Stasimon 2
[Episode 1]
O my hard fate! My mother has passed to the realms below; she lives no more,
Eumelus
dear father, ’neath the sun. Alas for her! she leaves us ere her time and to me bequeaths an orphan’s life. Behold that staring eye, those nerveless hands!
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Hear me, mother, hear me, I implore! ’tis I who call thee now, I thy tender chick, printing my kisses on thy lips.
400
Admetus
She cannot hear, she cannot see;
a heavy blow hath fortune dealt us, you children and me.
405
Eumelus
O father, I am but a child to have my loving mother leave me here alone; O cruel my fate, alas!
and thine, my sister, sharer in my cup of woe. Woe to thee, father! in vain, in vain didst thou take a wife and hast not reached the goal of eld with her; for she is gone before, and now that thou art dead,
410
my mother, our house is all undone.
415
Chorus
Admetus, these misfortunes thou must bear. Thou art by no means the first nor yet shalt be the last of men to lose a wife of worth; know this, we all of us are debtors unto death.
Admetus
I understand; this is no sudden flight of ill hither; I was ware of it and long have pined. But since I am to. carry the dead forth to her burial, stay here with me and to that inexorable god in Hades raise your antiphone. While raise your antiphone.
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While to all Thessalians in my realm I do proclaim a general mourning for this lady, with hair shorn off and robes of sable hue; all ye who harness steeds for cars, or single horses ride, cut off their manes with the sharp steel.
425
Hush’d be every pipe, silent every lyre throughout the city till twelve full moons are past; for never again shall I bury one whom I love more, no! nor one more loyal to me; honour from me is her due, for she for me hath died, she and she alone.
[Exeunt ADMETUS and EUMELUS, with the other children.
430
[Choral 1]
Daughter of Pelias, be thine a happy life in that sunless home in Hades’ halls! Let Hades know, that swarthy god,
435
Chorus
and that old man who sits to row and steer alike at his death-ferry, that he hath carried o’er the lake of Acheron in his two-oared skiff a woman peerless amidst her sex.
440
Oft of thee the Muses’ votaries shall sing on the seven-stringed mountain shell and in hymns that need no harp,i.e. Epic poetry. glorifying thee, oft as the season in his cycle cometh round at Sparta in that CarneanA reference to the Carnean festival, held in honour of Apollo, by the Dorians of Peloponnesus, especially by the Spartans, for nine successive days in the month Metageitnion, i.e. April, hence called the Carnean month. month
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when all night long the moon sails high o’erhead, yea, and in splendid Athens, happy town. So glorious a theme has thy death bequeathed to tuneful bards.
450
[Choral 2]
Would it were in my power and range to bring thee to the light from the chambers of Hades and the streams of Cocytus with the oar that sweeps yon nether flood!
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Chorus
For thou, and thou alone, most dear of women, hadst the courage to redeem thy husband from Hades in exchange for thy own life. Light lie the earth above thee, lady! And if ever thy lord take to him a new wife, I vow he will earn my hatred
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and thy children’s too.
465
His mother had no heart to plunge into the darkness of the tomb for her son, no! nor his aged sire.A line is here wanting in the MSS., but its absence does not destroy the sense. Their own child they had not the courage to rescue,
the wretches! albeit they were grey-headed. But thou in thy youth and beauty hast died for thy lord and gone thy way. O be it mine to have for partner such a loving wife! for this lot is rare in life. Surely she should be my help-meet all my life
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and never cause one tear.
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