EURIPIDES
nobody will dispute it, you have lost a wife 615
both good and modest in her ways. Nevertheless,
you have to bear it, even though it is hard to bear.
Accept these gifts to deck her body, bury them
with her. Oh yes, she well deserves honor in death.
She died to save your life, my son. She would not let 620
me be a childless old man, would not let me waste
away in sorrowful age deprived of you. Thereby,
daring this generous action, she has made the life
of all women become a thing of better repute
than it was.
O you who saved him, you who raised us up 625
when we were fallen, farewell, even in Hades' house
may good befall you.
I say people ought to marry women
•like this. Otherwise, better not to marry at all.
Admetus
I never invited you to come and see her buried,
nor do I count your company as that of a friend. 630
She shall not wear anything that you bring her.
She needs nothing from you to be buried in. Your time
to share my sorrow was when I was about to die.
But you stood out of the way and let youth take my place
in death, though you were old. Will you cry for her now? 635
It cannot be that my body ever came from you,
nor did the woman who claims she bore me and is called
my mother give me birth. I was got from some slave
• and surreptitiously put to your wife to nurse.
You show it. Your nature in the crisis has come out. 640
I do not count myself as any child of yours.
Oh, you outpass the cowardice of all the world,
you at your age, come to the very last step of life
and would not, dared not, die for your own child. Oh, no,
you let this woman, married into our family, 645
do it instead, and therefore it is right for me
to call her all the father and mother that I have.
And yet you two should honorably have striven for
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