CHORUS.

O greatly hospitable and ever liberal house of this man, thee even the Pythian Apollo, master of the lyre, deigned to inhabit, and endured to become a shepherd in thine abodes, through the sloping hills piping to thy flocks his pastoral nuptial hymns.  And there were wont to feed with them, through delight of his lays, both the spotted lynxes, and the bloody troop of lions[30] came having left the forest of Othrys; disported too around thy cithern, Phoebus, the dappled fawn, advancing with light pastern beyond the lofty-feathered pines, joying in the gladdening strain.  Wherefore he dwelleth in a home most rich in flocks by the fair-flowing lake of Boebe; and to the tillage of his fields, and the extent of his plains, toward that dusky part of the heavens, where the sun stays his horses, makes the clime of the Molossians the limit, and holds dominion as far as the portless shore of the AEgean Sea at Pelion.  And now having thrown open his house he hath received his guest with moistened eyelid, weeping over the corse of his dear wife, who but now died in the palace:  for a noble disposition is prone to reverence [of the guest].  But in the good there is all manner of wisdom.  And confidence is seated on my soul that the man who reveres the Gods will fare prosperously.

ADMETUS, CHORUS.

ADM.  Ye men of Pherae that are kindly present, my servants indeed bear aloft[31] the corse, having every thing fit for the tomb, and for the pyre.  But do you, as is the custom, salute[32] the dead going forth on her last journey.

CHOR.  And lo!  I see thy father advancing with his aged foot, and attendants bearing in their hands adornment for thy wife, due honors of those beneath.

PHERES, ADMETUS, CHORUS.

PHE.  I am at present sympathizing in thy misfortunes, my son:  for thou hast lost (no one will deny) a good and a chaste wife; but these things indeed thou must bear, though hard to be borne.  But receive this adornment, and let it go with her beneath the earth:  Her body ’tis right to honor, who in sooth died to save thy life, my son, and made me to be not childless, nor suffered me to waste away deprived of thee in an old age of misery.  But she has made most illustrious the life of all women, having dared this noble action.  O thou that hast preserved my son here, and hast raised us up who were falling, farewell,[33] and may it be well with thee even in the mansions of Pluto!  I affirm that such marriages are profitable to men, or that it is not meet to marry.

ADM.  Neither hast thou come bidden of me to this funeral, nor do I count thy presence among things acceptable.  But she here never shall put on thy decorations; for in no wise shall she be buried indebted to what thou hast.  Then oughtest thou to have grieved with me, when I was in danger of perishing.[34] But dost thou, who stoodest aloof, and permittedst another, a young person, thyself being old, to die,