Would you die so that another could live? This is the question that the Greek playwright Euripides asks us to consider in his play “Alcestis,” from 438 B.C.
A Wife’s Sacrifice
The play opens on the day Alcestis is to die in her husband’s place to satisfy the Fates and Death. Death himself is personified slouching toward the palace with a drawn sword. With firm resolution, she prepares herself for what is to come, for the journey into the “undiscovered country” of death. Her mind and heart are enshrouded by many memories and griefs, just as her body will soon be encased in the burial wrappings of the tomb.
Euripides masterfully fills out the scene through the lips of one of the servants who witnessed it: “When she knew that the last of her days was come she bathed … took garments and gems from her rooms of cedar wood, and clad herself nobly.” She offered this prayer, thinking even at this late hour of others, not herself: “O Goddess, since now I must descend beneath the earth, for the last time I make supplication to you: and entreat you to protect my motherless children.” Then, “To every altar in Admetus’s house she went, hung them with garlands, offered prayer, cut myrtle boughs—unweeping, unlamenting; nor did the coming doom change the bright colour of her face.”
When she says goodbye to the bedroom she shared with Admetus, she breaks down, weeps, kisses the bed, and many times tries to leave but can’t, and flings herself on the bed. She later dies in her husband’s arms.
The Weakness of Admetus
Yet at the back of our minds, we can’t escape the realization that all this is appallingly unnecessary. If Admetus would simply man up and die for his wife instead, all this could be avoided.
To most audiences, I think it’s clear from the beginning that Admetus is a weak and incredibly selfish man. All of his moaning and bewailing over Alcestis’s death rings a bit hollow, since it was at his own request and to save him from the Underworld that she has chosen to die. If he is so grieved for Alcestis, why doesn’t he just revert to the Fates’ original plan and not ask this sacrifice of her? Why doesn’t he sacrifice himself for her, instead of demanding that it be the other way around? As Admetus’s father-in-law tells him in a not-so-subtle rebuke, “You strove shamelessly not to die … you shirked your fate by killing her.”
When I taught this play to high schoolers, they had no patience for this self-absorbed king who whimpers around his palace, grieving the wife he allowed to die for him. They have a point, of course. But Admetus is not an entirely one-dimensional character, either. One of his strengths is his dedication to the concept of hospitality, known as xenia, which the ancient Greeks considered a sacred duty. It was this hospitality to Apollo that gave him the chance to live longer in the first place. And then Admetus goes to great lengths to offer a comfortable stay to another visitor, who appears just after Alcestis’s death: Heracles (Hercules for the Romans), the great hero of mythology.
A Tragicomedy
There is, indeed, a happy ending, though the characters have to suffer in order to reach it. Toward the end of the play, Admetus begins to realize that there are fates worse than death. Living on without Alcestis—and with the guilt of her death on his heart—proves to be abject misery. Through it, he finally has his “anagnorisis,” his moment of self-knowledge, when he realizes what a vile creature he has been. “I who should have died, I have escaped my fate, only to drag out a wretched life. Only now do I perceive it. … Those who hate me will say: ‘See how he lives in shame, the man who dared not die, the coward who gave his wife to Hades in his stead! Is that a man?’”
In these imagined reprimands by his enemies, Admetus reveals his awareness of his own crime and perhaps even the beginnings of repentance.
And at that moment, Heracles, who has been gone for some time, suddenly reappears to speak with his host. Through a clever and well-paced dialogue, we discover that the impossible has happened: Heracles, as the great hero and death-defier that he is, has rescued Alcestis from the tomb. He restores her to her husband’s welcoming arms.
Sacrifice and the Answer to Suffering
Whatever we say about Admetus’s weakness, failure, and whether he learns his lesson, to me that remains less interesting than Alcestis’s incredible act of devotion and self-sacrifice. It is unheard of in most ancient stories, and performed with such humility, modesty, and courage, that it shines with a light in the darkness of the ancient world.
That pagan world struggled mightily with the reality of mortality and suffering. Homer wrote substantially about war, death, and suffering, but found little consolation, little ultimate reason for the hard lot that is human life (and death), other than the hope of enduring it, like long-enduring Odysseus, and an abiding respect for the mystery and solemnity of it all. Greek mythology is full of tales of human beings suffering as pawns of the gods, for no reason other than that the gods are petty and passionate. It’s fair to say that most ancient literature is pretty grim.
But what Euripides suggests here is different. He suggests that through self-sacrifice, suffering can be transcended. Suffering may be our lot, but love is more powerful still. It is Alcestis’s sacrifice for her husband that leads to the unexpected happy ending and the defeat of death and suffering. Conversely, it is Admetus’s refusal to sacrifice that brings him the greatest misery.
On a psychological and spiritual level, this holds true because embracing suffering—while it likely will not eliminate it—can transform it into something meaningful and fulfilling. It is also true that self-sacrifice sometimes can open the doors of the impossible.
