of Admetus when his wife is lying dead in the house! Admetus insists that Heracles, if he had been told the truth, would have gone elsewhere. Whether this would in fact have been so, we have no means of judging. It would depend on the real relations between the two men, or rather on Heracles' opinion of those relations: he might have been moved to go, and he might have been moved to remain. But one thing surely is manifest, that if Admetus conjectures truly, he thereby condemns his trick. So much for the deceit in itself, for the mere offence against loyalty. But the offence goes deeper than this. Being thus admitted or rather entrapped into the house, Heracles behaves there in such a way, that on learning the truth from a servant he is overwhelmed with horror and self-disgust. For the full extent of this misadventure Admetus is not solely responsible. He could not perhaps be expected to guess that his excellent friend would console himself for the want of society by getting drunk, especially as the circumstances, even as pretended, would have sufficed to restrain most men from this extremity. But neither is Admetus excusable. The actual sequel does but emphasize the predictable risk to which he exposes his unsuspecting guest, who, without going as far as he does, might have done many things unsuitable to the awful situation in which the household is found. What right or approvable reason has Admetus for thrusting another upon this danger, merely because it consists with his opinion of his own interests that his bread should be eaten and not the bread of his neighbours; and where is the nobility of this economical purchase? I say nothing about the quality, in regard to the dead wife, of the particular lies by which the noble result is achieved.
Such, as it seems to me, would be the judgment on the case, if argued from the sentiments of mankind in general. But what we are concerned with after all is the sentiment of the Greeks as conceived by Euripides. Let us see how he represents it. The first to pronounce an opinion are the Chorus, from whom, as the especial friends of Admetus, accustomed by long respect and affection to regard him with uncommon indulgence[1], we
- ↑ v. 212, and passim.
