Admetus
King of Pherae whose wife Alcestis volunteered to die in his place, making theirs the most extreme love story in myth.
The Legend of Admetus
Apollo worked as his slave — and liked him so much he rigged fate itself to save him. When Admetus was fated to die young, Apollo got the Moirai drunk and extracted a concession: someone could die in his place. Only his wife Alcestis volunteered; his parents refused. After she died, Heracles arrived as a guest, learned what had happened, and wrestled Thanatos at her tomb to bring her back. Euripides's Alcestis is the earliest complete Greek play to survive. The story poses an unbearable question: is it moral to accept someone else's death for you, even if they offer freely?
Parents
Pheres, Periclymene
Symbols
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Alcestis
🗡 heroWife who died for her husband
Alcestis was the devoted wife who volunteered to die in place of her husband Admetus — the only person willing to make the sacrifice.
Laodamia
🗡 herodevotion
Wife of Protesilaus who embraced a wax image of her dead husband so desperately the gods briefly returned him to life.
Ariadne
🗡 herolove
Cretan princess who saved Theseus with a ball of thread, was abandoned on Naxos, and became the immortal wife of Dionysus.
Polyxena
🗡 herosacrifice
Trojan princess sacrificed on Achilles's tomb after the fall of Troy to appease his ghost.
Marpessa
🗡 herochoice
Mortal woman who chose the hero Idas over Apollo, fearing a god would abandon her in old age.
Antigone
🗡 heroChampion of divine law over human law
Daughter of Oedipus who defied King Creon's decree to bury her brother Polynices. Her story is one of mythology's most powerful explorations of conscience versus authority.
Iphis of Argos
🗡 heroUnrequited Love, Class, Suicide
Poor Argive youth who died of unrequited love for Anaxarete, who was then turned to stone.
Eriphyle
🗡 herobetrayal
Wife of Amphiaraus who twice accepted bribes to send her male relatives to their deaths in war.
Patroclus
🗡 heroThe companion whose death transformed the Iliad
Achilles's closest companion whose death in borrowed armour broke the hero's withdrawal and sent him raging back to war.
Andromache
🗡 heroWife of Hector
Andromache was Hector's devoted wife whose farewell with him on Troy's walls is the most tender scene in the Iliad — and whose fate after Troy's fall was the cruelest.
Haemon
🗡 heroNone recorded
Son of Creon and fiancé of Antigone who died beside her in defiance of his father
Phaedra
🗡 heroQueen consumed by forbidden love
Phaedra was the wife of Theseus who was cursed by Aphrodite to fall hopelessly in love with her stepson Hippolytus — her suicide and false accusation destroyed him.