speakest of! Oh! unhappy one, how do
we suffer!

ALC. He pulls me, some one pulls me--do you not see?--to the hall of the
dead, the winged Pluto, staring from beneath his black eyebrows--What wilt
thou do?--let me go--what a journey am I most wretched going!

ADM. Mournful to thy friends, and of these especially to me and to thy
children, who have this grief in common.

ALC. Leave off[19] supporting me, leave off now, lay me down, I have no
strength in my feet. Death is near, and darkling night creeps upon mine
eyes--my children, my children, no more your mother is--no more.--Farewell,
my children, long may you view this light!

ADM. Ah me! I hear this sad word, and more than any death to me. Do not by
the Gods have the heart to leave me: do not by those children, whom thou
wilt make orphans: but rise, be of good courage: for, thee dead, I should
no longer be: for on thee we depend both to live, and not to live: for thy
love we adore.

ALC. Admetus, thou seest both thy affairs and mine, in what state they are,
I wish to tell thee, ere I die, what I would have done. I, honoring thee,
and causing thee at the price of my life to view this light, die, it being
in my power not to die, for thee: but though I might have married a husband
from among the Thessalians whom I would, and have lived in a palace blessed
with regal sway, was not willing to live, bereft of thee, with my children
orphans; nor did I spare myself, though possessing the gifts of bloomy
youth, wherein I delighted. And yet thy father and thy mother forsook thee,
though they had well arrived at a point of life, in which they might have
died, and nobly delivered their son, and died with glory: for thou wert
their only one, and there was no hope, when thou wert dead, that they could
have other children.[20] And I should have lived, and thou, the rest of our
time. And thou wouldst not be groaning deprived of thy wife, and wouldst
not have to bring up thy children orphans. But these things indeed, some
one of the Gods hath brought to pass, that they should be thus. Be it
so--but do thou remember to give me a return for this; for never shall I
ask thee for an equal one, (for nothing is more precious than life,) but
just, as thou wilt say: for thou lovest not these children less than I do,
if thou art right-minded; them bring up lords over my house, and bring not
in second marriage a step-mother over these children, who, being a worse
woman than me, through env