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Enter Admetus from the palace with servants carrying Alcestis on her bier.
Admetus
Men of Pherae who stand by in good will, the body has been prepared for burial, and my servants are carrying it on their shoulders to grave and pyre. Do you, then, as custom ordains, [610] bid the dead woman farewell as she goes out on her last journey. Enter Pheres with retinue by Eisodos B.
Chorus-Leader
But look! I see your father approaching with aged step and his servants carrying finery for your wife, adornment for the dead. Pheres
I come to share in your trouble, my son. [615] For you have lost, as no one will deny, a noble and virtuous wife. Yet you must bear these things though they are hard to bear. Now take this finery, and let it be buried with her. We must show honor to her corpse [620] seeing that she died to save your life, my son, and did not leave me childless or let me waste away in a stricken old age bereft of you. She has given the lives of all women a fairer repute by daring to do this noble deed. To Alcestis [625] You that both saved this man's life and raised me up when I was falling: farewell! In the house of Hades may it go well with you! A marriage like this, I maintain, is a boon for mortals, and if not, it is never worthwhile to marry.1
1 See note above on 476.
Euripides. Euripides, with an English translation by David Kovacs. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1994.
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