O mansions of Admetus, wherein I endured to acquiesce in the slave's
table,[1] though a God; for Jove was the cause, by slaying my son
Æsculapius, hurling the lightning against his breast: whereat enraged, I
slay the Cyclops, forgers of Jove's fire; and me my father compelled to
serve for hire with a mortal, as a punishment for these things. But having
come to this land, I tended the herds of him who received me, and have
preserved this house until this day: for being pious I met with a pious
man,[2] the son of Pheres, whom I delivered from dying by deluding the
Fates: but those Goddesses granted me that Admetus should escape the
impending death, could he furnish in his place another dead for the powers
below. But having tried and gone through all his friends, his father and
his aged mother who bore him, he found not, save his wife, one who was
willing to die for him, and view no more the light: who now within the
house is borne in their hands, breathing her last; for on this day is it
destined for her to die, and to depart from life. But I, lest the
pollution[3] come upon me in the house, leave this palace's most dear
abode. But already I behold Death near, priest of the dead, who is about to
bear her down to the mansions of Pluto; but he comes at the right time,
observing this day, in the which it was destined for her to die.