When you hear the words “ancient Greek tragedy,” what comes to mind? Suicide, maybe. Some parricide every once in a while. If you’re feeling particularly despairing, maybe even all three: suicide, parricide, and gouging out one’s eyes. Skim through the pages of The Bacchae, Medea, Hippolytus, and others, and you will find that Greek tragedies do not involve a lot of positive emotion.
However, one tragedy defies the tradition of soul-crushing endings to soul-crushing plays: Euripides’ Alcestis. Yes, the play’s characters suffer—the titular protagonist Alcestis even dies. Nonetheless, the characters of Alcestis enjoy a traditionally happy ending.
Or do they?
First, we have to examine how we got to this point. Alcestis is not as popular a tragedy as, say, Oedipus Tyrannus, so it calls for some exposition. Here is a bare-bones summary: King Admetus of Pherae, due to his friendship with Apollo, is saved from an early death. However, someone must die in his place. Admetus’ parents refuse, but his wife Alcestis agrees to die for him. As she slowly withers, Admetus swears to never remarry. He insults his father Pheres for not choosing to die instead, and Pheres calls him a coward before storming off. Amongst this chaos, an oblivious Heracles stops by Pherae. Wanting to be hospitable, Admetus houses Heracles despite his wife’s death. Heracles initially drinks and celebrates, but once he learns of Alcestis’ death, he sets off to retrieve her from Thanatos. He later returns to Admetus with a veiled woman, whom he claims he won in a competition. Admetus initially refuses to take the woman in, but, pressured by Heracles, he agrees. Admetus lifts the veil to find Alcestis beneath it, and he rejoices. She cannot speak for three days, but Admetus, overcome by joy, declares a feast. With Admetus’ mistake reversed and everyone ostensibly alive and well, the play ends.
If you know this play’s designation and know what the word tragedy means, one thing immediately stands out: what’s up with that ending? In a sea of grim, unsalvageable conclusions, Alcestis’ fairytale resolution sticks out like a rainbow-hued thumb.
But something more specific also stands out: what’s up with Alcestis?
If you take this play at face value, Alcestis has been rendered temporarily mute by death and will soon regain her voice. In Diane Arnson Svarlien’s translation of Alcestis, Heracles says, “[Alcestis is] consecrated to the gods below / and will not be released until the third / day’s light has come” (Euripides, lines 1207-1209). The reader can assume that Alcestis’ condition is temporary and all will be well in three days. Her muteness is only a small bump on the road to her and Admetus’ happily ever after. However, this face-value interpretation leaves quite a few questions unanswered. For example, why doesn’t Alcestis react to her revival? Why doesn’t she reach for Admetus? Why doesn’t she at least smile? She is mute, not immobile. Being rescued from death and reunited with one’s husband should provoke a reaction. As Admetus asks, “Why is she just standing there in silence?” (Euripides, line 1205).
Which brings this essay to its point: Alcestis didn’t want to be revived. Her lack of reaction says it all. She resents that Heracles has dragged her back to life, she resents that she will have to spend more time with Admetus, and she resents that her seemingly perfect escape plan was foiled. Alcestis’ choice to die for her husband was not motivated by love; it was motivated by desperation for freedom.
It is important to note that Alcestis didn’t die happily. However, the timing of her sadness reveals that she took issue with the circumstances surrounding her death, not death itself. Alcestis’ chorus initially says, “When she realized / the day had come, she bathed her pale skin / with water from the river. Then she took / her clothing and her lovely jewelry / from cedar chambers, and she dressed herself / as the occasion called for” (Euripides, lines 153-158). Here, Alcestis displays surprising diligence for someone about to go to her death. Instead of refusing to surrender herself or breaking down, she prepares for her day. This sense of acceptance continues as she prays to Hestia and walks through her house. The chorus continues, “[Alcestis’] eyes were dry; she did not moan. Her beautiful complexion / was unchanged by the imminent disaster” (Euripides, lines 171-173). These sentences add a layer of determination to Alcestis’ actions. She behaves as if she is completing an important task. She may not like it, but she knows it must be done. Alcestis’ outward stoicism only falters when she comes across her marriage bed and children. She says to the bed, “It’s you / alone who have destroyed me” (Euripides, lines 179-180), and embraces her children “like a woman who is dying” (line 193). Alcestis’ reluctance to die stems from her resentment at having been put in this situation and from having to leave her children behind; however, she doesn’t seem to resent death itself. She is upset that her husband would let her die in such a way and upset for her children, but she keeps her composure regarding the action of dying.
There are two reasons why Alcestis would be so okay with death: she either loves Admetus that much, or she quietly despises him and views death as an escape. Given her comments toward Admetus, evidence points toward the latter. As Alcestis dies, she says, “I am dying, / although I didn’t have to, for your sake. / I could have married well in Thessaly, / had any man I wanted, lived in wealth” (Euripides, lines 301-304). In her final moments, Alcestis expresses resentment toward her marriage. She seems bitter that she married Admetus and implies that she didn’t want to. Given that this play takes place in ancient Greece, one has to wonder if Alcestis even chose to marry Admetus. Alcestis mentions her youth quite a few times, so she is obviously young. The existence of her children indicates that she married Admetus when she was even younger. In contrast, Admetus is a well-established king with very old parents, which indicates that he is probably middle-aged. A young girl without much agency being married off to an older man? Said young girl growing resentful of her husband due to her lack of agency? Considering this play’s setting, that is par for the course (Beneker and Tsouvala).
And Alcestis’ grievances regarding her marriage don’t stop there. One of her last requests to Admetus is to never remarry. She says to him, “It’s not possible / to pay me back what I deserve (for nothing / is worth more than a life), but what I will ask / is fair, as you’ll agree… Don’t remarry” (Euripides, lines 318-324). However, just a few lines after this request, she implies to her children that Admetus will remarry anyway. She says, “But you, my daughter, how will you / grow up to womanhood? What kind of wife / will your father marry after me? Let’s hope / she doesn’t, in the blossom of your youth, / cast some disgraceful slander on your name / and ruin utterly your hopes of marriage” (Euripides, lines 332-334). Alcestis evidently does not have much faith in her husband. She believes him to be the kind of person who would disregard his wife’s dying wish, the kind of person who would force a malicious stepmother upon his children. And, unfortunately, Alcestis might be onto something.
Throughout this play, Admetus is selfish, cowardly, and ungrateful. After Alcestis dies, Admetus’ father Pheres calls him out on this behavior. He says, “So, you put up a fight, / got out of dying, shamelessly stayed alive, / avoided your due fate by killing [Alcestis]. / You’re calling me a coward? You’re the worst! […] You’ve found a smart alternative to death: / just persuade your current wife to die / on your behalf! And then you blame your loved ones / if they won’t do it, coward that you are!” (Euripides, lines 735-744). Per his own father, Admetus is a spineless duty-shirker. Step into Alcestis’ shoes again, and you will see why she might resent her marriage. She probably lacked a say in marrying Admetus, and his lack of character only made things worse. To add to her unfortunate situation, she had no way out of her marriage, and her freedom was extremely limited. Alcestis, bound to a man she quietly resented, must have felt exceedingly trapped. So when an escape route presented itself in the form of death, she took it. It was a perfect plan: Alcestis would escape her marriage, die as a revered figure, and indirectly inflict some pain upon her husband. It was freedom on a silver platter. Alcestis didn’t die for Admetus; she died for herself.
Evidently, though, Alcestis doesn’t stay dead. Heracles fights Thanatos to retrieve her, then he brings her back to Admetus. However, something is very wrong with this revived Alcestis. Along with not being able to speak, she is stiff and devoid of emotion. As far as the reader can tell, she does not react at all to the fantastical events occurring around her. She simply stands in silence. Think back to Alcestis’ possible reasons to die, and it becomes increasingly clear that her lack of reaction is not just due to her death. She is frustrated, despairing, demoralized, and more resentful than ever. By reviving her, Heracles has negated all that has occurred. After a brief moment of freedom in death, Alcestis is shackled once more.
For all of Alcestis’ life, men tell her what to do. A man tells her to marry Admetus, a man tells her to be a homemaker, a man tells her to die, and now, a man tells her—forces her, really—to return to Admetus. She tries to break free, but she is dragged right back to where she started. By the man, no less: Heracles, with his heroic deeds and bulging muscles, was considered the ideal man by many ancient Greeks, and many modern men still view him as such (Blanshard and Stafford). Alcestis’ reunion with Admetus is almost symbolic: veiled and finely dressed, she is guided to her husband by a guardian. Once she reaches her husband, he takes her hand and her freedom. She quite literally has no say in any of this. Her relationship with Admetus started with a marriage she did not want, and said relationship is revived with a reenactment of this forced marriage. Alcestis does not depict a noble act of self-sacrifice; it depicts a desperate suicide attempt by a trapped young woman. Admetus may receive a happy ending, but Alcestis does not. Her revival is the real tragedy of this play.
Bio
Lana Miao is a high school junior from Great Neck, New York. She discovered the world of Classics through the Percy Jackson series in second grade, and her sixth grade Latin class solidified her passion for the field. She hopes to major in the Classics with a concentration in the Latin language. She enjoys parsing Latin text, reading too deeply into the syntax of Latin poetry, and interrogating the depiction of female figures in Greco-Roman literature. In her free time, she produces music, sings, and clumsily translates English paragraphs into Latin. Her favorite authors are Catullus and Euripides!
Works Cited
Beneker, Jeffrey, and Georgia Tsouvala. The Discourse of Marriage in the Greco-Roman World. U of Wisconsin P, 2020. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv136c5bq. Accessed 25 May 2025.
Blanshard, Alastair J.L., and Emma Stafford, editors. The Modern Hercules. Brill, 2020. Vol. 21 of Metaforms.
Euripides. Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus. Translated by Diane Arnson Svarlien, Hackett Publishing, 2007.
Well said!