Alcestis

Alcestis is a play by Euripides about a wife who agrees to die in her husband’s place and is brought back from the dead. It is set at Pherae in Thessaly, outside the palace of King Admetus, on the day that his wife Alcestis is fated to die. Apollo, who once served Admetus as a herdsman, has persuaded the Fates to let Admetus escape his own death if someone else will die for him, and only his wife has been willing. After her death, the hero Heracles arrives, on his way to Thrace to fetch the man-eating mares of Diomedes, and Admetus, in spite of his grief, takes him in as a guest and does not tell him who has died. When Heracles learns the truth from a servant, he goes to the tomb, wrestles Death for Alcestis, and brings her back veiled, presenting her to Admetus as a prize he has won, in a scene in which Admetus must decide whether to take a strange woman into his house. According to the ancient hypothesis, the play was produced in 438 BC as the fourth play of a group, in the place usually held by a satyr play, but it has no satyrs, and it has long been a problem to classify. The play contains a bitter argument between Admetus and his father Pheres, and a Heracles who is first a drunken guest and then a rescuer.

Date and Historical Background

The play’s date and its place in the program come from the ancient hypothesis (the introduction transmitted with the play). It records that Alcestis was produced in 438 BC, in the archonship of Glaucinus, in the fourth position, after Cretan Women, Alcmaeon in Psophis and Telephus; that Sophocles took the first prize and Euripides the second; and that the play is “rather satyric” in character. None of the three plays that were performed with it has survived. If the date is right, Alcestis is the earliest of Euripides’ surviving plays whose date is recorded; Medea, the next, is dated by its own hypothesis to 431 BC.

The myth was well known. Apollo’s service with Admetus is told in the prologue of the play itself (lines 1–14): Zeus killed Asclepius, the son of Apollo, with a thunderbolt, and Apollo in anger killed the Cyclopes who forged it (lines 3–6). In return, his father made him serve a mortal man, and Apollo herded cattle for Admetus, a pious man (lines 6–10). Apollo repaid him by getting the Fates to agree that Admetus could escape death if he found someone to die in his place (lines 12–14). The play does not explain why Apollo, after doing so much for a mortal, cannot also save Alcestis: Death answers that this is not allowed, and that he delights in his own privileges (lines 52–53).

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Apollo
• Death (Thanatos)
• Admetus, king of Pherae in Thessaly
• Alcestis, his wife, daughter of Pelias
• Their son, a small boy who speaks in the lament (the play does not name him)
• Maidservant
• Heracles
• Pheres, Admetus’ father
• Manservant
• Chorus of old men of Pherae

Setting

The scene is the front of the palace of Admetus at Pherae. The action takes place on one day, from the morning of Alcestis’s death to the moment when she is restored. The body is carried out to the grave during the course of the play, and Heracles goes off to the tomb and returns.

Summary of Alcestis

Prologue

Apollo speaks first (lines 1–27). He says he endured a laborer’s table in the house of Admetus, though a god. He explains how Zeus killed his son Asclepius with a thunderbolt and he killed the Cyclopes who made it, for which his father forced him to serve a mortal (lines 3–7). He tended the herds for Admetus and kept the house safe until this day, because he found the son of Pheres pious and saved him from death by tricking the Fates, who agreed that Admetus might escape Hades if he gave another corpse in exchange (lines 8–14). Admetus tried all his friends, his father and his old mother, and found no one willing to die for him except his wife, and she is now dying in the arms of her attendants. This is the day she is fated to die, and Apollo leaves the house so as not to be polluted by death. He sees Death approaching, the priest of the dead, who has come to take her down to Hades and is here on time (lines 24–27).

Death enters and is angry to find Apollo with his bow near the house (lines 28–37). He accuses the god of cheating the powers below of their rights, first by saving Admetus by a trick on the Fates, and now by standing guard with his weapon. Apollo says he has just cause and good words, and that he carries his bow as always (lines 38–40). He is troubled by the misfortunes of a friend. He asks Death not to take Alcestis by force (lines 44–51), and asks whether she might reach old age. Death says no: “Believe that I too take pleasure in my privileges” (line 53). Apollo says he can only take one life, and Death says that he gets a greater prize when the young die; Apollo adds that if she were old she would have a rich burial, and Death accuses him of making the law for the rich, since the wealthy would buy a long life (lines 54–59). Apollo warns that a man will come to the house of Pheres, sent by Eurystheus to fetch the horses of Thrace, and he will be received as a guest and take the woman from Death by force (lines 65–69). Death says he will gain nothing by talk and goes in with a sword to cut a lock of Alcestis’s hair as the consecration of the dead to the gods below (lines 72–76).

Parodos (Entrance Song)

The Chorus of old men of Pherae enters, speaking in alternating voices (lines 77–135). They wonder why the house is so quiet, and why there is no one at the door of the palace. They ask whether the queen is dead or alive, and one points out that there are none of the signs of death, no cries or beating of hands inside, and no spring water at the gate for purification, as custom requires, nor a lock of hair cut for mourning on the porch (lines 98–104). Yet this is the fated day. They say that there is no part of the earth, in Lycia or the dry sanctuary of Ammon, where they could go to save her, and that there is no help except from Asclepius, who could once raise the dead until Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt (lines 112–130). All the altars of the gods are full of sacrifices, but there is no cure for these ills. A maidservant comes out of the palace in tears (lines 136–140).

First Episode

The Chorus asks her whether the queen is alive or dead. The maidservant answers that she may be called both living and dead (lines 141–142), since she is already collapsing and breathing her last, and the day appointed by fate presses on her. The Chorus tells her that Admetus will lose a wife of the greatest merit, and the maidservant answers: “How could she not be the best? Who would dispute it?” (line 152). She then describes the preparations that Alcestis made when she knew that the day had come (lines 152–198). She washed her white skin in river water, took her best clothes and ornaments from a cedar chest, and stood before the hearth of Hestia and prayed: “Mistress, since I am going beneath the earth, I fall before you for the last time and ask that you take care of my orphaned children, give a loving wife to the one and a noble husband to the other, and that they not die early as their mother does, but live happily in their own land” (lines 163–169). She went to all the altars of the house, decked them with myrtle branches and prayed without tears or groans, and the coming evil did not change the color of her face. Then she went into her bedroom and threw herself on the bed and wept, saying: “O bed, where I loosed my maidenhead for this man, for whom I now die, farewell; I do not hate you. You have destroyed me alone; I die because I would not betray you and my husband. Some other woman will have you, not more virtuous than I, but perhaps more fortunate” (lines 177–182). She kissed the bed and soaked it with tears. She left the room, then turned back and threw herself on the bed again. The children clung to her robe and wept, and she took each in her arms and embraced them as if about to die. All the servants wept for their mistress, and she held out her hand to each, and there was no servant so lowly that she did not speak to him and was not answered (lines 189–195). The maidservant says that this is how things are in Admetus’ house, and that he would have died, but, having escaped death, he has a grief he will never forget (lines 196–198).

The Chorus asks whether Admetus is groaning. The maidservant says that he is weeping, holding his dear wife in his arms and begging her not to abandon him; she is wasting away with illness and is a mere weight on his arm (lines 199–206). She wants to see the light of the sun for the last time, and he will bring her out into the open air. The maidservant goes inside, and the Chorus sings the first stasimon (lines 213–243). They ask what way out there is for the king, and say that it is time to cut their hair and put on black. They pray to Apollo as the Healer (Paian), who found the cure for Admetus before, to find a way again and save him from the death-bringer Hades. They say that the king who has lost the best of wives will find the rest of his life unlivable, and that marriage, judging by past events and by this one, gives more pain than joy (lines 238–243).

Second Episode

Alcestis comes out, supported by Admetus, with their two children (lines 244–279). She speaks to the Sun and the daylight, the clouds in the sky, and then has a vision. She sees a two-oared boat on the lake and the ferryman of the dead, Charon, calling to her to hurry, and someone leading her away to the hall of the dead, winged Hades, glaring at her from under dark brows (lines 252–263). Admetus says that this is a bitter voyage for them all. She asks to be let go, and says she is lying down and cannot stand, that the gates of Hades are near and night is falling over her eyes. Admetus begs her not to abandon her children and to be brave; she says she cannot, and she gives the children a last look (lines 264–279).

Then she speaks to Admetus (lines 280–325). She says that she is dying for him and could have lived: she could have married any Thessalian she liked and lived in a rich house, but she did not want to live when separated from him, with orphaned children, and she did not spare her youth, although she had the things she enjoyed. Yet his father and his mother had abandoned him, although they were old and it would have been honorable for them to die for their son; he was their only child. She asks one thing in return, which is only just, since nothing is dearer than life: he should accept the children as masters of the house, and not marry again and bring in a stepmother, who would be worse than she and would hate the children and lift her hand against them from jealousy. The stepmother, she says, is hostile to the children of the first wife, no gentler than a viper (lines 305–310). A boy has his father to protect him, but she asks how her daughter will be brought up, and what woman her father will bring, who may harm her youth and spoil her marriage; for her mother will not be there to give her away in marriage or to comfort her at the birth of her child. She says she must die now, not the next day or in a few days but at once, and tells them to be happy; Admetus may boast of having had the best of wives, and the children of having had the best of mothers (lines 320–325).

Admetus answers (lines 328–368). He promises that she will be his only wife in life and in death, and that no Thessalian woman will ever call him husband in her place, since none is so high-born or so beautiful. He has enough children and prays to the gods that he may have joy of them, since he could not have joy of her. He will mourn not for a year but as long as he lives, hating his mother and hating his father, who loved him in word and not in deed. He will stop all revels and gatherings of drinkers, the garlands and the music, which once filled his house; he will never touch the lyre or lift his heart to the Libyan flute, for she has taken from him the joy of life. He will have a statue of her, made by the skill of craftsmen, laid on his bed, and he will embrace it and call her name, and seem to hold his wife although he does not; it will be cold pleasure, but it will lighten the weight on his soul. She will visit him in dreams. If he had the voice and song of Orpheus, so that he could charm the daughter of Demeter or her husband and bring her up from Hades, he would go down, and neither the dog of Pluto nor the ferryman Charon would stop him until he brought her back to the light (lines 357–362). He asks her to wait for him there and to prepare a house for him, and he will have himself laid in the same cedar chest next to her, so that he is never separated from her, who alone was faithful to him (lines 363–368).

She hands the children to him, and he accepts them from her hand as a dear gift from a dear hand, and promises that he will be their parent in her place (lines 371–378). She says that she must go, and says goodbye to the children, and Admetus begs her to take him with her and cries out at the loss of such a wife (lines 380–384). Her eyes grow dark; she asks him to look at the children, and says “I am nothing any more” and “farewell” (lines 385–391). Admetus says that he is lost, and the Chorus announces that Admetus’ wife is gone (line 392).

The small son cries out that his mother has gone to Hades and left him alone and begs his father to bear it, and asks him to look and listen (lines 393–415). Admetus tells him that she can neither see nor hear. The Chorus tells Admetus that he must bear his misfortunes, since he is not the first nor will he be the last to lose a good wife; death is owed by us all (lines 416–419). Admetus answers that he knew this was coming and that it was not a sudden misfortune, and announces the funeral. He commands all of Thessaly to share in the mourning with shaved heads and black cloaks; those who yoke four-horse teams or single horses are to cut their manes; there must be no flute or lyre in the city for twelve months, because he will never bury anyone dearer than she, who died for him (lines 422–434).

In the second stasimon (lines 435–475) the Chorus sends Alcestis down to the sunless house with a blessing, and says that Hades and the old ferryman will know that he has carried the best woman across the Acherontian lake. Many bards, they say, will sing of her on the seven-stringed mountain lyre and without lyre, in Sparta when the circle of the Carneian month comes round and the moon is risen all night, and in rich and shining Athens (lines 445–452). They wish they had the power to bring her back from Hades along the underworld river with an oar. She alone dared to give her life in exchange for her husband’s. May the earth lie lightly over her. If her husband takes another bed, he will be hateful to the Chorus and to her children. They say that the mother and the old father refused to save the son, though they were gray-haired, whereas she died in her youth (lines 466–471). They ask for such a wife for themselves, a rare thing in life.

Third Episode

Heracles enters (line 476), and speaks to the Chorus, asking whether Admetus is at home. The Chorus says that the son of Pheres is in the house and asks where Heracles is going. He is on his way to Thrace, he says, for the horses of Diomedes, a task assigned by Eurystheus. The Chorus asks if he knows what he is up against: the mares eat men, and their stalls are stained with blood (lines 481–498). He answers that his labors are always uphill and that he will not be afraid of an enemy hand (lines 499–506).

Admetus comes out with his hair cut, in mourning dress (lines 507–513). Heracles greets him and asks why he has cut his hair. Admetus says that he is burying someone today. Heracles first prays that his children are safe and that his father is not dead; Admetus says that his father is alive, as is his mother and his children, but that a woman has died. Heracles asks whether it was his wife, and Admetus replies in puzzling words that she both is and is not: he has a double answer (lines 518–528). Asked who has died, he says it was a woman who was not related to him but belonged to his house, and who had been brought up there as an orphan (lines 531–533). Heracles says that he would not have come if he had known and wants to go elsewhere. Admetus replies that the dead are dead, and he must not go to another man’s house; he orders the servants to open the guest rooms, which are separate from the house, to give him food, and to close the doors of the inner court so that his guest does not hear the mourning and lose his appetite (lines 539–550). Heracles goes in. The Chorus objects: how can he receive a guest when so much grief lies on the house? Admetus replies that if he drove a guest away from his house and city he would be blamed twice, and that Heracles is the best of hosts in Argos and would not have come in if he had known (lines 553–567).

The third stasimon (lines 568–605) praises the house of Admetus for its hospitality, and tells how Apollo once lived there, played his pipes among the herds of the king and charmed the lynxes and lions and dappled fawns, so that the cattle multiplied. The Chorus says that such a house has a good reputation, and that Admetus now opens his doors to a guest though his eyes are wet with tears for his wife who has just died. They conclude that the pious man is likely to be fortunate.

Fourth Episode

Admetus speaks to the Chorus (lines 606–610), thanking them for coming to the funeral, and at this moment his father Pheres appears (lines 611–613) with servants carrying gifts for the dead woman. Pheres says that he has come to share his son’s trouble, and speaks of the loss of a good wife (lines 614–628). Admetus replies angrily (lines 629–672): he did not invite him to the funeral and he is not welcome, since he would not die for his son. The old man had lived long enough, he had a kingdom and a son to leave it to, and he should have died for him instead of letting a young woman do so; he says that he does not count Pheres as his father, and that the old man who was not willing to die has proved a coward. The Chorus asks them to stop, since there is enough misfortune.

Pheres answers (lines 675–705). He asks whom Admetus thinks he is speaking to, a Lydian or a Phrygian slave; does he not know that he is a free Thessalian born of a Thessalian father? He says that he begot him and raised him and left him the kingdom, and owes him nothing more; there is no ancestral law that fathers should die for their children. Each man is born for himself, whether fortunate or unfortunate. Admetus has the light of the sun and is clinging to it, and he is the one who killed Alcestis, by his cowardice. He says that Admetus has found a clever way never to die, by persuading each wife in turn to die for him, and tells him that he should not blame his friends for cowardice. The quarrel continues in quick exchanges (lines 706–729). Pheres leaves with a warning: Admetus will bury her himself, as her own killer, and will answer to her kinsmen, for Acastus, her brother, is no man if he does not avenge his sister’s blood (lines 730–733). Admetus tells his father and mother to go and grow old childless, as they deserve, and says that they will never come under his roof again (lines 734–740). The body of Alcestis is carried out to the pyre, and the Chorus bids her farewell, praying that Hermes of the underworld and Hades will receive her kindly (lines 741–746).

A manservant enters from the house (lines 747–772). He says that he has received many guests at Admetus’ house but none worse than this one. When Admetus was in mourning, Heracles came in and boldly passed through the gates; then, though he knew of the misfortune, he took the food that was offered carelessly, and when the servants did not bring something, he ordered them to bring it. He took an ivy-wood cup in his hands and drank the strong wine of the black mother of the grape until the fire of the wine warmed him, then he put a crown of myrtle on his head and howled out of tune. There were two kinds of sound in the house: he sang, ignoring the troubles of Admetus’ house, and the servants wept for their mistress, but did not show their tears to the guest, because Admetus had ordered it. He is now looking after this stranger, whom he calls a thief and a robber, while she has been carried out of the house, and he did not follow the funeral or raise his hand in lament for her, who was like a mother to all the servants and protected them from countless evils by soothing her husband’s anger (lines 765–772).

Heracles, garlanded and merry, comes out and calls to the servant, asking why he looks so solemn and anxious (lines 773–802). A servant should not scowl at the guests, but should receive them with a pleasant face. He tells him to have a drink, since no one knows what fate brings, and the wise should enjoy the pleasure of the day. The servant answers that he knows all this, but it is not the time for revelry and laughter. Heracles says that the woman who died is a stranger, and there is no need to grieve too much. The servant says, “A stranger?”, and Heracles says that Admetus told him so (lines 803–825). The servant tells him that she was the mistress of the house; Heracles, seeing his tears, asks what has happened. When he learns that the dead woman was Admetus’ wife, he is distressed at his behavior (lines 826–836). He asks where she is buried, and the servant tells him to take the road to Larissa, where he will see the tomb.

Heracles then speaks to himself (lines 837–860). He calls on his heart and his hand to show what kind of son the Tirynthian woman bore him, for he must save the dead woman, and restore Alcestis to this house and do Admetus a service in return. He will go and watch for Death, the black-robed lord of the dead, and expects to find him drinking the blood of the sacrifice near the tomb; he will spring from ambush and seize him in his arms, and no one will take him from his grip until he gives up the woman. If he misses his prey, because Death does not come to the blood offering, he will go down to the houses of Kore and her lord in the sunless world and ask for her there, and he is sure that he will bring her back and put her in the hands of his host, who received him into his house and did not drive him away, although he was struck by a heavy misfortune, but hid it, out of nobility. Who among the Thessalians, he asks, is more hospitable than Admetus?

Heracles goes out. Admetus returns from the grave with the Chorus (lines 861–960), in a lyric lament. He asks where he can go, where stand, what he can say, and wishes that Hades had taken him. He envies the dead, and asks why the Chorus stopped him from throwing himself into the grave to lie dead beside the best of women (lines 897–899). The Chorus tells him to endure it, since he is not the first to lose a wife and misfortune falls on different people in different ways (lines 889–894). Then, as he turns to the house, he cannot bear to enter it: he came in with wedding songs and torches; now he goes in with wailing and black robes (lines 912–925). He says that his wife’s fate was luckier than his, since no pain will touch her again, while he who ought not to be alive must live (lines 935–940). He imagines the empty bed, the dust on the floor and the children clinging to his knees (lines 945–949), and the gossip of the Thessalians, who will point at him as a man who shamefully lives, who did not dare to die and gave his wife as a substitute (lines 954–961).

The fourth stasimon (lines 962–1005) begins with the Chorus saying that they have been among the Muses and have studied many theories, but have found nothing stronger than Necessity. There is no remedy for it in the Thracian tablets that Orpheus wrote, nor in the drugs that Apollo gave to the Asclepiads to relieve suffering mortals. Necessity alone has no altar and no image to which one can go; she does not listen to sacrifices. They pray that she not come upon them more heavily than before, since even Zeus accomplishes nothing without her. They say to Admetus that he must endure it, for tears cannot bring back those who are in Hades, and that even the children of the gods die. His wife was dear while she was with them, and will be dear now that she is dead. Her grave should not be thought of as the mound of the dead but should be honored like those of the gods, a reverence to travelers, and one who turns his steps aside from the road shall say: “She once died for her husband, and now she is a blessed spirit. Hail, lady, and be kind.” Such words, they say, will be said of her (lines 995–1005).

Exodos (Exit Song)

Heracles returns to the palace, leading a veiled woman (lines 1006–1007). He speaks frankly to Admetus as a friend: he reproaches him, without anger, for not telling him of his wife’s death, since he feasted in the house with a garland on his head while it was in mourning. But he does not want to hurt him in his grief. He then explains why he has come back: he asks Admetus to keep the woman for him until he returns from Thrace with the horses of Diomedes. If he does not return, Admetus should keep her as a servant. He won her, he says, in a contest that he came upon, in which athletes were competing for prizes; the winners of the lighter events took horses, and those of the heavier events, boxing and wrestling, took cattle, and a woman was added to the prize (lines 1025–1032). He could not have passed up such a gain, and he took part and won her. He asks Admetus to look after her until he comes back; he will repay him for his kindness (lines 1033–1041).

Admetus first explains that he hid his wife’s death not to slight Heracles, but because it would have added grief to grief if his guest had gone to another man’s house (lines 1037–1041). Then he refuses the woman (lines 1042–1069), out of consideration for his dead wife: he cannot see another woman in her house and under her roof, and his sorrow would be renewed. Heracles should give her to another Thessalian. If he takes her into the house, he fears a double reproach from the people, who will say that he betrays his benefactress for a new bed, and from the dead woman. He then looks at the woman and sees that her figure resembles his wife’s: he asks Heracles to take her away. Heracles says that he wishes he had the power to bring Alcestis back from Hades, as a favor (lines 1072–1075), and the Chorus and Heracles advise Admetus to accept his misfortune: time will cure the longing for the dead, and a new marriage will relieve him of his grief (lines 1078–1087). Admetus says that he cannot bear it; he would rather die than see any woman lie with him (lines 1090–1098). Heracles insists that he should hold out his hand, and the Chorus tells Admetus that it is better to accept (lines 1104–1115). Admetus gives in, unwillingly, and asks the servants to take her into the house, but Heracles says that he will not give her to servants, only into his own hands (lines 1113–1116). He tells him to hold her and see whether she looks like his wife. Admetus holds out his hand to her “like one cutting off the head of the Gorgon” (line 1118), and Heracles tells him to look at her and see whether she resembles his wife (lines 1121–1122).

Admetus cries out to the gods at an unexpected wonder: he sees his wife, whom he buried, and wonders whether it is a mocking vision sent by a god (lines 1123–1130). Heracles says that it is not a vision, but his own wife, whom he can speak to and embrace (lines 1131–1134). Admetus embraces her and asks where Heracles found her. Heracles says that he fought Death at the grave and won (lines 1140–1142). He says that Admetus cannot yet hear her voice, because she is not yet released from the consecration to the gods below, and not until the third day has come (lines 1144–1146). He tells him to take her inside and to treat guests justly henceforth. He himself must go on to Eurystheus and Thrace. Admetus begs him to stay and share the feast, and Heracles promises to do so another time, on his return. Admetus announces that he will have dances and sacrifices throughout the land, in thanks for his good fortune (lines 1152–1158). The play ends with the five lines of the Chorus: many are the shapes of the divine; the gods bring many things to pass that are not expected; what was expected is not fulfilled, and for the unexpected a god finds a way. “Such was the outcome of this story” (lines 1159–1163).

A Brief Analysis

The question that readers have asked about Alcestis is whether it is a tragedy, a comedy, or something in between. According to the ancient hypothesis, it was performed in the position of the satyr play, and the same source describes it as somewhat satyric in character. The text we have has no satyrs, and its first two thirds are as grave as any tragedy, with an ending in which the dead return. What can be said from the text is that the play mixes the registers. The first half is occupied with Alcestis’s death, the second with Admetus’s guest, a drunken Heracles who sings in his garland while the servants weep (lines 747–772), and a recovery of the dead by wrestling.

The central question is the character of Admetus. At the start he is a man who has accepted a deal in which his wife dies for him, and the play makes this uncomfortable. Alcestis herself says that his parents were old and could have died for him (lines 290–298), and his quarrel with Pheres is the most direct statement of the problem. Admetus calls his father a coward for refusing to die (lines 629–672); Pheres answers that his son has also chosen life, and has found a way never to die by letting his wives die in his place (lines 675–705). The audience is meant to hear both sides, and Admetus, who has just accused Pheres, cannot answer. His excessive promises to Alcestis, never to marry again, to put an end to the lyre and the banquets, to lie beside a statue, show how large a debt he feels.

The other side of Admetus is his hospitality. His readiness to take in Heracles, in the middle of his grief, is praised by the Chorus in the third stasimon (lines 568–605), and by Heracles himself (lines 857–860), and it is the reason why Alcestis is brought back. The play thus sets the unsympathetic Admetus, who let his wife die, against the generous Admetus, who will not turn away a guest, and the reward for the second comes to him, perhaps undeserved, from Heracles. At the end the same man who swore never to look at another woman has to be pressed into taking a stranger by the hand (lines 1104–1116). His refusal is, in the end, his fidelity to his promise, and that is what sets the final scene in motion. Whether this is a test, a comic reversal, or a sign of reward for hospitality, the text does not say, and the Chorus’s concluding lines only remark that the gods bring unexpected things to pass.

The role of Heracles also deserves notice. He is introduced in the prologue as a man who will come and take Alcestis from Death by force (lines 65–69). He is a guest, a drinker and a hero; after he learns the truth he acts at once and without being asked (lines 837–860), and his plan, to ambush Death at the tomb, is half comic in its physical directness. But he does it for a reason the play values, as a return for kindness. The Chorus’s fourth stasimon, with its praise of Necessity and of Alcestis as a blessed spirit who will receive honors at her tomb (lines 962–1005), prepares for a different ending, in which she stays dead; the actual ending reverses it by the intervention of a mortal hero, and the closing lines (lines 1159–1163), which also close several other plays, take the reversal as an example of how little men can foresee.

Alcestis Sources

The Greek text of Alcestis can be read on the Perseus Digital Library. The line numbers in this article follow it, and the quotations are translated from the Greek. The date, the other plays of the group, the result of the competition and the remark about the play’s satyric character come from the ancient hypothesis printed with the play.

See Also: Euripides, Medea, Heracles, Apollo, Admetus, Asclepius