Ten Plays. Euripides
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Heaven avert calamity from thy children!
ADMETUS. The children I have begotten are alive within my house.
HERACLES. Thy father maybe is gone; well, he was ripe to go.
ADMETUS. No, Heracles, he lives; my mother too.
HERACLES. It cannot be thy wife is dead, thy Alcestis?
ADMETUS. I can a twofold tale tell about her.
HERACLES. Dost mean that she is dead, or living still?
ADMETUS. She lives, yet lives no more; that is my grief.
HERACLES. I am no wiser yet; thy words are riddles to me.
ADMETUS. Knowest thou not the doom she must undergo?
HERACLES. I know she did submit to die in thy stead.
ADMETUS. How then is she still alive, if so she promised?
HERACLES. Ah! weep not thy wife before the day, put that off till then.
ADMETUS. The doomed is dead; the dead no more exists.
HERACLES. Men count to be and not to be something apart.
ADMETUS. Thy verdict this, O Heracles, mine another.
HERACLES. Why weepest then? which of thy dear ones is the dead?
ADMETUS. ’Tis a woman; I spoke of a woman just now.
HERACLES. A stranger, or one of thine own kin?
ADMETUS. A stranger, yet in another sense related to my house.
HERACLES. How then came she by her death in house of thine?
ADMETUS. Her father dead, she lived here as an orphan.
HERACLES. Ah! would I had found thee free from grief, Admetus!
ADMETUS. With what intent dost thou devise this speech?
HERACLES. I will seek some other friendly hearth.
ADMETUS. Never, O prince! Heaven forefend such dire disgrace!
HERACLES. A guest is a burden to sorrowing friends, if come he should.
ADMETUS. The dead are dead. Come in.
HERACLES. To feast in a friend’s house of sorrow is shameful.
ADMETUS. The guest chambers lie apart, whereto we will conduct thee.
HERACLES. Let me go; ten thousand-fold shall be my thanks to thee.
ADMETUS. Thou must not go to any other hearth. (To a Servant) Go before, open the guest-rooms that face not these chambers, and bid my stewards see there is plenty of food; then shut the doors that lead into the courtyard; for ’tis not seemly that guests when at their meat should hear the voice of weeping or be made sad.
[Exit HERACLES.]
CHORUS. What doest thou? With such calamity before thee, hast thou the heart, Admetus, to welcome visitors? What means this folly?
ADMETUS. Well, and if I had driven him from my house and city when he came to be my guest, wouldst thou have praised me more? No indeed! for my calamity would have been no whit less, while I should have been more churlish. And this would have been another woe to add to mine, that my house should be called no friend to guests. Yea, and I find him myself the best of hosts whene’er to Argos’ thirsty land I come.
CHORUS. Why then didst thou conceal thy present misfortune, if, as thy own lips declare, it was a friend that came?
ADMETUS. He would never have entered my house, had he known aught of my distress. Maybe there are those who think me but a fool for acting thus, and these will blame me; but my halls have never learnt to drive away or treat with scorn my guests.
CHORUS. O home of hospitality, thrown open by thy lord to all now and ever! In thee it was that Pythian Apollo, the sweet harper, deigned to make his home and in thy halls was content to lead a shepherd’s life, piping o’er the sloping downs shepherd’s madrigals to thy flocks. And spotted lynxes couched amid his sheep in joy to hear his melody, and the lions’ tawny troop left the glen of Othrys and came; came too the dappled fawn on nimble foot from beyond the crested pines and frisked about thy lyre, O Phoebus, for very joy at thy gladsome minstrelsy. And so it is thy lord inhabits a home rich in countless flocks by Boebe’s lovely mere, bounding his tilled corn-land and his level pastures with the clime of the Molossi near the sun’s dark stable, and holding sway as far as the harbourless strand of the Aegean ’neath Pelion’s shadow. Now too hath he opened wide his house and welcomed a guest although his eye is wet with tears in mourning for his wife so dear but lately dead within his halls; yea, for noble birth to noble feeling is inclined. And in the good completest wisdom dwells; and at my heart sits the bold belief that heaven’s servant will be blessed.
ADMETUS. Men of Pherae, kindly gathered here, lo! even now my servants are bearing the corpse with all its trappings shoulder-high to the funeral pyre for burial; do ye, as custom bids, salute the dead on her last journey starting.
CHORUS. Look! I see thy father advancing with aged step, and servants too bearing in their arms adornment for thy wife, offerings for the dead.
[Enter PHERES.]
PHERES. My son, I come to share thy sorrow, for thou hast lost a noble, peerless wife; that no man will deny. Yet must thou needs bear this blow, hard though it be. Accept this garniture, and let it go beneath the earth, for rightly is her body honoured, since she died to save thy life, my son, and gave me back my child, suffering me not to lose thee and pine away in an old age of sorrow. Thus by the generous deed she dared, hath she made her life a noble example for all her sex. Farewell to thee, who hast saved this son of mine and raised me up when falling; be thine a happy lot even in Hades’ halls! Such marriages I declare are gain to man, else to wed is not worth while.
ADMETUS. Thou hast come uncalled by me to this burial, nor do I count thy presence as a friendly act. Never shall she be clad in any garniture of thine, nor in her burial will she need aught of thine. Thou shouldst have shewn thy sympathy at the time my doom was sealed. But thou didst stand aloof and let another die, though thou wert old, the victim young; shalt thou then mourn the dead? Methinks thou wert no real sire of mine nor was she my true mother who calls herself and is called so, but I was sprung of slave’s blood and privily substituted at thy wife’s breast. Brought to the test thou hast shewn thy nature; I cannot think I am thy child by birth.
By heaven, thou art the very pattern of cowards, who at thy age, on the borderland of life, wouldst not, nay! couldst not find the heart to die for thy own son; but ye, my parents, left to this stranger, whom I henceforth shall justly hold e’en as mother and as father too, and none but her. And yet ’twas a noble exploit to achieve, to die to save thy so: and in any case the remnant of thy time to live was but short; and I and she would have lived the days that were to be, nor had I lost my wife and mourned my evil fate. Moreover thou hast had all treatment that a happy man should have; in princely pomp thy youth was spent, thou hadst a son, myself, to be the heir of this thy home, so thou hadst no fear of dying childless and leaving thy house desolate, for strangers to pillage. Nor yet canst thou say I die dishonour thy old age and give thee up to die, seeing I have ever been to thee most dutiful, and for this thou, my sire, and she my mother, have made me this return. Go then, get other sons to tend thy closing years, prepare thy body for the grave, and lay out thy corpse. For I will never bury thee with hand of mine; for I am dead for all thou didst for me; but if I found a saviour in another and still live, his son I say I am, and his fond nurse in old age will be. ’Tis vain, I see, the old man’s prayer for death, his plaints at age and life’s long weariness. For if death do but draw near, not one doth wish to die; old age no more they count so burdensome.
CHORUS. Peace! enough the present sorrow, O my son; goad not thy father’s soul to fury.
PHERES. Child, whom think’st thou art reviling? some Lydian or Phrygian bought with thy money? Art not aware I am a freeborn Thessalian,