Euripides equally important, though only one side is applicable to the primitive and miraculous legend. First they exhibit the patience and resolution of the victim, whose self-sacrifice remains of course as complete and heroic upon the Euripidean hypothesis as upon the other. But secondly this narrative makes equally plain, to minds not wholly prepossessed with the conviction that 'Apollo' cannot err, nor his devotees conceivably be deluded, the fact that, except the prophecy, there is not the smallest reason to fear for Alcestis on this day rather than another; that humanly speaking her life cannot possibly be in danger; and that if, as is clear enough, she is already suffering cruelly, if her strength is failing and threatens a grave collapse, this is simply because from the night onwards she herself with her family and household, in the simplicity of their faith, have been doing their utmost, as they are doing still and will persist in doing so long as she remains conscious, to torture beyond human endurance a delicate frame already shaken by expectation. Who but a fanatic could imagine a woman to be approaching inevitable death, to be already beyond the reach of aid, when not only, as we are told, is her appearance unaltered, but she is able without assistance to perambulate a palace, and to go through a prolonged series of fatiguing devotions and harrowing farewells? Who but a fanatic could see the work of a special providence, could see anything but the regularity of self-revenging nature, when these exercises, continued without remission till the effect is produced, lead from weakness to exhaustion, and finally to hallucination, fainting, coma, and all the appearance of death? Astonishment the rational auditor will undoubtedly feel, when he is told of the preparations for this predicted and foreseen decease, a double astonishment, both of admiration for the courage with which such horrors are borne, and of anger, like that of Lucretius, against the superstition which prompts them:—
What kind of creature should the woman prove
That has surpassed Alkestis?—surelier shown
Preference for her husband to herself
Than by determining to die for him?
But so much all our city knows indeed:
Hear what she did indoors—and wonder then[1].
- ↑ vv. 152–157, Browning's version.
