awhile and take a good look at him: let’s scan the landscape and the names. And we shall discover that Admetus belongs to the shadows as of right.
The landscape is Thessaly, a land that “in olden times was a lake surrounded by mountains high as the sky itself” (one of them was Olympus); a land that preserved its familiaritywith the deep waters which periodically burst forth to flood it from a hundred springs and rivers; a fertile country, yellow, rugged, with plenty of horses, cattle, witches. The presiding divinity is not the cool, transparent Athena but a great goddess who looms from the darkness, Pheraia. She holds a torch in each hand and is rarely mentioned. And this too is typical of the spirit of Thessaly, a land where divinity is closer to the primordial anonymity, where the gods rarely assume a human face, and where the Olympians are loath to descend. When a god does appear, he bursts forth, brusque and wild, like the horse Scapheus, whose mane leaps out from the rock split open by his own hooves. The horses that gallop around Thessaly are creatures of the deep, shooting out of the cracks in the ground, the cracks from which Poseidon’s wave rises to flood the plain. They are the dead, brilliantly white, brilliantly black. And Pheraia is a local name for Hecate, the night-roaming, underworld goddess who rends the dark with her torches. As a goddess, she is horse, bull, lioness, dog, but she is also she who appears on the back of bull, horse, or lion. A nurse to boys, a multiplier of cattle. In Thessaly she is
Brimó
, the strong one, who unites with Hermes, son of Ischys, also the strong one, the lover Coronis preferred to Apollo. And
strength
(
alk
) also forms part of the name Alcestis. In the land of Thessaly, rather than as a person divinity presents itself as pure force. But Pheraia, says Hesychius’s dictionary, is also the “daughter [
kórē
] of Admetus.” Is it possible that before becoming a pair of provincial rulers, Alcestis and Admetus were already sitting side by side as sovereigns of the underworld?
Now the landscape yields up its secret. It is the luxuriant country of the dead, this Thessaly where Apollo must be slave for a “great year,” until the stars return to their original positions—that is, for nine years. Apollo’s stay in Thessaly is a time cycle in Hades. The fact that Zeus chose this place instead of Tartarus as a punishment for Apollo itself suggests that this is a land of death. The name
Admetus
means “indomitable.” And who is more indomitable thanthe lord of the dead? Now the few things we know about Admetus take on new meaning: who could be more hospitable than the king of the dead? His is the inn that closes its doors to no one, at no hour of the day or night. And no one has such numerous herds as the king of the dead. When Admetus invites friends and relations to die for him, he is scarcely doing anything unusual: it’s what he does all the time. And the reason Admetus fully expects others to substitute for him in death is now clear: he is the lord of death, he greets the arriving corpses, sorts them and spreads them out across his extensive domains.
Now we see how truly extreme Apollo’s love is, more so even than it had seemed: out of love, Apollo tries to save the king of the dead from death. Now the love of both Apollo and Alcestis reveals itself as thoroughly provocative: it is a love for the shadow that steals all away. From Alcestis we discover what the
kóre
, snatched by Hades while gathering narcissi, never told us: that the god of the invisible is not just an abductor but a lover too.
The texts have little to say about Apollo’s period of servitude because it would mean touching on matters best kept secret. About Heracles’ servitude under Omphale the poets chose to be ironic. But, when it came to Apollo’s under Admetus, no one wanted to risk it. All that remains is the exemplum of a love so great as to compensate for any amount of shame and
The landscape is Thessaly, a land that “in olden times was a lake surrounded by mountains high as the sky itself” (one of them was Olympus); a land that preserved its familiaritywith the deep waters which periodically burst forth to flood it from a hundred springs and rivers; a fertile country, yellow, rugged, with plenty of horses, cattle, witches. The presiding divinity is not the cool, transparent Athena but a great goddess who looms from the darkness, Pheraia. She holds a torch in each hand and is rarely mentioned. And this too is typical of the spirit of Thessaly, a land where divinity is closer to the primordial anonymity, where the gods rarely assume a human face, and where the Olympians are loath to descend. When a god does appear, he bursts forth, brusque and wild, like the horse Scapheus, whose mane leaps out from the rock split open by his own hooves. The horses that gallop around Thessaly are creatures of the deep, shooting out of the cracks in the ground, the cracks from which Poseidon’s wave rises to flood the plain. They are the dead, brilliantly white, brilliantly black. And Pheraia is a local name for Hecate, the night-roaming, underworld goddess who rends the dark with her torches. As a goddess, she is horse, bull, lioness, dog, but she is also she who appears on the back of bull, horse, or lion. A nurse to boys, a multiplier of cattle. In Thessaly she is
Brimó
, the strong one, who unites with Hermes, son of Ischys, also the strong one, the lover Coronis preferred to Apollo. And
strength
(
alk
) also forms part of the name Alcestis. In the land of Thessaly, rather than as a person divinity presents itself as pure force. But Pheraia, says Hesychius’s dictionary, is also the “daughter [
kórē
] of Admetus.” Is it possible that before becoming a pair of provincial rulers, Alcestis and Admetus were already sitting side by side as sovereigns of the underworld?
Now the landscape yields up its secret. It is the luxuriant country of the dead, this Thessaly where Apollo must be slave for a “great year,” until the stars return to their original positions—that is, for nine years. Apollo’s stay in Thessaly is a time cycle in Hades. The fact that Zeus chose this place instead of Tartarus as a punishment for Apollo itself suggests that this is a land of death. The name
Admetus
means “indomitable.” And who is more indomitable thanthe lord of the dead? Now the few things we know about Admetus take on new meaning: who could be more hospitable than the king of the dead? His is the inn that closes its doors to no one, at no hour of the day or night. And no one has such numerous herds as the king of the dead. When Admetus invites friends and relations to die for him, he is scarcely doing anything unusual: it’s what he does all the time. And the reason Admetus fully expects others to substitute for him in death is now clear: he is the lord of death, he greets the arriving corpses, sorts them and spreads them out across his extensive domains.
Now we see how truly extreme Apollo’s love is, more so even than it had seemed: out of love, Apollo tries to save the king of the dead from death. Now the love of both Apollo and Alcestis reveals itself as thoroughly provocative: it is a love for the shadow that steals all away. From Alcestis we discover what the
kóre
, snatched by Hades while gathering narcissi, never told us: that the god of the invisible is not just an abductor but a lover too.
The texts have little to say about Apollo’s period of servitude because it would mean touching on matters best kept secret. About Heracles’ servitude under Omphale the poets chose to be ironic. But, when it came to Apollo’s under Admetus, no one wanted to risk it. All that remains is the exemplum of a love so great as to compensate for any amount of shame and
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