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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.
610
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.
610
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.
Look! I see thy father advancing with aged step, and servants too bearing in their arms adornment for thy wife, offerings for the dead.
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,
615
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.
620
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.
625
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,
615
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.
620
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.
625
Alcestis. Euripides. Edward P. Coleridge (Translator). London. 1906.
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