uld hear groans, nor should they be made sad.

CHOR. What are you doing? when so great a calamity is before you, Admetus,
hast thou the heart to receive guests? wherefore art thou foolish?

ADM. But if I had driven him who came my guest from my house, and from the
city, would you have praised me rather? No in sooth, since my calamity had
been no whit the less, but I the more inhospitable: and in addition to my
evils, there had been this other evil, that mine should be called the
stranger-hating house. But I myself find this man a most excellent host,
whenever I go to the thirsty land of Argos.

CHOR. How then didst thou hide thy present fate, when a friend, as thou
thyself sayest, came?

ADM. He never would have been willing to enter the house if he had known
aught of my sufferings. And to him[29] indeed, I ween, acting thus, I
appear not to be wise, nor will he praise me; but my house knows not to
drive away, nor to dishonor guests.

CHORUS.

O greatly hospitable and ever liberal house of this man, thee even the
Pythian Apollo, master of the lyre, deigned to inhabit, and endured to
become a shepherd in thine abodes, through the sloping hills piping to thy
flocks his pastoral nuptial hymns. And there were wont to feed with them,
through delight of his lays, both the spotted lynxes, and the bloody troop
of lions[30] came having left the forest of Othrys; disported too around
thy cithern, Phoebus, the dappled fawn, advancing with light pastern beyond
the lofty-feathered pines, joying in the gladdening strain. Wherefore he
dwelleth in a home most rich in flocks by the fair-flowing lake of Boebe;
and to the tillage of his fields, and the extent of his plains, toward that
dusky _part of the heavens_, where the sun stays his horses, makes the
clime of the Molossians the limit, and holds dominion as far as the
portless shore of the AEgean Sea at Pelion. And now having thrown open his
house he hath received his guest with moistened eyelid, weeping over the
corse of his dear wife, who but now died in the palace: for a noble
disposition is prone to reverence [of the guest]. But in the good there is
all manner of wisdom. And confidence is seated on my soul that the man who
reveres the Gods will fare prosperously.

ADMETUS, CHORUS.

ADM. Ye men of Pherae that are kindly present, my servants indeed bear
aloft[31] the corse, having every thing fit for the tomb, and for the pyre.
But do you, as is the custom, salute[32] the de