Alcestis
Euripides
Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. I. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1906.
- 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,[*](Dindorf has good reason for suspecting this line here.) 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,