Alcestis

Admetus is the King of Thessaly who won Apollo’s favor by treating Apollo kindly when he was Admetus’s slave. When we meet Admetus, he is grieving the imminent loss of his wife, Alcestis, who agreed to die in his place. After Alcestis is dead, Admetus grasps the paradox of his actions: He lives because Alcestis agreed to die for him, but without Alcestis, his life is meaningless. Admetus ultimately does not need to live without Alcestis because Heracles restores Alcestis to him at the end of the play.

Scholars have widely disagreed on how to interpret Admetus’s character. Is he a virtuous man whose desire to escape death is a perfectly understandable human characteristic? Or is he, as his father alleges, a coward and a hypocrite? On the whole, the play is ambiguous on the matter of Admetus’s virtues and failings. Clearly, Admetus is a pious man whom the gods love, but his human relationships are less rosy: Admetus is not entirely fair to his father, and even the most commonly-cited example of his noble nature—his eagerness to give hospitality to Heracles—can be interpreted as highly inappropriate, a feeling expressed by other characters in the play. Perhaps even more egregiously, he breaks his promise never to bring another woman into his household when he accepts the veiled woman from Heracles before realizing that she is Alcestis.

Admetus is not entirely unsympathetic. The play’s conclusion—in which Alcestis is restored to him—can be understood as a reward for the noble aspects of his character. The moral ambiguity of Admetus’s actions is one of the reasons Alcestis remains a topic of scholarly debate.

Heracles is a famous hero of Greek mythology. He is the son of the god Zeus and a mortal woman, Alcmene. Heracles is known for his extraordinary physical strength, courage, and adventurous nature. Heracles’s most important feats were his 12 Labors, which he was ordered to perform as a punishment for slaying his children, but he took part in many other adventures as well.

Heracles was a popular figure in Attic drama, appearing in tragedies as well as comedies. In Alcestis, Heracles assumes the more comical aspect of his persona. Euripides’s Heracles is a blustering, gluttonous, and even reckless figure. As Admetus’s guest, he revels without moderation before he discovers that the household is mourning for Alcestis.

At the same time, Heracles can be serious. At some moments, he takes an intellectual point of view, as when he responds with incredulity upon hearing that the horses of Diomedes are flesh-eating: “Mountain beasts, not horses, feed like that” (495). At other points, he is a metaphysician, arguing that Admetus should not mourn Alcestis until she is dead because “being and nonbeing are considered different things” (528). Heracles advocates for hedonism, as when he instructs Admetus’s servant on “what life is like” (780) by telling him that human beings do not know when they will die and should therefore live their lives to the fullest.

His hero-nature comes through when he finally learns of Alcestis’s death and vows to bring her back to Admetus. He fulfills Apollo’s prophesy that Alcestis would escape Death, leaving the Chorus to sing about how the gods can accomplish the unlikely.

Pheres is Admetus’s elderly father. He and his wife are unwilling to die for Admetus, even though Admetus believes that they should because they have already lived long lives. Deeming that Pheres has failed him and holding him responsible for the death of Alcestis, Admetus ultimately disowns him.

Pheres features in the play’s agon or debate scene, in which he fights bitterly with Admetus. He challenges Admetus’s perception of himself as a virtuous man and argues that it was inappropriate for him to ask others to die for him. He also tells Admetus that only he is responsible for the death of Alcestis. Pheres is outspoken on the play’s theme of the human desire to live. Even though he is old, as he tells Admetus, he does not want to die any more than the young Admetus and counts every moment he has to live as precious. Pheres’s unapologetic love of life makes him a foil for Alcestis, who gives up her life in spite of her love for it. He is also a foil for Admetus: For while both Alcestis and Admetus are extremely preoccupied with their reputation and legacy, Pheres does not care at all about “what they say of me when I am dead” (726). Pheres represents the view that life is all that matters and that what we leave behind counts for nothing, a view in some ways comparable to the hedonism of Heracles.

Apollo is the Greek god of the arts, healing, and inspiration. Euripides’s Apollo raises questions about the nature of the Greek gods and their relationship with mortals. Apollo honors Admetus for treating him well, even as a slave, but the chance he gives Admetus to avoid his death is not without difficulties. Not only does Apollo’s offer interfere with the privileges of the gods of the Underworld—as Death points out to Apollo—but it betrays a problematic understanding of human nature. Admetus realizes after Alcestis’s death that he has made his life unlivable precisely by taking advantage of Apollo’s gift. In his exchange with Death, Apollo demonstrates the lengths to which he is willing to go to get what he wants. He tries to bully Death, using dubious argumentation to try to convince him to spare Alcestis. Apollo leaves the stage after predicting that Alcestis will be saved after all, yet his presence—and the shadow of the offer he gave Admetus—haunts the rest of the play.

Death is a personification (his Greek name is Thanatos) who comes to carry Alcestis away to the Underworld. Death belongs to an older generation of Greek gods associated with the Earth and the Underworld and who in Attic tragedy often find themselves at odds with the younger generation of Olympian gods, such as Apollo. Death chastises Apollo for seeking “to take for [his] own / And spoil the death-spirits’ privileges” (30-31). In his rather comical dialogue with Apollo, Death shows himself as an egalitarian figure. For example, when Apollo argues that if Death lets Alcestis live to old age, he will enjoy the honors that come from a more lavish burial, Death responds that doing as Apollo suggests would mean “to favor the rich” (57). Everybody must die when their time comes, as Death calmly and reasonably explains to Apollo, who in frustration scoffs at his interlocutor’s “unrecognized talents for debate” (58). Like Apollo, Death leaves the play after the prologue, but, also like Apollo, his presence lingers over the events that follow.