Admetus

For in Pheres’ son I found a man as holy as myself, and him I saved from death by cheating Destiny, for they promised me, those goddesses of fate, that Admetus should escape the impending doom, if he found a substitute for the powers below.

And I will put an end to revelry, to social gatherings o’er the wine, forego the festal crown and music which once reigned in my halls.

to the courts of death, winged Hades glaring from beneath his dark brows.

Lord Apollo said to the son of Pheres:

"And in time Apollo was born" — and no wonder, since he is found serving Admetus, together with Heracles, for a great year.

For let there be silence about Cometes the Cretan, Cinyras the Cypriot, Admetus the Thessalian, Aristaeus the Cyrenian, Amphiaraus the Athenian, Timoxenus the Corcyrean, Demaenetus the Phocaean, Epigenes the Thespian, Nicias the Carystian, Ariston the Thessalian, Dionysius the Carthaginian, Cleophon the Corinthian, and Hippo the daughter of Chiron, and Boeo and Manto, and the multitude of the Siby …

Do you suppose, she asked, that Alcestis would have died for Admetus, or Achilles have sought death on the corpse of Patroclus, or your own Codrus have welcomed it to save the children of his queen, if they had not expected to win a deathless memory for valor, which now we keep?

And therefore it is no mistake when the ancient poets tell their tales of the love Apollo bore Phorbas, Hyacinthus, and Admetus, as well as the Sicyonian Hippolytus also, of whom it is said, that, as often as he set out to sail from Sicyon to Cirrha, the Pythian priestess, as though the god knew of his coming and rejoiced thereat, chanted this prophetic verse:

and certain others that Admetus himself, in order that he might give a religious sanction to the necessity that was upon him of not surrendering the man, arranged beforehand and solemnly rehearsed with him the supplication scene.

But in the desperate fortune of that time Themistocles was more afraid of kindred and recent jealousy than of an anger that was of long standing and royal, and promptly cast himself upon the king’s mercy, making himself the suppliant of Admetus in a way quite peculiar and extraordinary.

Thus he who serves both makes lords, and the surrendered slave of Admetus increases the Roman citizens with empire, while he ruined his liberal worshipper Croesus by deceiving him with ambiguous oracles.

One assigns Apollo to King Admetus for the feeding of his flocks;

And being pursued by those who had been appointed to the work, as they heard on inquiry in what direction he was going, he was compelled in a strait to stop at the house of Admetus, the king of the Molossians, who was not on friendly terms with him.

but Themistocles, addressing himself as a suppliant to his wife, was instructed by her to take their child, and seat himself on the hearth.

And when Admetus came not long after, he declared who he was, and begged him not to avenge himself on a banished man, for whatever he himself might have urged against any request of his to the Athenians;