lation.'

_Herc._ Why are thy locks in sign of mourning shorn? {530}
_Adm._ 'Tis for one dead, whom I to-day must bury.
_Herc._ The Gods avert thy mourning for a child!
_Adm._ My children, what I had, live in my house.
_Herc._ Thy aged father, haply he is gone.
_Adm._ My father lives, and she that bore me lives.
_Herc._ Lies then thy wife Alcestis mongst the dead?
_Adm._ Of her I have in double wise to speak.
_Herc._ As of the living speakst thou, or the dead?
_Adm._ She is, and is no more: this grief afflicts me.
_Herc._ This gives no information: dark thy words. {540}
_Adm._ Knowst thou not then the destiny assign'd her?
_Herc._ I know that she submits to die for thee.
_Adm._ To this assenting is she not no more?
_Herc._ Lament her not too soon: await the time.
_Adm._ She's dead: one soon to die is now no more.
_Herc._ It differs wide to be, and not to be.
_Adm._ Such are thy sentiments, far other mine.
_Herc._ But wherefore are thy tears? What man is dead?
_Adm._ A woman: of a woman I made mention.
_Herc._ Of foreign birth, or one allied to thee? {550}
_Adm._ Of foreign birth, but to my home most dear.

Hercules is moving away for the purpose of seeking hospitality
elsewhere: Admetus will not hear of it, and, when Hercules loudly
protests, puts aside his opposition with the air of one whose authority
in matters of hospitable rites is not to be disputed. He orders
attendants to conduct Hercules to a distant quarter of the Palace, to
spread a sumptuous feast, and bar fast the doors, lest the voice of woe
should affect the feasting guest. When Hercules is gone the _Chorus_
are staggered by such a mastery of personal grief as this implies. But
_Admetus_ asks how could he let a guest depart from his house?

My affliction would not thus {575}
Be less, but more unhospitable I.

But why, the _Chorus_ ask, conceal the truth?--His friend, answers
_Admetus_, would never have entered, had he known. Some may blame him,
he continues, but his house simply knows not how to do dishonor to a
guest.--Admetus returns into the Palace, to his funeral preparations:
the _Chorus_ are moved to enthusiasm by this forgetfulness of self in
hospitable devotion; their enthusiasm breaks out in an Ode celebrating
the glories of their king's hospitality in the past, and ending in a
gleam of hope that it may yet do something for him in