marriage to the man that could bring him a lion and a boar tamed to the yoke and drawing together. Admêtus, son of Pherês, the oponymus of Pheræ in Thessaly, and thus grandson of Krêtheus, was enabled by the aid of Apollo to fulfil this condition, and to win her;[1] for Apollo happened at that time to be in his service as a slave (condemned to this penalty by Zeus for having put to death the Cyclôpes), in which capacity he tended the herds and horses with such success, as to equip Eumêlus (the son of Admêtus) to the Trojan war with the finest horses in the Grecian army. Though menial duties were imposed upon him, even to the drudgery of grinding in the mill,[2] he yet carried away with him a grateful and friendly sentiment towards his mortal master, whom he interfered to rescue from the wrath of the goddess Artemis, when she was indignant at the omission of her name in his wedding sacrifices. Admêtus was about to perish by a premature death, when Apollo, by earnest solicitation to the Fates, obtained for him the privilege that his life should be prolonged, if he could find any person to die a voluntary death in his place. His father and his mother both refused to make this sacrifice for him, but the devoted attachment of his wife Alkêstis disposed her to embrace with cheerfulness the condition of dying to preserve her
- ↑ Apollodôr. i. 9, 15; Eustath. ad Iliad, ii. 711.
- ↑ Euripid. Alkêst. init. Welcker; Griechisch. Tragœd. (p. 344) on the lost play of Sophoklus called Admêtus or Alkêstis; Hom. Iliad, ii. 766; Hygin. Fab. 50-51 (Sophoklês, Fr. Inc. 730; Dind. ap. Plutarch. Defect. Orac. p. 417). This tale of the temporary servitude of particular gods, by order of Zeus as a punishment for misbehavior, recurs not unfrequently among the incidents of the mythical world. The poet Panyasis (ap. Clem. Alexand. Adm. ad Gent. p. 23)—
Τλῆ μὲν Δημήτηρ, τλῆ δὲ κλυτὸς Ἀμφιγυήεις,
Τλῆ δὲ Ποσειδάων, τλῆ δ’ ἀργυρότοξος Ἀπόλλων
Ἀνδρὶ παρὰ θνητῷ θητευσέμεν εἰς ἐνιαυτόν·
Τλῆ δὲ καὶ ὀβριμόθυμος Ἄρης ὑπὸ πατρὸς ἀνάγκης.The old legend followed out the fundamental idea with remarkable consistency: Laômedôn, as the temporary master of Poseidôn and Apollo, threatens to bind them hand and foot, to sell them in the distant islands, and to cut off the ears of both, when they come to ask for their stipulated wages (Iliad, xxi. 455). It was a new turn given to the story by the Alexandrine poets, when they introduced the motive of love, and made the servitude voluntary on the part of Apollo (Kallimachus, Hymn. Apoll. 49; Tibullus, Eleg ii. 3, 11-30).
