Alcestis

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 315 sections

1.250
Lift thyself, unhappy wife, forsake me not; entreat the mighty gods to pity us.
2.252
I see the two-oared skiff, I see it; and Charon, death’s ferryman, his hand upon the boatman’s pole,
2.255
is calling me e’en now, Why lingerest thou? Hasten. Thou art keeping me. Thus in his eager haste he hurries me.
2.257
Ah me! bitter to me is this voyage thou speakest of. Unhappy wife, what woes are ours!
2.259
One draws me, draws me hence, seest thou not?
2.260
to the courts of death, winged Hades glaring from beneath his dark brows. What wilt thou with me? Unhand me. On what a journey am I setting out, most wretched woman I!
2.264
Bitter journey to thy friends, yet most of all to me
2.265
and to thy babes, the partners in this sorrow.
266
Hands off! hands off at once! Lay me down, I cannot stand. Hades standeth near; and with its gloom steals night upon my eyes.
270
O my children, my children, ye have no mother now. Fare ye well, my babes, live on beneath the light!
273
Woe is me! this is a message of sorrow to me, worse than aught that death can do.
275
Steel not thy heart to leave me, I implore, by heaven, by thy babes whom thou wilt make orphans; nay, raise thyself, have courage. For if thou die I can no longer live; my life, my death are in thy hands; thy love is what I worship.
1.393
O my hard fate! My mother has passed to the realms below; she lives no more,
1.395
dear father, ’neath the sun. Alas for her! she leaves us ere her time and to me bequeaths an orphan’s life. Behold that staring eye, those nerveless hands!
1.400
Hear me, mother, hear me, I implore! ’tis I who call thee now, I thy tender chick, printing my kisses on thy lips.
1.404
She cannot hear, she cannot see;
1.405
a heavy blow hath fortune dealt us, you children and me.
1.406
O father, I am but a child to have my loving mother leave me here alone; O cruel my fate, alas!
1.410
and thine, my sister, sharer in my cup of woe. Woe to thee, father! in vain, in vain didst thou take a wife and hast not reached the goal of eld with her; for she is gone before, and now that thou art dead,
1.415
my mother, our house is all undone.
1.416
Admetus, these misfortunes thou must bear. Thou art by no means the first nor yet shalt be the last of men to lose a wife of worth; know this, we all of us are debtors unto death.
1.420
I understand; this is no sudden flight of ill hither; I was ware of it and long have pined. But since I am to. carry the dead forth to her burial, stay here with me and to that inexorable god in Hades raise your antiphone. While raise your antiphone.
1.425
While to all Thessalians in my realm I do proclaim a general mourning for this lady, with hair shorn off and robes of sable hue; all ye who harness steeds for cars, or single horses ride, cut off their manes with the sharp steel.
1.430
Hush’d be every pipe, silent every lyre throughout the city till twelve full moons are past; for never again shall I bury one whom I love more, no! nor one more loyal to me; honour from me is her due, for she for me hath died, she and she alone. [Exeunt ADMETUS and EUMELUS, with the other children.
1.435
Daughter of Pelias, be thine a happy life in that sunless home in Hades’ halls! Let Hades know, that swarthy god,
1.440
and that old man who sits to row and steer alike at his death-ferry, that he hath carried o’er the lake of Acheron in his two-oared skiff a woman peerless amidst her sex.
1.445
Oft of thee the Muses’ votaries shall sing on the seven-stringed mountain shell and in hymns that need no harp, glorifying thee, oft as the season in his cycle cometh round at Sparta in that Carnean month
1.450
when all night long the moon sails high o’erhead, yea, and in splendid Athens, happy town. So glorious a theme has thy death bequeathed to tuneful bards.
2.455
Would it were in my power and range to bring thee to the light from the chambers of Hades and the streams of Cocytus with the oar that sweeps yon nether flood!
2.460
For thou, and thou alone, most dear of women, hadst the courage to redeem thy husband from Hades in exchange for thy own life. Light lie the earth above thee, lady! And if ever thy lord take to him a new wife, I vow he will earn my hatred
2.465
and thy children’s too.
2.466
His mother had no heart to plunge into the darkness of the tomb for her son, no! nor his aged sire. Their own child they had not the courage to rescue,
2.470
the wretches! albeit they were grey-headed. But thou in thy youth and beauty hast died for thy lord and gone thy way. O be it mine to have for partner such a loving wife! for this lot is rare in life. Surely she should be my help-meet all my life
2.475
and never cause one tear.
476
Mine hosts, dwellers on this Phersean soil! say, shall I find Admetus in the house?
478
The son of Pheres is within, Heracles. Tell me what need is bringing thee to the Thessalian land,
480
to visit this city of the Pheraeans?
481
I am performing a labour for Tirynthian Eurystheus.
482
And whither art thou journeying? on what wandering art thou forced to go?
483
To fetch the chariot-steeds of Thracian Diomedes.
484
How canst thou? art a stranger to the ways of thy host?
485
I am; for never yet have I gone to the land of the Bistones.
486
Thou canst not master his horses without fighting.
487
Still I cannot refuse these labours.
488
Then shalt thou slay them and return, or thyself be slain and stay there.
489
It will not be the first hard course that I have run.
490
And what will be thy gain, suppose thou master their lord?
491
The steeds will I drive away to the Tirynthian king.
492
No easy task to bit their jaws.
493
Easy enough, unless their nostrils vomit fire.
494
With ravening jaws they rend the limbs of men.
495
Thou speakest of the food of mountain beasts, not of horses.
496
Their mangers blood-bedabbled thou shalt see.
497
Whose son doth he who feeds them boast to be?
498
Ares’ son, king of the golden targe of Thrace.
499
This toil again is but a piece of my ill-luck;
500
hard it ever is and still is growing steeper, if I with Ares’ own-begotten sons must fight, first with Lycaon, next with Cycnus, while now I am bound on this third contest to engage the horses and their master.
505
Yet shall no man ever see Alcmena’s son trembling at his foemen’s prowess.
507
See where Admetus, lord of this land, comes in person from the palace forth.
509
Hail! son of Zeus, from Perseus sprung.
510
Joy to thee also, Admetus, king of Thessaly.
511
Would there were! yet thy kindly heart I know full well.
512
Why dost thou appear with head shorn thus in mourning?
513
To-day I am to bury one who is dead.
514
Heaven avert calamity from thy children!
515
The children I have begotten are alive within my house.
516
Thy father maybe is gone; well, he was ripe to go.
517
No, Heracles, he lives; my mother too.
518
It cannot be thy wife is dead, thy Alcestis?
519
I can a twofold tale tell about her.
520
Dost mean that she is dead, or living still?
521
She lives, yet lives no more; that is my grief.
522
I am no wiser yet; thy words are riddles to me.
523
Knowest thou not the doom she must undergo?
524
I know she did submit to die in thy stead.
525
How then is she still alive, if so she promised?
526
Ah! weep not thy wife before the day, put that off till then.
527
The doomed is dead; the dead no more exists.
528
Men count to be and not to be something apart.
529
Thy verdict this, O Heracles, mine another.
530
Why weepest then? which of thy dear ones is the dead?
531
’Tis a woman; I spoke of a woman just now.
532
A stranger, or one of thine own kin?
533
A stranger, yet in another sense related to my house.
534
How then came she by her death in house of thine?
535
Her father dead, she lived here as an orphan.
536
Ah! would I had found thee free from grief, Admetus!
537
With what intent dost thou devise this speech?
538
I will seek some other friendly hearth.
539
Never, O prince! Heaven forefend such dire disgrace!
540
A guest is a burden to sorrowing friends, if come he should.
541
The dead are dead. Come in.
542
To feast in a friend’s house of sorrow is shameful.
543
The guest chambers lie apart, whereto we will conduct thee.
544
Let me go; ten thousandfold shall be my thanks to thee.
545
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
550
should hear the voice of weeping or be made sad. [Exit HERACLES.
551
What doest thou? With such calamity before thee, hast thou the heart, Admetus, to welcome visitors? What means this folly?
553
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?
555
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

Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0006.tlg002.perseus-eng2. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source.