of her; and as to the household, the men-servants and maid-servants, their reverence and affection is altogether inexpressible. The slaves who wait upon Heracles are almost ready to rebel because they thus miss the chance of saying a ceremonious farewell to the corpse[1]. But none is more eloquent upon this theme, as indeed none has more cause, than the husband for whom she dies, Admetus himself. In the promise of mourning observances he is inexhaustible; the utmost efforts of imagination seem, as we note with sympathy, insufficient to answer his intentions. No common widower's year of black, he says while still the ears of his wife are open to his assurances[2], will content his grief. His whole life will be spent not merely in cherishing but in acting his regret. Never an entertainment any more in the house, which has been so hospitable. No garlands, no music ever again; where would be the pleasure of them? The very bed of the wife will be occupied only by a graven imitation of her, upon which the husband will bestow his embraces, as if it were indeed herself. Nor when she has ceased to hear him does he cease to promise; rather his anticipations take a wider range[3]. It is his command that the public celebration, like the private, shall be on a scale almost incredible. All his subjects are to put into mourning their persons, their households, and (if they have them) their carriages; nor is this injunction limited to any period of time. Even the severe ordinance that 'neither flute nor lyre shall be heard,' an ordinance which in a Greek town would have had an effect something like that of a papal interdict in the middle ages, curtailing or suspending every office of social and religious life and practically closing the schools, even this refinement of severity is expressly extended to 'twelve full months'. No burial, as he justly adds, could better deserve such recognition than that of his queen deserves it from the king of Thessaly.
But all this predicted, prospective, and promissory magnificence, this more than liberal estimate of what shall be, must be done by himself and his people in the future to show forth by outward signs their eternal memory and worship of the heroic dead, does not in the least affect, except so far as to illuminate by the light of contrast, the visible fact that Alcestis
