ADMETUS
To-day I must bury a dead body.
HERACLES
May a God avert harm from your children!
ADMETUS
The children I have begotten are alive in the house.
HERACLES
Your father was ripe for death-if it is he has gone?
ADMETUS
He lives-and she who brought me forth, O Heracles.
HERACLES
Your wife-Alcestis-she is not dead?
ADMETUS (evasively)
Of her I might make a double answer.
HERACLES
Do you mean that she is dead or alive?
ADMETUS (ambiguously)
She is and is not-and for this I grieve.
HERACLES (perplexed)
I am no wiser-you speak obscurely.
ADMETUS
Did you not know the fate which must befall her?
HERACLES
I know she submitted to die for you.
ADMETUS
How then can she be alive, having consented to this?
HERACLES
Ah! Do not weep for your wife till that time comes.
ADMETUS
Those who are about to die are dead, and the dead are nothing.
HERACLES
Men hold that to be and not to be are different things.
ADMETUS
You hold for one, Heracles, and I for the other.
HERACLES
Whom, then, do you mourn? Which of your friends is dead?
ADMETUS
A woman. We spoke of her just now.
HERACLES (mistaking his meaning)
A stranger? Or one born of your kin?
ADMETUS
A stranger, but one related to this house.
HERACLES
But how, then, did she chance to die in your house?
ADMETUS
When her father died she was sheltered here.
HERACLES
Alas! Would I had not found you in this grief, Admetus!
ADMETUS
What plan are you weaving with those words?
HERACLES
I shall go to the hearth of another friend.
ADMETUS
Not so, O King! This wrong must not be.
HERACLES (hesitating)
The coming of a guest is troublesome to those who mourn.
ADMETUS (decisively)
The dead are dead. Enter my house.
HERACLES
But it is shameful to feast among weeping friends.
ADMETUS
We shall put you in the guest-rooms, which are far apart.
HERACLES
Let me go, and I will give you a thousand thanks.
ADMETUS
No, you shall not go to another man's hearth. (To a servant) Guide him, and open for him the guest-rooms apart from the house.
(HERACLES enters the Palace by the guests' door; when he has gone in, ADMETUS turns to the other servants) Close the inner door of the courtyard; it is unseemly that guests rejoicing at table should hear lamentations, and be saddened.
(The attendants go into the Palace.)
LEADER
What are you about? When such a calamity has fallen upon you, Admetus, have you the heart to entertain a guest? Are you mad?
ADMETUS
And if I had driven away a guest who came to my house and city, would you have praised me more? No, indeed! My misfortune would have been no less, and I inhospitable. One more ill would have been added to those I have if my house were called inhospitable. I myself find him the best of hosts when I enter the thirsty land of Argos.
LEADER
But why did you hide from him the fate that has befallen, if the man came as a friend, as you say?
ADMETUS
Never would he have entered my house if he had guessed my misfortune.
To some, I know, I shall appear senseless in doing this, and they will blame me; but my roof knows not to reject or insult a guest.
(He goes into the Palace, as the CHORUS begins its song.)CHORUS (singing)
strophe 1
O house of a bountiful lord, Ever open to many guests, The God of Pytho, Apollo of the beautiful lyre, Deigned to dwell in you And to live a shepherd in your lands!
On the slope of the hillsides He played melodies of mating On the Pipes of Pan to his herds.
antistrophe 1
And the dappled lynxes fed with them In joy at your singing;From the wooded vale of Orthrys Came a yellow troop of lions;To the sound of your lyre, O Phoebus, Danced the dappled fawn Moving on light feet Beyond the high-crested pines, Charmed by your sweet singing.
strophe 2
He dwells in a home most rich in flocks By the lovely moving Boebian lake.
At the dark stabling-place of the Sun He takes the sky of the Molossians As a bourne to his ploughing of fields, To the soils of his plains;He bears sway As far as the harbourless Coast of the Aegean Sea, As far as Pelion.
antistrophe 2
Even to-day he opened his house And received a guest, Though his eyelids were wet With tears wept by the corpse Of a dear bedfellow dead in the house.
For the noble spirit is proclaimed by honour;All wisdom lies with the good.
I admire him:
And in my soul I know The devout man shall have joy.
(The funeral procession of ALCESTIS enters from the door of the women's quarters. The body, carried on a bier by men servants, is followed by ADMETUS and his two children. Behind them comes a train of attendants and servants carrying the funeral offerings. All are in mourning. ADMETUS addresses the CHORUS.)ADMETUS
O friendly presence of you men of Pherae! Now that the body is prepared, and the servants bear it on high to the tomb and the fire, do you, as is fitting, salute the dead as she goes forth on her last journey.
(PHERES, the father of ADMETUS, enters, followed by attendants bearing funeral offerings.)LEADER OF THE CHORUS
But I see your father, tottering with an old man's walk, and his followers bearing in their hands for your wife garments as an offering to the dead.
PHERES
My son, I have come to share your sorrow, for the wife you have lost was indeed noble and virtuous-none can deny it. But these things must be endured, however intolerable they may be.
Take these garments, and let her descend under the earth. Her body must be honoured, for she died to save your life, my son; she has not made me childless, nor left me to be destroyed without you in my hapless old age; and she has given glorious fame to all women by daring so noble a deed! (He lifts his hand in salutation to the body of ALCESTIS.) O woman, who saved my son, who raised me up when I had fallen, hail! Be happy in the halls of Hades! I declare it-such marriages are profitable to mankind; otherwise, it is foolish to marry.
ADMETUS (furiously)
