King of Pherae in Thessaly and son of its founder Pheres, Admetus is the mortal whom a god served: Apollo, sentenced to thralldom, came to his house, and out of that kindness won him the bride Alcestis and the strangest of gifts — the right to escape his own death if another would die in his place.1
Apollodorus sets his house in the Aeolid line: Pheres, son of Cretheus, founded Pherae in Thessaly and begat Admetus and Lycurgus — the latter settling at Nemea, while Admetus kept the city his father raised. When Admetus reigned over Pherae, Apollo served him as his thrall. Apollodorus traces the reason to an older quarrel: Zeus had blasted Asclepius, Apollo killed the Cyclopes in revenge, and at Leto's pleading was sentenced to serve a mortal for a year — so he came to Admetus at Pherae as a herdsman and made all the cows drop twins. Beyond Pherae, Admetus took his place among the heroes of his age, a hunter of the Calydonian boar and a sailor on the Argo.2
The servitude bound god to king in gratitude, and the debt was paid in marriage. Admetus wooed Alcestis, daughter of Pelias, but Pelias had set a contest — he would give her only to the suitor who yoked a lion and a boar to a single car. Apollo yoked the beasts and gave them to Admetus, who brought them to Pelias and so won Alcestis; Hyginus tells the same in both his Admetus and Alcestis fables, adding that the god helped because he had been treated kindly while in his servitude.3
The wedding itself nearly undid him. Offering sacrifice at his marriage, Admetus forgot to sacrifice to Artemis, and when he opened the bridal chamber he found it full of coiled snakes. Apollo bade him appease the goddess and won for him a further favour from the Fates: when Admetus should be about to die, he might be released from death if someone would choose, of their own will, to die in his stead. When the day came, neither his father nor his mother would die for him, but Alcestis died in his place — and the Maiden sent her up again, or, as some say, Heracles fought with Hades and brought her back; elsewhere Apollodorus has Heracles coming from Pherae after saving the dead Alcestis for Admetus.4
Hyginus tells the death plainly: Admetus obtained from Apollo that another might die in his place of their own will, and when neither his father nor his mother was willing, his wife Alcestis offered herself and died for him a vicarious death, until Hercules called her back from the dead. Hyginus names her again among the women who died such a death and among those who, by leave of the Parcae, returned from the world below.5
Homer knows Admetus chiefly through his marriage and his son. Alcestis, queenly among women and comeliest of Pelias' daughters, bore to Admetus a son, Eumelus, who led eleven ships to Troy; and the swiftest mares in the whole host were his — the very horses Apollo of the silver bow had reared in Pereia.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
