has already in fact done just this.
  216. The Greek word erôs is not limited to erotic contexts, and love (philein) at 1081 is not erotic.
  217. Alcestis had made the same point to Admetus at 381, with the same verb (“soften”).
  218. This word, literally “be persuaded,” is the pivot of this scene.  Note that in his response, Admetus breaks the pattern of stichomythia, with his sigh “alas” falling outside of the verses. In conjunction with the phrases “sharing in my victory” (1103) and “you win” (1108), the audience might have been reminded of a famous scene of persuasion about the entrance into the house between Clytemnestra and her husband Agamemnon, just returned from the Trojan War in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (especially 943).
  219. You win picks up “victory” at 1103.
  220. In the Greek wedding ceremony, the groom “leads” his bride into his house. See above on 260.
  221. Looking at Medusa, one of the Gorgons, would turn one into stone. Perseus was able to cut off her head only by looking at her with a mirror provided by Athena. The tone of the line is difficult to gauge at this moment of climax.
  222. Do you have her? The gesture of the groom’s hand on the veiled bride’s hand/wrist was a standard part of the Greek wedding ceremony (see, e.g., 917 above), as was the unveiling of the bride (see on 1120). This line both starts the break in the run of stichomythia, and with the exceedingly rare two changes of speaker, echoes 391, where the same rare phenomenon occurs. The use of the verb “look” also echoes the repeated use of the same verb at 390. The first instance was at the very moment of Alcestis’s death; here it occurs at the very moment of her symbolic re-marriage to Admetus. The second instance reverses the first. Throughout the play, Admetus is said to have “lost” his wife; Heracles now tells him to keep her safe.
  223. Heracles’ unveiling of Alcestis—either at this moment or very slightly before or after—mimics the anakalupterion (unveiling of the bride) that was another part of the Greek wedding ceremony.
  224. Admetus is reassured, as is the audience, that this figure is not a revenant, but his actual spouse.
  225. Divine envy, a concept perhaps foreign to us, was easily entertained in Greek thinking.
  226. The use of the word kurios might also call the wedding and betrothal ceremonies to mind, as it was the woman’s kurios who had the authority to hand her over in marriage.
  227. Why does the playwright draw attention to Alcestis’s silence? It is true that this play could have been performed with only two actors with speaking roles (as opposed to the customary three) and thus there would have been no additional actor available for this role, but even if this were the case, the matter of her silence could have been handled in other ways. Alcestis needed to be consecrated to the underworld gods before her death (74-76), and so her now being de-consecrated (“purified from her consecration”) creates a symmetry. The woman at the center of the play, who has succeeded in the male world of glory (kleos), now has no voice. Her silence should not be attributed to dramaturgical or religious constraints.
  228. Three was a common number in Greek ritual, and three days after a burial, food offerings were made to the dead.
  229. Eurystheus.
  230. Ever the vigilant host, Admetus invites Heracles to stay, but there’s no further role for him.
  231. Having earlier shut down celebration among his citizens in response to Alcestis’s death (425ff.), Admetus now orders that everyone celebrate his change of fortune. tetrarchy: the four states that comprised Thessaly.
  232. The play concludes (in chanted anapests) with a fitting coda.  The same coda appears at the end of four other Euripidean plays (with a slight change in one instance), and while the authenticity of these lines is questioned for other plays, there is no strong reason to think they are not genuine in Alcestis.
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Euripides' Alcestis Copyright © by Michael R. Halleran is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.