ad going forth on her last
journey.

CHOR. And lo! I see thy father advancing with his aged foot, and attendants
bearing in their hands adornment for thy wife, due honors of those beneath.

PHERES, ADMETUS, CHORUS.

PHE. I am at present sympathizing in thy misfortunes, my son: for thou hast
lost (no one will deny) a good and a chaste wife; but these things indeed
thou must bear, though hard to be borne. But receive this adornment, and
let it go with her beneath the earth: Her body 'tis right to honor, who in
sooth died to save thy life, my son, and made me to be not childless, nor
suffered me to waste away deprived of thee in an old age of misery. But she
has made most illustrious the life of all women, having dared this noble
action. O thou that hast preserved my son here, and hast raised us up who
were falling, farewell,[33] and may it be well with thee even in the
mansions of Pluto! I affirm that such marriages are profitable to men, or
that it is not meet to marry.

ADM. Neither hast thou come bidden of me to this funeral, nor do I count
thy presence among things acceptable. But she here never shall put on thy
decorations; for in no wise shall she be buried indebted to what thou hast.
Then oughtest thou to have grieved with me, when I was in danger of
perishing.[34] But dost thou, who stoodest aloof, and permittedst another,
a young person, thyself being old, to die, weep over this dead body? Thou
wert not then really the father of me, nor did she, who says she bore me,
and is called my mother, bear me; but born of slavish blood I was secretly
put under the breast of thy wife. Thou showedst when thou camest to the
test, who thou art; and I deem that I am not thy son. Or else surely thou
exceedest all in nothingness of soul, who being of the age thou art, and
having come to the goal of life, neither hadst the will nor the courage to
die for thy son; but sufferedst this stranger lady, whom alone I might
justly have considered both mother and father. And yet thou mightst have
run this race for glory, hadst thou died for thy son. But at any rate the
remainder of the time thou hadst to live was short: and I should have lived
and she the rest of our days, and I should not, bereft of her, be groaning
at my miseries. And in sooth thou didst receive as many things as a happy
man should receive; thou passedst the vigor of thine age indeed in
sovereign sway, but I was thy son to succeed thee in this palace, so that
thou wer