Alcestis

Also Known As: Greek Alkestis; daughter of Pelias of Iolcus, wife of Admetus of Pherae
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: A mortal queen who accepted death in her husband’s place and was then given back to the living, either by Persephone or by Heracles wrestling Death at her tomb.
Role in Mythos: She is the Greek tradition’s model of the wife who dies for her husband, the centre of Euripides’ tragedy of 438 BCE and of Phaedrus’ speech on love in Plato’s Symposium.
Relation to Humans: Alcestis was herself human, a princess of Thessaly and the mother of Eumelus, who led the ships of Pherae to Troy. Her choice became the benchmark ancient writers used to measure devotion, and the gods in Plato’s telling honoured it by letting her soul return to earth.

A lion and a boar do not share a yoke. That was the point. When the suitors came to Iolcus asking for the eldest daughter of King Pelias, he set them a task meant to send them home: harness a lion and a wild boar to one chariot and drive it to his door. Most of them did go home. Admetus, the young king of Pherae across the Thessalian plain, came back with the two animals pulling side by side, and he took Alcestis away as his wife.

He had not done it alone. Apollo had yoked the beasts for him. The god owed Admetus a debt of an odd kind, because he had lately been his servant. Zeus had killed Apollo’s son Asclepius with a thunderbolt for raising the dead, and Apollo had answered by killing the Cyclopes who forged the thunderbolts. As punishment Zeus bound him to a mortal master, and the master was Admetus, who treated him well. Apollo kept his herds, and when Admetus needed a miracle, Apollo supplied one.

The marriage began with a blunder. At the wedding sacrifice Admetus forgot to offer anything to Artemis, and when he opened the bridal chamber he found it full of coiled snakes. Apollo again stepped in, told him to appease his sister, and then went further. He won a concession from the Fates themselves: when the day came for Admetus to die, he could escape, provided someone else chose freely to die in his place. In Euripides’ version, Apollo got that promise by making the Fates drunk.

It sounded like a bargain. It was a trap, and the whole story lives inside it. When the day arrived, Admetus went looking for a substitute. His aged father Pheres refused. His mother refused. Nobody in the house or the city stepped forward. Only Alcestis said yes.

Alcestis had a history of refusing what others did. Diodorus of Sicily records that when Medea persuaded the daughters of Pelias to cut up their father, promising to boil him young again, Alcestis alone would not lay hands on him. Her sisters killed the king. She did not, and Jason later gave her, the eldest, in marriage to Admetus. The daughter who would not kill her father was the wife who would die for her husband.

Euripides staged her last day at the City Dionysia in Athens in 438 BCE, and the play still carries the smell and sound of it. A servant tells how, knowing the hour had come, Alcestis washed her body in running water, took her best clothes from the cedar chests, and prayed at the hearth of Hestia for her children. She went round every altar in the house, laying on each a garland cut from myrtle boughs, and she did not weep. Then she reached her marriage bed, and there she did. She kissed it, threw herself across it, and kept getting up to leave and falling back.

On stage she asks Admetus for one thing. Do not bring a stepmother into this house, she tells him, because a second wife might hate the children. He swears it, and in a burst of grief promises to have a craftsman carve her likeness so that he can lie beside it at night. She holds the oath up before witnesses and dies in the daylight she is giving away.

Death has been waiting at the door since the prologue. Euripides gives him a body and a job. He carries a drawn sword, and he claims the dying the way a priest marks a victim at the altar, by shearing a lock of hair with the blade. He argues with Apollo over whether this particular soul might be let off, and he wins the argument. Apollo leaves with a prophecy: a man is on his way to this house, sent by a king in the south to fetch wild horses from Thrace, and that man will take the woman back by force.

The man is Heracles, and he arrives at the worst possible moment, on his way to the man-eating Mares of Diomedes. Admetus, bound by the Greek law of hospitality, hides the death and lets him in. Heracles eats, drinks deep from an ivy-wood cup, sings badly, and wears a wreath of myrtle while the household mourns around him. A servant finally tells him the truth. Sobered, Heracles decides to lie in wait at the tomb, where Death will come to drink the blood of the offerings, and to seize him in a grip no one can break.

He comes back with a veiled woman and asks Admetus to keep her for him. Admetus, who has sworn never to take another wife, refuses, then gives way, and takes her hand. Under the veil is Alcestis. She says nothing. Heracles explains that she cannot speak until three days have passed and she has been purified and released from the powers below.

That is one ending. The Library attributed to Apollodorus keeps an older and quieter one alongside it: after Alcestis died, the Maiden, Persephone, sent her up again of her own accord, moved by what she had done. The Library notes the Heracles version too, saying that some tell how he fought with Hades and brought her back. The Roman mythographer Hyginus follows the Heracles line. Plato, in the Symposium, has Phaedrus praise Alcestis for dying where her husband’s parents would not, and he sets her above Orpheus, who went down to fetch his wife but would not die for her. The gods, Phaedrus says, gave her soul the rare privilege of coming back to the upper world.

Her power was entirely a matter of will. She had no weapon and no divine parent. What she had was the one thing Apollo’s bargain required and nobody else would give, a free choice, and once she made it the Fates had to accept it. Death himself had to wait for her to finish her farewells.

Her limits were a mortal’s limits. She could not bargain her way back, and in no version does she rescue herself. Someone else has to act, whether a goddess of the dead or a drunken hero with his arms round Death’s ribs. Homer, older than all of these tellings, remembers her more simply as the mother of Eumelus, whose mares Apollo had reared and which Homer rates the best horses in the Greek army at Troy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Alcestis in Greek mythology?

Alcestis was the eldest daughter of King Pelias of Iolcus and the wife of King Admetus of Pherae in Thessaly. She is famous for volunteering to die in her husband’s place when no one else, including his parents, would do so.

Why did Alcestis die for Admetus?

Apollo had won a concession from the Fates that Admetus could escape death if someone else chose freely to die for him. When his father Pheres and his mother both refused, Alcestis offered herself and died in his stead.

How did Alcestis come back from the dead?

The sources give two versions. In Euripides’ play Alcestis (438 BCE), Heracles wrestles Death at her tomb and brings her back veiled and silent. The Library attributed to Apollodorus says Persephone sent her back up to the living, and mentions the Heracles version as an alternative.

What task did Admetus complete to marry Alcestis?

Pelias promised Alcestis to the suitor who could yoke a lion and a wild boar to a chariot. Apollo, who had served Admetus as a herdsman, yoked the two animals for him, and Admetus won her.

Did Alcestis help kill her father Pelias?

No. According to Diodorus of Sicily, when Medea tricked the daughters of Pelias into killing their father, Alcestis alone refused to lay hands on him. Jason later gave her in marriage to Admetus.