¹ For a general survey see Sifakis, G. M., ‘Children in Greek tragedy’, BICS xxvi (1979) 67–80Google Scholar.

² The approach here adopted is in general aligned with the interpretations of Dale, A. M., Euripides, Alcestis (Oxford 1954) xxii–xxixGoogle Scholar and Lesky, A., ‘Der angeklagte Admet’, Maske und Kothurn x (1964) 203–16Google Scholar, here cited as reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften (Bern/München 1956) 281–94Google Scholar. See also Steidle, W., Studien zum antiken Drama (München 1968) 132–52Google Scholar; Rohdich, H., Die Euripideische Tragödie (Heidelberg 1968) 23–43Google Scholar; Burnett, A. P., Catastrophe survived (Oxford 1971) 22–46Google Scholar; Rivier, A., ‘En marge d'Alceste’, i, MH xxix (1972) 122–40Google Scholar, ii, MH xxx (1973) 130-43; Lloyd, M., G&R xxxii (1985) 119–31Google Scholar; Bergson, L., Eranos lxxxiii (1985) 7–22Google Scholar. Of course there is wide divergence of views among these writers, but they agree in taking a positive view of Alcestis and Admetus. Since I believe this view to be substantially correct, I confine my notes mainly to points of agreement or disagreement with these writers, and only occasionally refer to others who in various ways take a negative view on these particular matters.

For discussion of limitations on coherent dramatic personality (although without reference to the Pheres scene), see Gould, J., PCPS xxiv (1978) 43–67Google Scholar. Conacher, D. J., AJPh cii (1981) 3–25Google Scholar, argues (correctly, in my view) for greater relevance to characterization in rhetorically shaped scenes than Gould would allow, although I do not accept his negative treatment of Admetus in the Pheres scene.

³ See Dale (n. 2) xxvi-xxvii and Lesky (n. 2) 285-6 for the relation between the two scenes.

⁴ It is futile to try and distinguish her devotion to her marriage bed from love for her husband. What she feels for him is not undifferentiated emotion, but is conceptualised in accordance with the way in which she sees herself and her station; there is no hint of any divergence of feeling, and she thinks of her daughter's future similarly (166, 316).

⁵ Admittedly it is not stated explicitly that she has left the bedroom before she embraces the children, and as fruit of the union they are certainly relevant to her feelings towards her marriage bed. Yet they are not mentioned in her address, and the sequence κατ’ ′Αδμήτου δόμους (170), έσπεσοῦσα (175), έξιοῦσ’ (188), κατά στέγας separates them from the bed as much as from the household at large. Thus Rivier (n. 2) i 134, although correctly reading the scene as showing love for Admetus, runs too many things together in visualising the children in the bedroom with Alcestis and in including them along with her husband as among those saved by her death.

⁶ Lines 287-8 (‘I refused to live torn from you with orphaned children’) do indeed imply a concept of family unity in which children and husband alike are involved, but even here her own enforced separation is given the main emphasis, and not any possible threat to the children in such circumstances. Golden, L., CJ lxvi (1970-1971) 119Google Scholar, claims that the text ‘clearly indicates that Alcestis sacrifices herself for two basic reasons: her love for Admetus and her love for her children’; this obscures the subordinate role of one reason.

For good criticism of a similar argument see Zürcher, W., Die Darstellung des Menschen im Drama des Euripides (Basel 1947) 28Google Scholar. According to Burnett (n. 2) 35 ‘Husband, children, house and marriage make up a single ideal concept which her death will save.’ Again, not all these factors come into operation at the same level; an unavoidable division in her commitment to the family unit is created by her own choice of death, and therein lies the dilemma which explains the subsequent action.

⁷ See Rivier (n. 2) ii 136-8 for criticism of attempts to avoid the clear implications of these lines.

⁸ See Dale (n. 2) xxiv-xxix for the fundamental interpretation of this speech.

⁹ Rosenmeyer, T., The masks of tragedy (New York 1971) 230–1Google Scholar is locked into an excessively subtle psychologising approach when he says that Euripides has the child lament ‘because all other characters on the stage are too rigidly caught up in their own interests and complexities to respond with the proper candor and simplicity’. All others? Even the Chorus? And who else is there apart from these and Admetus? Steidle (n. 2) 133 well describes the powerful theatrical effect of a silent grieving Admetus.

¹⁰ Use of the term ‘character’ does not entail the belief that Euripides has imagined his stage figures to represent people with detailed personalities, or that he designed each and every utterance to contribute something to an audience's perception of a certain sort of individual mind, this purpose having precedence over any other function of dramatic language. Rather it implies that, in this case, Admetus has been conceived as a figure who will impress an audience as a bearer of a few traits to be taken as characteristic of him and significant in connection with his part in the action. One does not need to think of him as a detailed character study to feel that Dale (n. 2) xxvii goes too far in saying that Euripides had no particular interest in the sort of person Admetus is apart from his όσιότης. See Steidle (n. 2) 141, who finds this incredible, and Conacher (n. 2) 3. Admetus must have other traits. For instance, while Dale notes that he provokes Pheres’ counterblast by ‘the unfilial violence and exaggeration of the attack’, she thinks that the outburst is sufficiently accounted for by the smooth shamelessness of his father's opening words (notes on 614 and 697). But this prejudges Pheres and is implausible unless account is taken of the anticipation of the outburst at lines 338-39; but then, as I argue, in view of the differences of feeling in the way Alcestis and Admetus address the same points, we have an invitation to see one Admetus behind his behaviour in both scenes.

¹¹ Attempts to justify Admetus in this scene usually do not allow sufficient weight to Pheres’ side; e.g. Lesley (n. 2) 281-2 regards Pheres as condemned by the communis opinio of the play, but this, in my view, since it amounts only to Alcestis and the Chorus (290, 470), in passages which praise Alcestis by comparison rather than denounce Pheres, is true but less than decisive; Lesky adds that Pheres has no justification for his refusal and ‘er ist auch sonst als defekt gezeichnet’, with reference to line 726. Burnett (n. 2) 40-3 treats Pheres as a hypocrite, and has Admetus’ attack reflecting Apollo's confrontation with Death and Heracles’ conflict at the tomb: ‘the spectator is left with the subrational sense that the ugly figure whom Apollo allowed to enter the house has now been driven off by its master’. But Admetus hardly masters Pheres, quite the reverse, and his very attack has self-defeating aspects. Rivier (n. 2) ii 134 warns that it is wrong in practice to take the scene as point of departure for examining Admetus, since dramatic events happen in sequence and later statements cannot alter earlier; but this does not justify his dismissal of Pheres’ attitude and conduct as that of a κακός. Lloyd (n. 2) 121, 129, refers to the scene as a re-enactment of Pheres’ refusal to die, not Admetus’, with Admetus rightly repudiating the other's complacency; surely some argument is needed here to support the thesis that ‘Admetus behaves correctly throughout the play’. A more balanced view of the agon is found in Dale (n. 2) ad loc. (cf. n. 10), who sees Pheres as victor on points in the debate, although being morally in the wrong. Steidle (n. 2) 143 well stresses the notion that while there is moral pressure on Pheres to die (he is old, Admetus is young), this falls short of a duty, and to this extent he has a defence. The fullest and in my view the best discussion is that of Rohdich (n. 2) 32-8, who allows full validity to Pheres’ counter-principle of universal love of life in response to the censorious invective which Admetus inherits from the heroic Alcestis. This seems to me to be on the right lines, except that Admetus needs to be autonomous and distinct from Alcestis’ attitudes, Another good point is in Bergson (n. 2) 12: Pheres thinks mortal thoughts by contrast with Admetus who seeks for a life ‘beyond destiny’. Vickers, B., Towards Greek tragedy (London 1973) 116–19Google Scholar in his brief account of the play vividly describes a reader's conflicting responses to opposing, valid viewpoints: Pheres indeed had but little time to give up for Alcestis, but ‘what right has Admetus to demand from his father the few remaining weeks or months of life?’.

¹² Of course, both these features and their later recurrence are commonly discussed, and are taken together by critics of Admetus’ character. I also want to stress that they are indicative of his character and should be taken together, but not of a superficial or ridiculous character. His speech seems more distinctive than a rhetorical development of typical bereavement, as Rivier (n. 2) i 139 suggests, and too far from Alcestis in tone for it to be her act speaking through him, he himself having only the one character trait of hospitality, as Rohdich (n. 2) 30-1 thinks. That the speech is difficult for those who do not wish to damn Admetus is shown by the disquiet of Lesky (n. 2) 294, who suggests that the hyperboles are meant to show the impossibility of the situation in which Admetus is placed, an idea which leads into the friction between myth and the real world which is a stable point round which many discussions of the play's meaning turn; but surely an interpretation in terms of character, if available, is simpler and more consistent.

¹³ It is just as important to note the difference in tone as the connection of thought and the reappearance of the material in the attack of Pheres. Evenness of tone is assumed by Rohdich (n. 1) 34: the attack on Pheres reveals ‘den Geist der Alkestis, der aus ihm spricht, weil er mit ihm einsgeworden ist’. Nor should the later ferocity be read back into her words, cf. Erbse, H., Philologus cxvi (1972) 44Google Scholar, who sees Alcestis as full of bitter reproaches which Admetus takes over. Rather the bitterness is his alone.

¹⁴ For heroic intolerance of the unheroic in Sophocles compare the treatment of their more ordinary sisters by Antigone (Ant. 86-7) and Electra (El. 357-73); and for hidden truths revealed in angry retaliation at a domineering attack compare the reaction of Teiresias to Oedipus (O.T. 350) and to Creon (Antig. 1060). Admetus is in noble company.

¹⁵ Even without lines 1119-20, condemned by Hübner, U., Hermes cix (1981) 156–66Google Scholar, the logic of the scene seems at least as well served by contact at 1118 as at 1135, and I would say better in fact. Heracles insists on entrusting the woman as a ward to Admetus’ own hands, and there are four references to touch in five lines (1113-16). It seems logical that he should take hold of her before he sees who she is. It is not at all clear that this first contact would spoil the second, the embrace of the reunited pair, or that θιγεῖν (1117) cannot refer to the first while θίγω (1131) refers to the second.

¹⁶ The scene may also suggest a repeated solemnisation of the original marriage of Admetus and Alcestis, for at weddings the bridegroom took the bride by the hand, and at some stage of the ceremony she was unveiled; cf. Buxton, R. G. A., Dodone xiv (1985) 75–89Google Scholar, especially 77, 80. Such an allusion need only be additional, not alternative to the interpretation in the text, which is supported by the parallel staging of the earlier transfer, and the wedding symbolism would be reinforced by the absence of the children.

¹⁷ I am grateful to the Editor of JHS for the reference in n. 16 and for helpful comments in general.