A Book of Golden Deeds | Page 6

for them, though we cannot now disentangle them from the fable that has adhered to them; and, at any rate, the ancient Greeks believed them, and gathered strength and nobleness from dwelling on such examples; since, as it has been truly said, 'Every word, look or thought of sympathy with heroic action, helps to make heroism'. Both tales were presented before them in their solemn religious tragedies, and the noble poetry in which they were recounted by the great Greek dramatists has been preserved to our time.
Alcestis was the wife of Admetus, King of Pherae, who, according to the legend, was assured that his life might be prolonged, provided father, mother, or wife would die in his stead. It was Alcestis alone who was willing freely to give her life to save that of her husband; and her devotion is thus exquisitely described in the following translation, by Professor Anstice, from the choric song in the tragedy by Euripides:
'Be patient, for thy tears are vain They may not wake the dead again: E'en heroes, of immortal sire And mortal mother born, expire. Oh, she was dear While she linger'd here; She is dear now she rests below, And thou mayst boast That the bride thou hast lost Was the noblest earth can show.
'We will not look on her burial sod As the cell of sepulchral sleep, It shall be as the shrine of a radiant god, And the pilgrim shall visit that blest abode To worship, and not to weep; And as he turns his steps aside, Thus shall he breathe his vow: 'Here sleeps a self-devoted bride, Of old to save her lord she died. She is a spirit now.
Hail, bright and blest one! grant to me The smiles of glad prosperity.' Thus shall he own her name divine, Thus bend him at Alcestis' shrine.'
The story, however, bore that Hercules, descending in the course of one of his labors into the realms of the dead, rescued Alcestis, and brought her back; and Euripides gives a scene in which the rough, jovial Hercules insists on the sorrowful Admetus marrying again a lady of his own choice, and gives the veiled Alcestis back to him as the new bride. Later Greeks tried to explain the story by saying that Alcestis nursed her husband through an infectious fever, caught it herself, and had been supposed to be dead, when a skilful physician restored her; but this is probably only one of the many reasonable versions they tried to give of the old tales that were founded on the decay and revival of nature in winter and spring, and with a presage running through them of sacrifice, death, and resurrection. Our own poet Chaucer was a great admirer of Alcestis, and improved upon the legend by turning her into his favorite flower---
'The daisie or els the eye of the daie, The emprise and the floure of flouris all'.
Another Greek legend told of the maiden of Thebes, one of the most self- devoted beings that could be conceived by a fancy untrained in the knowledge of Divine Perfection. It cannot be known how much of her story is true, but it was one that went deep into the hearts of Grecian men and women, and encouraged them in some of their best feelings; and assuredly the deeds imputed to her were golden.
Antigone was the daughter of the old King Oedipus of Thebes. After a time heavy troubles, the consequence of the sins of his youth, came upon him, and he was driven away from his kingdom, and sent to wander forth a blind old man, scorned and pointed at by all. Then it was that his faithful daughter showed true affection for him. She might have remained at Thebes with her brother Eteocles, who had been made king in her father's room, but she chose instead to wander forth with the forlorn old man, fallen from his kingly state, and absolutely begging his bread. The great Athenian poet Sophocles began his tragedy of 'Oedipus Coloneus' with showing the blind old king leaning on Antigone's arm, and asking--
'Tell me, thou daughter of a blind old man, Antigone, to what land are we come, Or to what city? Who the inhabitants Who with a slender pittance will relieve Even for a day the wandering Oedipus?' POTTER.
The place to which they had come was in Attica, hear the city of Colonus. It was a lovely grove--
'All the haunts of Attic ground, Where the matchless coursers bound, Boast not, through their realms of bliss, Other spot so fair as this. Frequent down this greenwood dale Mourns the warbling nightingale, Nestling 'mid the thickest screen Of the ivy's darksome green, Or where each empurpled shoot Drooping with its myriad fruit, Curl'd in many a mazy twine, Droops the never-trodden