Alkestis
This is the earliest play by Euripides to have survived intact. It was produced in 438 (his first, Peliades, was presented in 455) as the fourth play (the other three being Cretan Women; Alkmaion in Psophis; Telephos), and it won second prize.
English introduction
P. 183: only Alkestis could be found to die for Admetos. This usually provokes controversy, leading to the conclusion that Admetos must have been a very selfish man to have allowed her to do so - indeed, exactly that point is made in the play by his father, Pheres, Admetos countering by accusing Pheres of selfishness in not volunteering, and Pheres replying by suggesting that Admetos was selfish to expect him to volunteer!
Writers of later versions of the story clearly felt that the character of Admetos was the most unsatisfactory thing in the play: Alfieri, Alaste Seconda (1798) makes Alkestis’ death an oracular prediction, viz. fated rather than chosen, while in Browning’s Balaustion’s Adventure (1871) Alkestis herself freely volunteers to die for Admetos, who initially rejects the offer and accepts it reluctantly later; and cf. T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party. All these authors interpreted the story with moral values of a later time. Would the Greeks have thought Admetos selfish? To some extent; but he was a king, he was head of his House (the House is an essential motif in the play), and he had to ensure its continuity. Alkestis was a foreigner, and the wife’s role in the House was inferior to her husband’s. See further A. M. Dale’s warnings against seeing Greek tragedy too much in the light of characterization (introduction to A. M. Dale, Euripides ’ Alcestis (Oxford University Press, 1954), pp. xxiv-xxv). See further D. J. Conacher Euripides: Alcestis (Oxbow/Aris and Phillips, 1988) pp. 43ff; L. P. E. Parker Euripides: Alcestis (Oxford University Press, 2007).
CD
Section 15A-C is recorded on CD 2 tracks 43-5.
Section Fifteen A
Background
Greek tragedy 8.45-66 Burial 5.78-83
Grammar
Future perfect
Tragic usages and iambic trimeters
Commentary
p. 184 line
1 IOTW ... KaT0avou^£vn: a difficult opening sentence; it should first be established that vaTra is from oiSa, then that KaT0avoupevn is a future participle.
2 Murray’s Oxford Classical Text (now superseded by Diggle) made it certain that nlfo paxpra should not be taken together by printing a comma between the two words (see vocabulary, which cites paxpra).
3 n®; yap ov; as ‘of course’ has been familiar from Section l onwards. evavrfov has been learnt as a preposition (8c), but may have been forgotten: use it to deduce evavTiraaerai. The usage in Section 10d (Text p. 126.22) may be recalled!
4-5 A difficult sentence (Dale ad loc. even suggests obelizing), but the general sense ‘What must a woman be like to surpass her?’ can be elicited.
tft€pp€pXn^£vnv: establish that this is from vrcepP&llra, cf. the derivation ‘hyperbole’ (as a figure of speech).
1 npoxi^rao’: isolate the rip- stem; emphasize elided -a.
trc€p0av€iv: isolate 0av-, then add vrcep.
7-8 ^£v ... 8’: note the contrast: it becomes important later.
7 It may be necessary to point out that fia0e0’ = fla0ero; note another meaning for xVpio;, ‘her appointed hour’.
8 X^UKOV: complimentary, a sign of beauty for the Greeks: as most women would naturally be sun-tanned, white was regarded as beautiful.
9 £K ... £lowa: the first example of tmesis, which should here be explained (cf. repvra). Tmesis may be known from ‘post... quam’ separation in Latin.
K€8pwrov: Priams’ store-room was of cedar wood (Iliad xxiv.191-2), as the fragrant (ev&Sn;, Homer) wood was thought to protect clothes from moth and damp; Soprav the ‘home’ of the clothes, probably a chest or cabinet.
10 ‘Eo'ria<;: the hearth was central to the home; it is, paradoxically, the House’s survival that Alkestis' death may ensure.
11 As 0eparcrav - 0epanaiva, so Seaborn; - Seanoiva.
12 navvoxaxov: elicit from nav and vararov.
TCpoarcvtvra: note nuvra as very common poetic form of nmra.
13 op9av€wai: the obvious derivation does not point directly to the correct meaning here - ‘to look after orphans’. The middle op^avevopai means ‘I am an orphan'.
TM ^£v: look ahead to rfi Se to emphasize ‘to my (son)... to my (daughter)...’
14 Zuyov: give the meaning, cf. zeugma; biologists may know zygomorphic, zygotes etc.
y€vvaiov: root yev-, cf. English noble = well-born and also = fine in character, morals etc. Homer (Iliad ii.714-15, xxm.288ff.) knew the son as Eumelos. The daughter’s name was Perimele. Note again the underlying idea of the perpetuation of the House.
15 T€Kowa: in iambic trimeters the aorist participle feminine of TtKrra is commonly used as a noun (p^rnp could stand only in the first, third or fifth foot, whereas Texova’ could be used anywhere); hence it takes a dependent genitive (avrrav).
16 0av€iv: indirect command (hence also pnS’ in the previous line). arapou^: a-, rapa (cf. Latin hora meaning ‘season’), hence ‘unseasonably,
untimely, premature'.
17 yfi naxproa: Alkestis herself came from Iolkos, where her father Pelias was king. Admetos had to win her by yoking a boar and a lion to a chariot, a feat he managed with the help of Apollo, then in servitude to him.
Note that living until death in one’s native land was a constant preoccupation - of females, one wonders, as much as of males? Cf. the plight of women depicted in Sophocles’ Tereus (fr. 583) in The Oxford Book of Greek Verse (Oxford University Press, 1930) no. 337; or in Euripides’ Danae fr. 318.1-2:
yuvq yap s^eAGofioa rcarpfflrav Soprav oti rfflv reKovrrav eariv, aAAa rofi Ae%ouc;.
Section Fifteen B
Commentary
p. 186 line
1 Ka^£oT€y€: = Kai E^eareye. A suppliant placed a garland upon an altar. If his request was granted he removed the garland, but left it if the request was refused. One line, omitted here, tells us that Alkestis cut myrtle shoots for each of the altars.
2 aK^auxo^, aoT£vaKTo<;: both can be deduced by reference back to Text p. 56.5 and p. 105.19 respectively.
5 A£xo<;: the crucial turning-point between her outward public self-control and her breakdown in the privacy of her own bedroom. Cf. Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Note especially the central feature of the bed: it was what originally yoked her to Admetos, and from it came the children, the continuity of the House.
6 8^: emphasizes evrav0a, ‘then indeed (though she had restrained herself earlier)’.
5- 8 rcap0£v€ia ... Kop£u^axa: tautologous, in that both the adjective and the noun have the sense of ‘maidenhood, virginity’.
1 Two difficult prepositional usages here: EK + genitive for an agent is not uncommon (‘from (the action of) this man’); rcepv + genitive to mean ‘for whose sake’ is unparalleled.
7 ^ov^v: ‘you have destroyed me alone’, viz. not Admetos, whose life has been spared because of her death. Some take this as: ‘me alone (amongst all women)’, viz. ‘I am the only one to have made this supreme sacrifice.’
npo8ovvai: cf. the usage later in the Text p. 188.20. Alkestis would have been betraying Admetos in the sense that refusal to die would have implied denying her position within the ovkoc; as being less than her husband’s. This is made explicit in
etc y’ avqp Kpelaarav YuvaiK&v puplrav opav ^aoc (Euripides, IA 1394)
8 Probably ‘some other woman’, as Alkestis later extracts a promise from Admetos never to remarry. This too is relevant to the House motif, as her children will be guaranteed succession unless Admetos should take another wife and legitimize the inheritance of any issue therefrom.
Future perfect: mention briefly that some verbs have a future perfect (usually middle); that it has reduplication + future endings; that it is future with a perfect aspect (i.e. not the same tense as in Latin) - those three things alone need to be known.
11-12 Parodied in Aristophanes’ Knights 1251-2 (Kleon saying farewell to his garland, symbol of his favoured position under Demos, now taken by the Sausage-Seller):
os S’ aAloc Tic AaP®v KeKTqaexai KXsnxnc psv OWK av paAAov, emuxnc S’ Varac
Note the use of paAAov + adjective for comparative - this is common in tragedy because comparatives are difficult to fit into the metre.
Section Fifteen C
Background
Women, marriage and home 5.17ff.
Commentary
p. 187 line
1 Kuv€i: actually the same verb as Kvoai (p. 127.6) but with a different meaning.
2 All three words will probably have to be given here: note the effect of a three- word line, imparting a ponderous quality.
3 rcpovrorc^;: the usual translation ‘headlong’ implies a haste which is not required here: Dale (ad loc.) takes the word to mean ‘with head bowed’.
^KTOOOwa: not so much ‘falling away’, as ‘rushing away’, or ‘tearing herself away from’ (Dale).
4 rco^a: not given in vocabulary as meaning ‘often’, though the adverbial usage (neuter plural) is very common.
9 KaKo;: the opposite of Eo0Aoc; below, here not ‘morally vicious’, but ‘low¬born’.
p. 188 line
13- 16 Difficult: establish that ‘he’ (= Admetos) must be the subject (because of the masculine participle). Even when correctly translated, the sentence seems a truism - ‘if he had died, he would have died’ - and needs explanation, viz. that would have been an end of it, ‘whereas by escaping death he will have acquired such grief as he will never forget’. Note ov tcot’ ktA. - Murray’s reading in the (earlier) Oxford Classical Text, where he explains quod aliquando - non oblitus erit, viz. ov AEA^oETai as emphatic (perfect) litotes.
11 OT€vaZ£i: here followed by ei, ‘grieves that’, cf. 0aupaZra ei, ‘I am amazed that’.
15 /€poiv: duals are not explained until Section 18 (where only one example occurs - a verb), so this should be noted here. At most, only three noun/adjective endings need be noted: the article T®, rovv (from which the feminine -avv would follow), and -ovre for the participle.
16 npo8ovvai: ironically the same word as the servant quoted Alkestis as using (p. 186.10), here apparently meaning ‘forsake, desert’, as though Admetos wants to eat his cake and keep it!
17 vooro: it is never made explicit from what (natural) cause Alkestis dies, one fact used by Verrall in his theory that Euripides meant us to suppose that she never actually died.
18 With the punctuation of the text (Oxford Classical Text) a0liov Papo; must be in apposition to the subject: ‘she, exhausted, a pathetic weight in [literally of] his hands’. Others omit the comma, taking Papo; as a cognate accusative after napeipevn: ‘relaxed with regard to the pathetic weight of her hands', implying that she is now too feeble even to lift her hands, a known sign of utter exhaustion.
Much has been written about Alkestis, and students should be encouraged to read the whole play. A note of comparison: Philip II of Spain married his fourth wife, Anne of Austria, in successful pursuit of his twenty-five- year quest for a male heir (his son by his first wife, Maria of Portugal, was the homicidal lunatic Don Carlos). Once, when the king was critically ill, the pious queen prayed earnestly that she might die instead of so important a man as the king:
euertere domos totas optantibus ipsis di faciles.
Juvenal, Satires 10.7-8 She died, Philip lived.
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