Attendant Thou earnest at no proper time for our house to welcome thee, for sorrow is come upon us; lo! thou seest our shorn heads and robes of sable hue.
Heracles Who is it that is dead? Is it a child or his aged sire that hat hath passed away?
Attendant Nay, sir guest, ’tis Admetus’ wife that is no more.
Heracles What sayest thou? and did ye then in spite of that admit me to your cheer?
Attendant Yes, for his regard would not let him send thee from his door.
Heracles Unhappy husband, what a wife hast thou lost!
Attendant We are all undone, not she alone.
Heracles I knew it when I saw his streaming eye, shorn head and downcast look, yet did he persuade me, saying it was a stranger he was bearing to burial. So I did constrain myself and passed his gates and sat drinking in his hospitable halls, when he was suffering thus. And have I wreathed my head and do I revel still? But—thou to hold thy peace when such a crushing sorrow lay upon the house! Where is he burying her? Whither shall I go to find her?
Attendant Beside the road that leadeth straight to Larissa, shalt thou see her carved tomb outside the suburb.
Heracles O heart, O soul, both sufferers oft, now show the mettle of that son Tirynthian Alcmena, daughter of Electryon, bare to Zeus. For I must save this woman, dead but now, setting Alcestis once again within this house, and to Admetus this kind service render. So I will go and watch for death the black-robed monarch of the dead, and him methinks I shall find as he drinks of the blood-offering near the tomb. And if, from ambush rushing, once I catch and fold him in my arms’ embrace, none shall ever wrest him thence with smarting ribs, ere he give up the woman unto me. But should I fail to find my prey and he come not to the clotted blood, I will go to the sunless home of those beneath the earth, to Persephone and her king, and make to them my prayer, sure that I shall bring Alcestis up again, to place her in the hands of him, my host, who welcomed me to his house nor drove me thence, though fortune smote him hard, but this his noble spirit strove to hide out of regard for me. What host more kind than him in Thessaly? or in in the homes of Hellas? Wherefore shall he never say his generous deeds were lavished on a worthless wretch.
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