SEMICH. But there is not even one of our friends near, who can tell us whether we have to deplore the departed queen, or whether Alcestis, daughter of Pelias, yet living views this light, who has appeared to me and to all to have been the best wife toward her husband.
CHOR. Hears any one either a wailing, or the beating of hands within the house, or a lamentation, as though the thing had taken place?[[9]] There is not however any one of the servants standing before the gates. Oh would that thou wouldst appear, O Apollo, amidst the waves of this calamity!
SEMICH. They would not however be silent, were she dead.
SEMICH. For the corse is certainly not gone from the house.
SEMICH. Whence this conjecture? I do not presume this. What is it gives you confidence?
SEMICH. How could Admetus have made a private funeral of his so excellent wife?
CHOR. But before the gates I see not the bath of water from the fountain,[[10]] as is the custom at the gates of the dead: and in the vestibule is no shorn hair, which is wont to fall in grief for the dead; the youthful[[11]] hand of women for the youthful wife sound not.
SEMICH. And yet this is the appointed day,—
SEMICH. What is this thou sayest?
SEMICH. In the which she must go beneath the earth.