Alcestis (611-714)

Look! I see thy father advancing with aged step, and servants too bearing in their arms adornment for thy wife, offerings for the dead.

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.

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 son, 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 did 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.

Peace! enough the present sorrow, O my son; goad not thy father’s soul to fury.

Child, whom think’st thou art reviling? some Lydian or Phrygian bought with thy money? Art not aware I am a freebom Thessalian, son of a Thessalian sire? Thou art too insolent; yet from hence thou shalt not go as thou earnest,

after shooting out thy braggart tongue at me. To rule my house I begat and bred thee up; I own no debt of dying in thy stead; this is not the law that I received from my ancestors that fathers should die for children, nor is it a custom in Hellas.

For weal or woe, thy life must be thine own; whate’er was due from me to thee, thou hast. Dominion wide is thine, and acres broad I will leave to thee, for from my father did I inherit them. How, pray, have I wronged thee? of what am I robbing thee?

Die not thou for me, nor I for thee. Thy joy is in the light; think’st thou thy sire’s is not? By Heaven! ’tis a weary while, I trow, that time beneath the earth, and life, though short, is sweet. Thou at least didst struggle hard to ’scape thy death,

lost to shame, and by her death dost live beyond thy destined term. Dost thou then speak of cowardice in me, thou craven heart! no match for thy wife, who hath died for thee, her fine young lord? A clever scheme hast thou devised to stave off death for ever,

if thou canst persuade each new wife to die instead of thee; and dost thou then taunt thy friends, who will not do the like, coward as thou art thyself? Hold thy peace; reflect, if thou dost love thy life so well, this love by all is shared; yet if thou wilt speak ill of me,

thyself shalt hear a full and truthful list of thy own crimes.

Too long that list both now and heretofore; cease, father, to revile thy son.

Say on, for I have said my say; but if it vexes thee to hear the truth, thou shouldst not have sinned against me.

My sin had been the deeper, had I died for thee.

What! is it all one for young or old to die?

To live one life, not twain, is all our due.

Outlive then Zeus himself!

Dost curse thy parents, though unharmed by them?