Alcestis
Gilbert Murray (1915)
Euripides's Alcestis (438 BC) is his earliest surviving play, performed in the slot usually reserved for a satyr-play and mingling tragic pathos with comic and even happy elements. When King Admetus is granted escape from death if another will die in his place, only his wife Alcestis consents; her sacrifice, Admetus's belated self-knowledge, and Heracles's wrestling of Alcestis back from Death give the play its strange tragicomic tone. The translation is Gilbert Murray's.
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