Euripides’ play Alcestis is – er – interesting. It is the earliest of Euripides’ surviving plays. Performed at the Dionysian festival in Athens in 438 BCE, it took the place of a satyr drama as last in a group of plays by Euripides. While we no longer have the three tragedies it followed, we know their titles at least, Cretan Women, Alcmaeon in Psophis, and Telephus.
Alcestis is a play that isn’t performed much these days because it isn’t exactly woman-friendly. Women in Athens were supposed to stay indoors, not be discussed in public, be thrifty, never have sex with anyone but her husband, and produce many healthy children, preferably boys. Alcestis, the title character of the play, is everything the perfect wife should be, including beautiful.
When the play opens Alcestis is on the verge of death. Her husband, Admetus, was supposed to die earlier that year but managed, with the help of Apollo, to make a deal with death. If Admetus could find someone willing to die in his place, then he would be spared. Admetus asked his aging parents and they had the temerity to refuse. He asked other family members and friends. No one would die for him. So his wife, Alcestis, stepped up and offered to die in his place. Now her time has come and she dies the noble death deserving of the perfect woman, lauded for her sacrifice by all who knew her.
Admetus, the selfish bastard, is sick with grief. He begs his wife not to die. Oh, how I wanted to punch him in the nose! Dude! She’s dying because of you! Maybe you should have thought things through a little better!
While Alcestis is being prepared for burial, Heracles shows up on his way to Thrace to perform one of his labors, fetching the four-horse chariot of Diomedes. He shows up at Admetus’ place looking for a meal and a comfortable bed. Greek customs of hospitality come in conflict with the requirement that Admetus mourn his wife. Admetus is in a pickle. He can’t turn Heracles away but he shouldn’t be welcoming him into his house either.
Heracles is astute enough to notice that someone has recently died but when he asks Admetus who it was, he tells Heracles it was no one of importance. He then has Heracles whisked away to so he doesn’t see Alcestis being carried out of the house to the family tomb.
In comes Pheres, Admetus’ father, offering condolences and finery to bury Alcestis in. But Admetus will have nothing to do with his father, even goes so far as to disown him, all because he blames him for his wife’s death. If only his father who, while he is getting old is certainly not about to kick the bucket, if only he had given up his life for his son, then Alcetis would still be alive. While everyone had been praising Alcestis’ sacrifice and mourning with Admetus, not one person pointed a finger at him and said things wouldn’t be this way if it weren’t for him. But Pheres refuses to be Admetus’ scapegoat:
I gave you life and brought you up to be master of my house, but I am not obliged to die for you. My ancestors have not handed down to me the rule that fathers should die for their sons, and this is not a Greek tradition either. [...] You enjoy being alive – do you think your father doesn’t? By my calculations, we spend a good long time down below, while life is short but sweet. At any rate, you fought shamelessly against death, and you’re living now beyond your appointed time because you condemned her to death. And you accuse me of cowardice – you, the ultimate coward, who proved worse than the woman who died for you, her fine husband?
While personally I was cheering Pheres on during his long rant at Admetus, the Greeks wouldn’t have been. No, there is no tradition or obligation that a father should die for his son, but Pheres gets out some insults and statements that would have made the Greeks suck in their breaths. And while Admetus avoiding death by allowing his beloved wife to die in his place seems distasteful to us, it wasn’t to the Greeks. It meant that Alcestis died with honor and glory that of course reflected well upon Admetus.
While all this is going on, Heracles is indoors feasting and drinking and having a jolly time. The servants are trying not to look glum so as not to cause Heracles to question Admetus’ hospitality. But Heracles figures out something is up and he hasn’t been told the whole story. And the story isn’t hard to get from the servants. Heracles takes pity on his friend and goes out for a stroll to Alcestis’ tomb where he encounters Thanatos preparing to lead Alcestis away to the underworld. Heracles wrestles with Thanatos and brings Alcestis back to life. As you can imagine, Admetus is thrilled. After all, he got his wife back and an almost sure bet that she’ll die for him next time too.
One of the more interesting aspects of this play was the language. Euripides is known for writing more like people actually talk instead of in the highly formal manner of Aeschylus and Sophocles. He was pretty popular in his day too which probably has something to do with why we have more surviving plays by him than Aeschylus and Sophocles. Aristophanes apparently makes fun of the playwright though more than once. Something to look forward to once I make my way through all of Euripides’ plays.
This is very different from Euripides other plays, I think because it is, as you say, a Satyr play and as such it is the only one of its kind that we have. Wait till you get into the tragedies; they really are shocking.
The Athenian approach to women was appalling to modern minds (well to modern female minds, anyway.) They were considered inferior beings and to a lot of the audience’s minds there wouldn’t have been that much difference between sacrificing Alcestis and giving up a good white heifer. Wouldn’t you just like to have poured boiling pitch down on the lot of them?
Annie, boiling pitch, now there is a great idea!
Women, even ones who managed to be citizens didn’t have much status. The introduction mentions that scholars think women weren’t even allowed to be in the audience of the plays. with an all boys club like that, you play to the crowd I guess.
That contempt for women makes a character like Aeschylus’s Clytemnestra that much more striking, I think. I mean, she’s certainly no white heifer! And although I know she wasn’t originally as sympathetic as I find her, there’s no denying that her blazing energy dominates that play. Interesting. It sounds like Pheres provides a bit of unlooked-for satisfaction here.
Crikey, the past really is another country. Although this post does remind me of a conversation I had with my son, about the Bruno Mars song that plays a lot on the radio, you know, the one about catching a grenade for someone? My son often picks holes in song lyrics and he was having a field day with it. Catching a grenade he said, well, okay, it could be a way to save someone’s life, deflect death in a noble manner. But by the time you got to the part where he’s offering to jump in front of a train for her, he’d lost all sense of reason. He couldn’t see how jumping in front of a train would ever help anybody – you could hardly deflect a train from running over a person. No social good resulted. I thought he was hilarious, although of course at the time I didn’t realise that Bruno Mars was actually subverting an ancient and sexist tradition, and now I do think the better of him for it.
Emily, I know, Clytemnestra is not a woman to be messed with. She is night and day different from Alcestis. I find Clytemnestra to be a sympathetic character too even though originally she is not supposed to be. How times change, eh? Pheres does provide some satisfaction in Alcestis but he’s not supposed to either!
Litlove, oh your son cracks me up! Not many kids his age would even bother to analyze the lyrics to popular songs. The idea of Bruno Mars subverting an ancient and sexist tradition is an amusing thought!
Oof, this sounds a little hard to take. It must be kind of fun to read it in ways the Greeks would not have — there’s a certain satisfaction in that, I think.
Hmm. Not much chivalry going on here, is there! It would be interesting to read about life during this period–Litlove is right–the past really Is a different country!
Dorothy, it does feel kind of subversive to these plays in ways the Greeks wouldn’t have. I think it points out how they are still relevant. What an interesting conversation this play could inspire about the morality of asking someone else to die in your place.
Danielle, no, the Greeks only cared about their personal and family honor and there were rules and customs they had to follow and being generous to women was not one of them. I would love to read a books about what it was like to live during the 5th c BCE. I really must do some research and see what’s available.