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[741-788] Alcestis 703
LEADER (chanting)
Alas! Alas! You who suffer for your courage, O noblest and best
of women, hail! May Hermes of the Dead, may Hades, greet you
kindly. If there are rewards for the dead, may you share them as you
sit by the bride of the Lord of the Dead!
(The Procession has filed out. A servant in mourning hurries out
from the guests' quarters.)
SERVANT
Many guests from every land, I know, have come to the Palace of
Admetus, and I have set food before them, but never one worse than this
guest have I welcomed to the hearth.
First, though he saw our Lord was in mourning, he entered, and dared
to pass through the gates. Then, knowing our misfortune, he did not
soberly accept what was offered him, but if anything was not served to
him he ordered us to bring it. In both hands he took a cup of ivy-wood,
and drank the unmixed wine of the dark grape-mother, until he was encompassed
and heated with the flame of wine. He crowned his head
with myrtle sprays, howling discordant songs. There was he caring nothing
for Admetus's misery, and we servants weeping for our Queen; and
yet we hid our tear-laden eyes from the guest, for so Admetus had commanded.
And now in the Palace I must entertain this stranger, some villainous
thief and brigand, while she, the Queen I mourn, has gone from the house
unfollowed, unsaluted, she who was as a mother to me and all us servants,
for she sheltered us from a myriad troubles by softening her husband's
wrath.
Am I not right, then, to hate this stranger, who came to us in the midst
of sorrow?
(HERACLES comes from the Palace. He is drunkenly merry, with a myrtle
wreath on his head, and a large cup and wine-skin in his hands. He
staggers a little.)
HERACLES
Hey, you! Why so solemn and anxious? A servant should not be sullen
with guests, but greet them with a cheerful heart.
You see before you a man who is your lord's friend, and you greet
him with a gloomy, frowning face, because of your zeal about a strange
woman's death. Come here, and let me make you a little wiser!
(With drunken gravity) Know the nature of human life? Don't think
you do. You couldn't. Listen to me. All mortals must die. Isn't one who
knows if he'll be alive to-morrow morning. Who knows where Fortune
will lead? Nobody can teach it. Nobody learn it by rules. So, rejoice in