[250] Apollodôr. i. 9, 15; Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. 711.
[251] Euripid. Alkêst. init. Welcker; Griechisch. Tragœd. (p. 344) on the lost play of Sophoklês called Admêtus or Alkêstis; Hom. Iliad., ii. 766; Hygin. Fab. 50-51 (Sophoklês, Fr. Inc. 730; Dind. ap. Plutarch. Defect. Orac. p. 417). This tale of the temporary servitude of particular gods, by order of Zeus as a punishment for misbehavior, recurs not unfrequently among the incidents of the mythical world. The poet Panyasis (ap. Clem. Alexand. Adm. ad Gent. p. 23)—
Τλῆ μὲν Δημήτηρ, τλῆ δὲ κλυτὸς Ἀμφιγυήεις,
Τλῆ δὲ Ποσειδάων, τλῆ δ᾽ ἀργυρότοξος Ἀπολλὼν
Ἀνδρὶ παρὰ θνητῷ θητεύσεμεν εἰς ἐνιαυτόν·
Τλῆ δὲ καὶ ὀβριμόθυμος Ἄρης ὑπὸ πατρὸς ἀνάγκης.
The old legend followed out the fundamental idea with remarkable consistency: Laômedôn, as the temporary master of Poseidôn and Apollo, threatens to bind them hand and foot, to sell them in the distant islands, and to cut off the ears of both, when they come to ask for their stipulated wages (Iliad, xxi. 455). It was a new turn given to the story by the Alexandrine poets, when they introduced the motive of love, and made the servitude voluntary on the part of Apollo (Kallimachus, Hymn. Apoll. 49; Tibullus, Elegii. 3, 11-30).
[252] Eurip. Alkêstis, Arg.; Apollod. i. 9, 15. To bring this beautiful legend more into the color of history, a new version of it was subsequently framed: Hêraklês was eminently skilled in medicine, and saved the life of Alkêstis when she was about to perish from a desperate malady (Plutarch. Amator c. 17. vol. iv. p. 53, Wytt.).
[253] The legend of Akastus and Pêleus was given in great detail in the Catalogue of Hesiod (Catalog. Fragm. 20-21, Marktscheff.); Schol. Pindar Nem. iv. 95. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 224; Apollod. iii. 13, 2.
[254] This incident was contained in one of the earliest dramas of Euripidês, the Πελίαδες, now lost. Moses of Chorênê (Progymnasm. ap. Maii ad Euseb. p. 43), who gives an extract from the argument, says that the poet “extremos mentiendi fines attingit.”