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201 ALCESTIS 201

ALCESTIS

Admetus, a king of Thessaly, was doomed to die, but the god Apollo, who had once, as a punishment for an offence to Zeus, served him for a year, and so become attached to the family, begged the Fates to release him from this necessity. They agreed to spare Admetus if some one else would die in his stead. This his wife Alcestis, alone, was willing to do. But after her death, Heracles, the strongest of the heroes, passing through Thessaly ou his way to Thrace to perform his eighth labor, learned of the calamity, and going to her tomb wrestled with Death and compelled the release of Alcestis and restored her to Admetus. The play opens on the day appointed for Alcestis' death. The situation is stated by Apollo in the prologue.

The Alcestis is the earliest of the extant plays of Euripides, being presented in 438 b. c. It is not a tragedy in the strict sense of the term, but took the place of the so-called Satyr- drama, at the close of the presentation of three tragedies (a trilogy).

The translation of the Alcestis here given is Robert Brown- ing's, included in the poem Balaustion's Adventure, written in 1871. The italicized lines are by Browning, not by Euripides, but serve well as an interpretation of the rest, which for the most part is a literal translation from the Greek.^

There sle^it a silent palace in the snn^

With jjlaiufi adjacent and Thessalian peace —

Pherai, where King Admetos ruled the land.

Out from the portico there gleamed a God^

Apollon : for the how was in his hand. s

The quiver at his shoidder, all his shape

One dreadful heauty. And he hailed the house

As if he hnew it well and loved it much :

" Ο Admeteian domes, where I endured,

Even the God I am, to drudge awhile, lo

Do righteous penance for a reckless deed,

^ For Mr. Browning's transliteration of Greek names see p. 19.3.