Alcestis · Atlas

in the texts

AlcestisClassical · Greek

Wife of Admetus and daughter of Pelias, who volunteers to die in her husband's place; her death and the mourning it causes form the central action of this window.

Not one friend near to say if we must mourn our queen as dead, or if she liveth yet and sees the sun, Alcestis, daughter of Pelias, by me and all esteemed the best of wives to her husband.

alcestis ¶

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

alcestis ¶

And if ever thy lord take to him a new wife, I vow he will earn my hatred and thy children’s too.

alcestis ¶

SymposiumClassical · Greek

The wife of Admetus who alone was willing to die in her husband's place; the gods rewarded her devotion by returning her from Hades.

Sufficient witness is borne to this statement before the people of Greece by Alcestis, daughter of Pelias, who alone was willing to die for her husband, though he had both father and mother.

symposium ¶

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?

symposium ¶

StromataLate Antiquity · Greek

Mythic wife celebrated for her love of her husband.

And the rest of the poets sing of Atalanta's swiftness in the hunt, and of the tender love of Anticleia, and of Alcestis' love of her husband, and of the good courage of Macaria and of the Hyacinthides.

book 4 ¶