Page:Euripides the Rationalist.djvu/67

Rh his liberal housekeeping, religious habits, and other unquestioned virtues. Indeed he is himself obliged to acknowledge, when all is over and his choice apparently irrevocable, that this disadvantageous impression is only too likely to be permanent. We can therefore well understand his wish that the persons before whom he was to exhibit himself in the position of chief mourner for the victim (as the less 'kindly' might put it) of his own cowardice, should be those whose loyal attachment had been proved by long experience.

The mourning-train then is provided, and so also, as far as circumstances permit, is the rest of the funeral. It was the Greek custom that a corpse should be adorned not only with elaborate wreaths and other such decorations, but also, when the condition of the family permitted, with jewellery and the like, which was buried or burnt with it and thus appropriated to the use of the dead. In reply to a question from the friends—or should we not rather say, the accomplices?—of Admetus, the maid-servant informs them and us that this matter has not escaped his prevision; the articles are selected and prepared; 'Yes, the tiring, which her lord intends to bury with her, is in readiness'. Something, much indeed, Alcestis herself contributes to preparation; for knowing that 'the appointed day' has dawned for her, she performs upon herself, with pathetic patience and forethought, the needful washing and robing, and happens even to conceive the desire of looking once more upon the open sky, for which purpose she is carried out, apparently on a litter, to the front of the palace. Nor does she, living or dead, ever re-enter her own chamber until after she has lain in the grave. After her death the body is carried into the house; at least it seems so, though in the absence of stage-directions we cannot be sure of this; but it remains, in the brief interval before the departure, at the entrance, ready for bearing out, as appears in the indignant and sneering allusion of the servant who waits on Heracles. 'But the corpse', says Heracles, 'was only that of a stranger to the family!O yes', replies the man, playing upon an ambiguous word, 'O yes, it was out of the family and out of the door'', too much