Alcestis Themes

In Euripides’s Alcestis, a tragic play of the fifth century B.C., King Admetos of Thessaly dreads death, resists the reality of it, and exploits others to help him avoid it. At the beginning of the play, the god Apollo explains that Admetos “was doomed to die young, / but I outwitted the Fates and won him a reprieve: / Admetos’s day of death might be deferred / if someone else would volunteer to take…

In Alcestis, King Admetos is characterized by a stubborn refusal to live within his limits. The results of his defiance of human constraints are devastating; his wife, Alcestis, must submit to death in his place. But the play includes a variety of other examples of characters who accept the obligations and limits on their lives—everyone from Admetos’s father, Pheres, to his divine friends Apollo and Herakles, all the way to Death…

On the brink of Alcestis’s death, the chorus leader describes her as the paragon of loyalty: “In dying and living both: / incomparably a queen. For courage and love / Alcestis has no rival among all women / on this earth.” Although Alcestis disappears from the play fairly quickly, her “incomparable” character haunts the play as others deal with the repercussions of her willing self-sacrifice. In particular, her above-and-beyond act of loyalty in dying…