Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Admetus.
The gallery
Admetus and Alcestis Receiving the Oracle
Unknown, c. 45–79 AD
A Roman wall painting from Herculaneum, buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, showing King Admetus of Pherae seated beside his wife Alcestis as they receive the fateful oracle that he may escape death only if another agrees to die in his place. The seated couple's troubled gazes capture the dread that sets the tragedy in motion. It is held in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MAN inv. 9026) and is one of the earliest surviving images of the pair.
Apollo and the Cattle of Admetus
Cornelis van Poelenburgh, c. 1620
A small Dutch cabinet painting depicting the god Apollo, condemned by Zeus to serve a mortal for a year, tending the herds of King Admetus in a luminous Italianate landscape. The myth of Admetus's kindness to his divine herdsman—repaid when Apollo later won him the gift of escaping death—is rendered in Poelenburgh's polished, classicising manner. The panel illustrates the episode that bound Admetus's fortunes to Apollo's favour.
Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis
Frederic Leighton, c. 1869–1871
A large Victorian oil by Frederic Leighton showing the climax of the Alcestis story: Heracles grapples with the winged death-daemon Thanatos to wrest back the body of Alcestis, who had sacrificed herself to save her husband. On the left, the grief-stricken King Admetus is supported among mourning women beside the bier. Inspired by Euripides and by Robert Browning's poem 'Balaustion's Adventure', the painting hangs in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford.
Sarcophagus with Scenes from the Myth of Admetus and Alcestis
Unknown, c. 161–170 AD
A Roman marble sarcophagus carved in high relief with a continuous frieze of the Admetus and Alcestis legend—from the couple consulting the oracle and Alcestis's deathbed sacrifice to Heracles leading her back from the dead to a grieving Admetus. Made for the freedman C. Junius Euhodus and his wife Metilia Acte, it used the myth of conjugal devotion and death conquered as a funerary parallel. It is preserved in the Vatican's Chiaramonti collection (inv. 1195).