Alcestis, the earliest extant tragedy by Euripides, was written when the dramatist was in his forties. It is therefore the work of a fully matured man. First staged in 438 b.c.e., the play is in part a product of Athens’s Age of Pericles, that period between the end of the Persian Wars and the onset of the Peloponnesian War. This play shares some of the piety and optimistic confidence of that golden era when Athens reached its greatest power and achieved its finest cultural successes, including the great tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

In Alcestis, Euripides reworks an old legend that had earlier been dramatized by the tragic poet Phrynichus. The work bears Euripides’ inimitable stamp in the keen psychological portraiture, in the rare mixture of comic and tragic elements, and in the deus ex machina ending. Presented as the fourth drama in a tetralogy, which is traditionally a satyr-play, Alcestis is best described as a tragicomedy.

The opening confrontation between Apollo and Thanatos, or Death, sets forth the opposition that is the play’s main underlying theme. Apollo is a radiant god, the representative of light, health, and life, whereas Thanatos is a dark, dismal underworld divinity with an awesome power over all living creatures. Both deities have a claim on Admetus and Alcestis, yet because they belong to different supernatural spheres a compromise between them is impossible. However, Apollo, with his prophetic gift, foresees a resolution in the arrival of Hercules, who will rescue Alcestis from Death.

From that point on, the action proceeds on purely human terms. All the characters are recognizable as persons, with private attitudes, emotions, and choices. Euripides reveals the feelings of Alcestis, a woman who freely sacrifices her life so that her husband may live; of Admetus, who asks for and accepts such a sacrifice; of the child of such a marriage; of Admetus’s old father, Pheres, reviled by his only son for refusing to lay down his life; and of Hercules, who accepts hospitality from the grieving Admetus, drunkenly amuses himself, and then wrests Alcestis from Death to redeem his honor. These are not mere puppets of Fate but men and women acting of their own volition. They are, however, torn between life and death—between Apollo and Thanatos—by the choices they make.

Alcestis chooses the heroic role in laying down her life for Admetus. She knows well what she will leave behind: the joy of her marriage bed, her small children, and the pleasures of living. Her sacrifice is all the greater because she is also aware of the terrors of death. She loves her husband, but Alcestis is also thinking of her children and of what will happen to them if the kingdom passes to a stranger. Her final restoration dramatically suggests the biblical paradox that whoever loses his life for love’s sake will gain new life.

Admetus suggests the complementary paradox, that whoever seeks to save his life will lose it. He turns weak in the face of death and chooses to let another die for him. His remorse while his wife is still alive is sheer sentimentality, for at heart he is an egoistic coward. However, when she is dead, he must confront his ignoble shame and live a deathlike existence of perpetual mourning.

His moment of self-recognition occurs in the bitter meeting with his father, Pheres. Admetus blames Pheres for Alcestis’s death, because the old man chose to live when he might have died for his son. Pheres exhibits the same cowardice that afflicts Admetus, but he speaks the truth when he condemns Admetus and declares...