she says, citing in indirect form the terms of the original,
That one, who reverenced the Gods so much,
Would prosper yet: (or—I could wish it ran—
Who venerates the Gods, i' the main will still
Practise things honest though obscure to judge).
Exactly so : if Euripides expects us to admire the behaviour of Admetus as a host, and has founded his play upon this expectation, the Chorus, whose first judgment is unfavourable, should have been made to disprove and retract their opinion, or at least to acknowledge in unequivocal terms that, however the thing may look, they must be mistaken. It is strange (ex hypothesi) and unsatisfactory, that all their inspiriting reminiscences should bring them no nearer to the point than this, that with a man so pious all will assuredly. . .be right.
It appears then that at this point the sentence upon Admetus' action remains in suspense: and there it is left, till we come to the concluding dialogue between the prince and the traveller. For as to the ejaculations and speeches of Heracles in the moment when he discovers the fact concealed from him, and resolves to recover Alcestis from the grasp of Death, they are from the circumstances inadmissible as matter of judgment. He is then speaking under the double excitement of wine and remorse. He is filled, as any man would be, when his eyes are thus suddenly opened, with the sense of his own misbehaviour and loss of respect. His one impulse is to put himself right forthwith and recover his dignity, "to approve himself" as he says, "for a son of Zeus" by a signal service rendered to those whose hospitality he had claimed and certainly, as he perceives, has abused. He is thus in no condition to estimate or to consider the behaviour of his friend to himself: and in fact his exclamations, so far as they touch this side of the matter, betray by their inconsistency that he has not yet reflected on it. At the first moment of suspecting a deceit he cries out against it as an incredible injury:
Have I been outraged by my friend and host?[1]
And in the same spirit he reproaches the slave, in language broken with indignation, for having complied with Admetus'
- ↑ v. 816.
