Alcestis (0-57)

Halls of Admetus, wherein I steeled my heart to be content with a servant’s board, god though I was. Zeus was to blame; he slew my son Asclepius, piercing his bosom with a thunderbolt;

whereat I was enraged and smote his Cyclopes, forgers of the heavenly fire; so my sire in recompense for this forced me to become a slave in a mortal’s home. Then came I to this land and kept a stranger’s flocks, and to this day have been the saviour of this house.

For in Pheres’ son I found a man as holy as myself, and him I saved from death by cheating Destiny, for they promised me, those goddesses of fate, that Admetus should escape the impending doom, if he found a substitute for the powers below.

So he went through all his list of friends, made trial of each, his father and the aged mother that bare him,[*] but none he found save his wife alone that was willing to die for him and forego the light of life; she now within the house is upheld in his arms,

gasping out her life; for to-day is she doomed to die and pass from life to death. But I, for fear pollution overtake me in the house, am leaving the shelter of this roof I love so well, for already I see Death hard by,

the priest of souls departed, who is on his way to lead her to the halls of Hades; true to time he comes, watching this day that calls her to her doom.