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 whene’er to Argos’ thirsty land I come.
CHORUS. Why then didst thou conceal thy present misfortune, if, as thy own lips declare, it was a friend that came?
ADMETUS. He would never have entered my house, had he known aught of my distress. Maybe there are those who think me but a fool for acting thus, and these will blame me; but my halls have never learnt to drive away or treat with scorn my guests.
CHORUS. O home of hospitality, thrown open by thy lord to all now and ever! In thee it was that Pythian Apollo, the sweet harper, deigned to make his home and in thy halls was content to lead a shepherd’s life, piping o’er the sloping downs shepherd’s madrigals to thy flocks. And spotted lynxes couched amid his sheep in joy to hear his melody, and the lions’ tawny troop left the glen of Othrys and came; came too the dappled fawn on nimble foot from beyond the crested pines and frisked about thy lyre, O Phoebus, for very joy at thy gladsome minstrelsy. And so it is thy lord inhabits a home rich in countless flocks by Boebe’s lovely mere, bounding his tilled corn-land and his level pastures with the clime of the Molossi near the sun’s dark stable, and holding sway as far as the harbourless strand of the Aegean ’neath Pelion’s shadow. Now too hath he opened wide his house and welcomed a guest although his eye is wet with tears in mourning for his wife so dear but lately dead within his halls; yea, for noble birth to noble feeling is inclined. And in the good completest wisdom dwells; and at my heart sits the bold belief that heaven’s servant will be blessed.
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.
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.
[Enter PHERES.]
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, 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.
ADMETUS. 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 so: 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 die 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.
CHORUS. Peace! enough the present sorrow, O my son; goad not thy father’s soul to fury.
PHERES. Child, whom think’st thou art reviling? some Lydian or Phrygian bought with thy money? Art not aware I am a freeborn Thessalian, son of a Thessalian sire? Thou art too insolent; yet from hence thou shalt not go as thou camest, 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.
CHORUS. Too long that list both now and heretofore; cease, father, to revile thy son.
ADMETUS. Say on, for I have said my say; but if it vexes thee to hear the truth, thou shouldst not have sinned against me.
PHERES. My sin had been the deeper, had I died for thee.
ADMETUS. What! is it all one for young or old to die?
PHERES. To live one life, not twain, is all our due.
ADMETUS. Outlive then Zeus himself!
PHERES. Dost curse thy parents, though unharmed by them?
ADMETUS. Yea, for I see thy heart is set on length of days.
PHERES. Is it not to save thyself thou art carrying to the tomb this corpse?
ADMETUS. A proof of thy cowardice, thou craven heart!
PHERES. At any rate her death was not due to me; this thou canst not say.
ADMETUS. Ah! mayst thou some day come to need my aid!
PHERES. Woo many wives, that there may be the more to die.
ADMETUS. That is thy reproach, for thou didst refuse to die.
PHERES. Dear is the light of the sun-god, dear to all.
ADMETUS. A coward soul is thine, not to be reckoned among men.
PHERES. No laughing now for thee at bearing forth my aged corpse.
ADMETUS. Thy
